In Australian election race, Trump 'chaos' is making a conservative vote risky

By Kirsty Needham

SYDNEY (Reuters) - In the well-heeled Sydney beachside suburb of Bondi Junction, early voters leaving a pre-poll centre said they had Donald Trump and the global economy on their mind.

Australia holds a national election on Saturday, and a campaign coinciding with the U.S. president's stop-start tariffs and volatile diplomacy is bolstering the prospects of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his ruling centre-left Labor Party.

Albanese does not name Trump when he tells voters a conservative government led by the Liberal Party opposition would bring "chaos" to Australia.

"The last thing you need is a volatile government," Albanese said on Monday.

"Trump is affecting everybody," said business owner Ian Atherton, 67, voting in Bondi Junction, among the 2.4 million Australians to have already cast a ballot by Monday.

"What is happening externally is far more important than what is happening internally. I just want to keep the status quo," he added.

When Trump was inaugurated in January, Liberal Party leader Peter Dutton was ahead in the polls, as Australians expressed anger over the cost of living and housing affordability.

Most polls in the final stretch of the campaign show Labor ahead, although it may need the support of independent lawmakers to form government.

"Voters want stability while an idiot like that is in charge in the United States," said Lawrence Jurman, 71. "I think it has hurt the Liberals."

Andrew Carswell, former press secretary to Liberal Party Prime Minister Scott Morrison, who lost office at the previous election, said Trump had been "a wrecking ball" for Australia's conservative coalition and more broadly across the world.

"Australian voters are looking on with concern at what is happening and saying if that is change, we don't want it," he said.

Three recent surveys show negative public reaction to Trump, while Liberal Party insiders told Reuters the anti-Trump sentiment was impacting Dutton's campaign as voters rapidly became risk-averse. Australian pension funds, exposed to the U.S. stockmarket rout, are one way voters are taking a direct hit.

Although Trump was not the decisive factor in Dutton's fall in opinion polls - Albanese has run a strong campaign, and Dutton made mistakes including a short-lived policy to ban public servants working from home - it added to voter reservations, said two political strategists.

"Peter is basically a mainstream Australian conservative, he is not an extremist. Some people in the party got Trumpy in a trivial way," said a former Liberal campaign strategist who knows Dutton and declined to be named.

Independent political consultant Simon Jackman said Albanese's decision to delay the election when a cyclone threatened Brisbane meant the campaign coincided with Trump imposing tariffs which shocked Australians.

The Liberal Party has historically seen itself as closer to the U.S., striking security and free trade agreements, he said.

"You had the amazing spectacle of a leader of the conservative party in Australia, Dutton, having to distance himself from the president of the United States," said Jackman.

The election had been shaping up as a retrospective about what a bad job Albanese and Labor had done in managing the cost of living crisis, Jackman said, but that changed.

"It became (about) which party could shield Australia from an incredibly uncertain global economic environment, led largely by the actions of the American president."

The Trump effect is also boosting the "Teal" independents - female lawmakers who won city seats from the Liberals in 2022 by championing action on climate change, and could determine which party forms government if neither secures a clear majority, adds Jackman.

'AWFUL' TIMING

In the week after Trump and his DOGE advisor Elon Musk arrived in the White House, Dutton criticised public servants hired as "culture, diversity and inclusion advisers". He would appoint a rising conservative star, indigenous woman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, to a Ministry of Government Efficiency, he said.

Media seized on the moment Senator Price, the former deputy mayor of a desert town wracked by violence, said she wanted to "make Australia great again". She later said the echo of Trump's slogan was a slip of the tongue.

"There was an early attachment to Trump euphoria when things were glowing, and then when they turned sharply, the alignment with the Trump administration hurt them, particularly policies on cutting the public service and work from home," said Carswell, who adds the campaign was "awful timing" for Dutton.

U.S. trade negotiators also complained about Australia's subsidised medicine scheme, bolstering Labor's election attack - denied by Dutton - that he would "Americanise" health.

Albanese has largely avoided direct criticism of Trump, because of the importance of the U.S. security alliance. He did not attend Trump's inauguration and has not gone to Washington, saying he will wait for the results of the May 3 election.

Dutton, asked about Trump in a televised leaders debate mid-campaign, said: "I don't know the president, I've not met him."

When shown a picture of Musk in the final leaders debate on Sunday, Dutton said the first words that came to mind were "evil genius".

"I haven't sought to be anybody other than myself," he said, when asked if he was distancing himself from Trump's style.

A Resolve poll for The Sydney Morning Herald, which directly asked about Trump's impact on the election, found 68% of those surveyed said Trump was bad for Australia, and 35% of undecided voters were less likely to back Dutton because of Trump.

Ipsos Australia director Jessica Elgood says the Trump effect can be seen in other polls where cost of living tops concerns.

"If you are concerned about the range of issues related to the cost of living, you are going to be worried by the global financial instability and unpredictability that has occurred over the last few weeks since the tariffs were announced," she said.

"Taken together it creates an environment where the safety of a known quantity - Labor and Albanese - is more compelling than the risk of the unknown - Dutton."

(Reporting by Kirsty Needham in Sydney; Editing by Lincoln Feast.)