Sawt Falasteen - Australia's election foes get personal

In their third televised election debate, characterised as the "final showdown" before 17 million Australians cast their compulsory votes, Morrison and Labor's Anthony Albanese got personal.

"He's a loose unit when it comes to the economy. He makes things up as he goes along," said Morrison, using a slang term for someone who is unreliable because of the Labor leader's campaign stumbles.

At the outset of the campaign last month, Albanese forgot both the unemployment rate and the main lending rate. More recently, he apparently had difficulty explaining his party's disability policy.

Albanese hit back, accusing Morrison of shirking responsibility for the slow rollout of vaccines and rapid antigen tests in the Covid-19 pandemic, as well as for his management of the 2019-2020 "Black Summer" bushfires and this year's deadly east coast floods.

When Morrison faces challenges, he "blames someone else consistently", he said.

Albanese accused Morrison's conservative Liberal-National Party coalition of allowing climate change policy to drift.

The prime minister has vowed to mine and export coal for as long as there are buyers, touted a "gas-fired recovery" from the pandemic, and resisted global calls to cut carbon emissions faster by 2030.

"Climate change is real and it is here now. We see it with the bushfires and floods," Albanese told the Channel Seven-hosted debate.

"Australia can be a renewable energy superpower for the world if we seize this opportunity."

- 'In the mood to change' -

The pair also sparred on a string of other policy disagreements: Morrison's failure to fulfil a three-year-old campaign promise to create a federal anti-corruption commission; Albanese's support for minimum wages to match inflation; and Labor's backing for more government funding for childcare.

Despite the public wrangles, including in two previous election debates, the opinion polls have not budged much since Morrison called the election a month ago.

A weekend Newspoll gave Labor a 54-46 percent lead over Morrison's ruling coalition on a two-party basis.

But few pundits are counting Morrison out.

Three years ago, he defied a string of negative opinion polls to win what he termed a "miracle" election.

Opinion polls in any case are a snapshot, not a prediction, cautioned Mark Kenny, professor at the Australian National University in Canberra.

But "if I put my money on it, I think I'll probably go with what passes for empirical data that we do have at the moment, which suggests that Australians are in the mood to change the government: they've had enough of Morrison", he told AFP.

On the campaign stump, Morrison freely concedes: "You may not like me."

But he asks voters to judge him by the job he has done, notably for Australia's resurgent post-pandemic economy and 4.0-percent unemployment rate.

Even on the economy, however, he has difficulties.

Inflation is running hot at a 20-year high as prices soar at gas stations, in shops, and for housing.

Adding to the pain for borrowers, the central bank raised interest rates this month for the first time in 20 years.

V.Said--SF-PST