Australia votes in general election overshadowed by Trump tariffs

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00:00I think it's kind of a tradition. It's limited to Bondi Beach, which is Australia's most famous beach here in Sydney.

00:07And to be honest, it's been a beautiful day, but it's not even that warm.

00:10I think they're just doing it to appear on TV, and apparently it's working.

00:14It's working. Gregory, tell us, how did voting go this Saturday?

00:20Well, I went to a polling station this morning.

00:24There were still a lot of people voting, even though early voting is allowed here.

00:29Actually, this year was a record number of early voting.

00:32More than 40% of the voters voted before today for this election.

00:38And polls have closed here on the East Coast, where roughly 80% of the Australian population live.

00:43But polls are still open in over states in Australia, in South Australia, the Northern Territory, and Western Australia.

00:50And it's not to be discounted, actually, because three years ago, Western Australia was the decider for this election.

00:56Labour did very well three years ago, and that's how they got into government.

01:01So it's still a bit too early to know how everything will turn out.

01:05But polls these last few weeks have clearly indicated that we are looking for a re-election of Labour in government,

01:13which is not a small thing, because, actually, if Anthony Albanese, the Prime Minister, does win this election tonight,

01:19he will be the first Prime Minister in over 25 years to win a second term.

01:24Yeah. Domestic issues usually dominate the agenda in Australia.

01:29But some voters worried about Donald Trump. Tell us more.

01:33Yeah, yeah, of course. I mean, it's not as bad as Canada, because so far, Donald Trump didn't say he was planning to invade or annex Australia.

01:45But yes, of course, especially his commercial policy has created some tension here.

01:51Australia is a country that exports massively its product, agriculture, mining, etc., etc.

01:57And the position adopted by Donald Trump was kind of detrimental to Conservative leader Peter Dutton,

02:05who chose to kind of like align himself with Donald Trump, use some of his rhetoric, some of his ideas.

02:13And, well, this didn't reassure Australians at all.

02:16Just to expand a little bit on how Dutton tried to copy Donald Trump,

02:20well, first, we found out just a few days ago that one of the American president's campaign director

02:27actually flew to Australia to give him some advice, to coach him for this campaign.

02:32And just last week, at the end of a debate he had with Anthony Albanese,

02:35he called the ABC, which is the national public broadcaster, the hate media.

02:41Earlier in the campaign, he said he was going to create Department of Government efficiency,

02:47a doge like the one Elon Musk is running, and he said he plans to cut thousands and thousands of public servants' jobs.

02:54And this didn't really go well with voters either, because they understood that behind those codes,

02:59there would be less public service and that ultimately their life would be not as good as it is today.

03:06So it was actually a pretty bad bet for Peter Dutton to align himself that much with Donald Trump,

03:13because actually Australians are not very fond of him.

03:16Actually, a survey conducted just a few weeks ago with a very wide number of people

03:22was asking the question, who do you think is the biggest threat to world peace?

03:27And Donald Trump came first in front of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping.

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