Australia Federal Election To See Broad Policy Continuity

Key View

• We at Fitch Solutions continue to see uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the May 21 federal elections despite opinion polls pointing to the main opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP) leading the incumbent Liberal-National Coalition for now.
• Nevertheless, we expect broad policy continuity to persist after the election, as both parties have similar policy stances on a range of issues such as tax policies, foreign relations and the environment.
• Hence, we have maintained our Short-Term Political Risk index score for Australia at 71.5 out of 100, following our decision to keep the ‘policy continuity’ sub-component score of 77.5 unchanged.

We at Fitch Solutions expect Australia’s May 21 federal election to be closely contested between Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s conservative Liberal-National Coalition (the ‘Coalition’) and the main opposition Australian Labor Party (ALP), led by Anthony Albanese. Despite recent opinion polls showing that the ALP continues to lead the Coalition, we see uncertainty surrounding the outcome of the election given that the Coalition similarly lagged the ALP in polls before the previous elections in May 2019. Nonetheless, we expect broad policy continuity to persist after the elections regardless of the outcome. This is because both parties have broadly similar policy stances towards a range of key issues such as fiscal matters, foreign relations (including with China) and the environment. As such, we have maintained our Short-Term Political Risk index (STPRI) score for Australia at 71.5 out of 100, having left the ‘policy continuity’ sub-component score at 77.5.