Name: Why cost of living is a major issue in Australia election | BBC News
Uploaded: 2025-05-03T00:07:58.000Z
Duration: 9 min 36 s
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In Australia, voters will head to the ballot box on Saturday to cast their vote in the country's federal election.

Among the critical issues for voters is the high cost of living.

Both Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and the opposition leader Peter Dutton have been making big spending promises.

My colleague Steve Lye is in Sydney and told us earlier what the mood is like.

It's just about 6.10 in the evening here, the day before polling day, although early polling has been available to Australians here for the last two weeks or so.

We understand that about 6 million people have already cast their votes.

That's out of 18 million eligible voters.

So quite a sizable proportion of the electorate have already cast their votes even before polling day has yet to begin.

You mentioned housing, affordability and the cost of living very much on the minds of many of the electorate.

Worth to note as well that the demographics of this election are certainly interesting because it's the first time that millennials and Gen Z voters will be outnumbering baby boomers, comprising approximately 47% of the electorate.

So what matters to young people in this election is something that will be on the minds of those political candidates as they've been making their campaign speeches and campaign pledges as well.

Now we talked a bit about the cost of living and housing being on the minds of voters, but that's not the only thing.

There's also the geopolitics, geopolitical side of things as well that has really sort of come to the fore.

So it's not just the Russia-Ukraine war, it's not just what's been happening in the Middle East that we've just been reporting on, but it's really US President Donald Trump and his tariffs agenda that has really shaken things up.

We've seen how it's played out in the Canadian election.

Will it have an impact here in Australia as well?

That's something that candidates are trying to assess and determine what Australia's place in the world is going to be and how they present that to the electorate is certainly going to be on their minds.

My colleague Katie Watson has been speaking to voters from across Australia to get their thoughts on what matters to them.

This is Western Sydney and Australians here are enjoying some Americana.

Politics here has been a bit of a wild ride.

Every day, candidates trying to control their message, but not always successfully.

US politics and Donald Trump have thrown this campaign somewhat off course.

Tariffs are great, but we should have had tariff protections many years ago.

It looks bad now because they're used to a system where you sell off assets overseas.

It probably affects me more than I realise, but I just choose to ignore it.

Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and rival Peter Dutton have repeatedly had to answer questions on Trump.

Not everyone, though, satisfied with the answers.

Which is why independent candidates and smaller parties are doing well, voters fed up with traditional politics.

Since Trump has come in, we've seen a huge shift in the global geopolitical order.

And Australia's in this position where the US is a close ally and has been for 80 years, but China is our major trading partner.

So we have to balance these interests very carefully.

Canvassers are eager to sway any voters who are still undecided.

It's like our overall economy and also defence.

I care a lot about climate change and also queer rights.

A lot of the world is turning very conservative, I guess.

And global politics is increasingly hard to ignore when it comes to casting a vote.

Initially, the focus was on the cost of eggs, the cost of living in general, the cost of energy.

But there are some things that are more important than the cost of eggs.

Its Liberal Party was unelectable six months ago, but their elections this week were totally transformed by Donald Trump.

People here haven't been affected as much by Trump's policies.

But what we saw earlier this week in Canada, this leaning towards incumbents, the familiar in an uncertain world, well, polls predict that scenario will play out here too.

Australia prides itself on mateship, staying on side with its friends matters.

There may not be much of a team spirit among allies right now, but voters here will be keen to see how their next leader rides out this unpredictability.

It really is fascinating to see how events unfolding all the way across on the other side of the world can have an impact here on domestic issues here in Australia.

And we can discuss this a bit further with Conrad Benjamin.

He's creator, editor and presenter of the Punter's Politics podcast.

Conrad, thanks so much for joining me today to talk about this.

You've been speaking about the elections in the run-up to this quite extensively.

Tell us what some of your listeners and voters you've been speaking to about their main concerns leading into this election.

I think the main concerns are the fact that society in general in Australia, things are getting more expensive.

Housing is now impossible to get into if you're a millennial Gen Z.

You're now 10 years away from saving to get your deposit, even if you started 10 years ago.

So a lot of my audience and the things I talk about is how the system is fundamentally broken and we're sick of politicians who seem to be passing laws that keep this broken system going that benefits their vested interests and their corporate interests and is just beating down the everyday Aussie punter.

So what does that mean for these people that are sort of suffering from these policies that aren't helping them then?

And what are they thinking about doing during this election?

Not voting for the two main parties, looking to independents or smaller parties perhaps?

Or just boycotting the election altogether?

Yeah, the best thing about our political system is that we force everyone to vote and you get to preferentially list.

And then so I can go top to bottom if the major parties are just tinkering around the edges and serving their corporate donors,

I get to put a minor party or an independent and then in my electorate, if they don't get up, my vote will flow to who I would rather.

Do I want a slap in the face or a kick in the nuts?

I get to choose in the end, but ultimately I can put who I really want without wasting my vote, which I know in the UK and the US, it's a different system.

And so I think a lot of Aussies are very happy with our voting system that allows us to do that.

Yeah, it does really enable young voters or voters across the spectrum in Australia to really properly engage with the process and understand it's compulsory as well to vote.

I mean, there must be a frustration then from your listeners and for the young people here in Australia to really make their voices heard.

Yeah, like we've been, major parties have been horse trading back and forth.

Let's take housing for the last 20 years.

We have some of the most expensive housing in the world.

Like you wouldn't know we live in a country with heaps of land, but for 20 years, the housing crisis has gotten worse and worse and worse to the point where millennials and Gen Z are just completely locked out.

And so when you look at voting trends at the moment,

Albo with his last federal election won with the lowest primary vote in history.

So as much as he won, confidence in the major two-party system is dripping away.

And we're going to find out tomorrow whether that trend will continue, whether generations like myself are looking for politicians to actually start fixing broken systems rather than handing us a couple of bucks and tinkering around the edges and kicking the can down the road.

Yeah, and what do you think it would take for them to address or to make significant reforms that would help?

Like politicians seem to only want one thing and that's power.

And we need to just take it off them for them to lose an election, to lose votes, to lose seats.

So they wake up and go, oh, how do we get votes?

Well, let's look at where the votes went.

Let's look at these independents that don't take corporate cash.

Let's look at these independents that don't go work for oil and gas lobby groups just after they made the rules for it, right?