00:00When we were doing this story, we looked around the country to see if we could find some data
00:06that really talked about a cost of living election and how bad it was going to be.
00:11And we couldn't really find it.
00:12So what we did is we went and got the UNSW and a data analytics firm to have a look at
00:18some data for us.
00:19And what they came back with was actually pretty startling.
00:22First of all, three years ago, just before the last election, around a majority of households
00:29were in financial stress in 8% of electorates.
00:32So 8% of electorates, a majority of households were in financial stress.
00:36Now if we fast forward to today, that figure is now 82%.
00:40So that tells you just how bad it is and how difficult it's going to be for Prime Minister
00:46Anthony Albanese.
00:47I guess if you look at what does this mean politically, because we don't have a presidential
00:53system here, we go seat by seat.
00:54So if you look at the 20 marginal seats that Labor's defending at the next election, 19
01:01of those are in pretty acute financial stress.
01:05So that tells you the challenge for the Labor government and Prime Minister Albanese as
01:09he comes into this election.
01:11What about the Greens, Angus?
01:12Yeah, interesting one there.
01:14I mean, they are defending three seats up in Brisbane and also the seat, Adam Bandt's
01:19seat in Melbourne, which is definitely not in play.
01:22But those three seats in Brisbane are definitely in play.
01:26We've seen some, I think, older voters move away from the Greens.
01:31They've been a little bit shocked, I think, by some of the antics of Max Chandler-Mather,
01:36the housing spokesman, getting on the stage with the CFMEU, terrible look for them.
01:42But also some pretty, you might call, radical housing policies around putting a sort of
01:48rent cap on to try and freeze rents.
01:51Look, everyone thinks that's a terrible idea, most economists, the Grattan Institute, people
01:55like that.
01:56But we went and dug into the data and actually you can see that, well, there's a reason for
02:02that and that is because those three Green seats in Brisbane, you've got Griffith, you've
02:07got Ryan and you've got Brisbane, all of those have really elevated levels.
02:12So about 80% of those electorates are in serious rental stress.
02:17So 80% of households in those three seats are under rental stress.
02:21So that might tell you why the Greens are so keen to push this policy and how they're
02:25speaking to their base.
02:26And how are the independents approaching this election?
02:28Yeah, this is going to be the wild card, I think.
02:31I think we're not going to see a huge amount of movement between the two major parties
02:35in seats.
02:37But I think the independents is going to be the big story again in this election.
02:41So Simon Holmes of Court and his Climate 200, they've got their backing candidates in third
02:47party seats and all the focus is really on whether they're going to retain their seats,
02:53the so-called Teals in Sydney and Melbourne and also Kate Cheney over in Perth.
02:58But I think the really interesting contests are going to be some of these regional independents.
03:03So we've got in the seat of Wanan, we've got a guy, Alex Dyson, 36-year-old comedian, taking
03:10on Dan Teen, a former cabinet minister.
03:13On the Gold Coast, there's a couple of independents there that are going to do some things.
03:16In the seat of Groom, Toowoomba, LNP heartland for years.
03:20That's going to be an interesting battle.
03:21And also outside in some of the regional areas in Melbourne or outside of Melbourne.
03:26So I think they've been quite strategic also and they've targeted these seats where the
03:33sitting members are retiring and there's a three or four way contest.
03:37So it's going to be a messy preference flow, things are going to be fractured there.
03:41So I think that's going to be the story of the election.
Comments