Australia’s national sport is guessing election day

Forget cricket — Australia’s national sport is guessing when the next election will be. 

We’re now more than 900 days into Anthony Albanese’s prime ministership — and media outlets have spent at least half of them wondering out loud when the next vote will be held. 

It began as early as September 2023, when Albanese responded to a Greens threat to tank the Housing Australia Future Fund by refusing to rule out a double dissolution election. 

As the ABC’s Antony Green pointed out at the time, a double dissolution of Parliament was the only likely way an election would have been able to be held before August 2024, so the passing of the housing fund quieted the speculation. For a short while. 

In May of 2024, Green wrote another blog post declaring the “prospects for an election in late 2024 have evaporated”, citing the planned redistribution of federal seat boundaries and several state elections. 

But, as Green pointed out in the same post: “Early election speculation is like some creature from an Eagles song. You can stab it with your steely knives but you just can’t kill the beast.”

The beast reared its head again in August, in the form of an August 29 Australian column by Dennis Shanahan, who wrote: “Thursday, August 29 is the day that virtually all hope, expectation and speculation about an early federal election in 2024 becomes obsolete with only December 7 left as a saloon of last resort for an ‘early option’ before 2025.”

In October, Shanahan seemed sure he had figured it out: “​​After all the speculation about an early election in 2024, Anthony Albanese’s new parliamentary schedule has effectively ended the shadow play and ensured an election on May 17 — the full-term poll the prime minister has always promised.”

The following month, ABC News reported Albanese was “moving aggressively to ready Labor for a federal election campaign starting as early as January”. In the same story, Albanese was quoted as saying the election would be called in “April or before”, while mocking the media’s preoccupation: “It’s the media that seems to be obsessed by the date of elections. I have read the election would be in August, September, November, December 7.”

We at Crikey must admit we have not been immune to the temptation to play the guessing game. In mid-November, we received a tip from a Parliamentary source pointing out that the latest lower house schedule listed several valedictory speeches by retiring MPs.

Seeking comment from the prime minister’s office, we explained in a November 15 email that our source had “speculated that this could be a sign Labor is preparing for an early election — the logic being that by getting these speeches out of the way now, the governor-general could be asked to issue writs by late January for a March election, without any retiring MPs going without a chance to deliver their farewell speech.”

“Would simply refer you to recent comments (including this week) from the prime minister on election timing,” read the answer from the PMO. The story went unpublished. 

Two days later, NCA NewsWire reported Albanese had dropped a “big election date hint”. The news service referred to a Sky News interview where the prime minister said Australia would “go to an election sometime between May…” before cutting himself off. He went on to say “the election will be in May … it could be beforehand, but that will be a matter for me to make in conjunction with my cabinet colleagues”. 

With the new year upon us, the speculation has only grown more feverish. On January 1, SBS reported “experts have narrowed down the date of next year’s federal election to sometime between March and May”.

The Daily Telegraph wondered on January 6: “Might Albanese break convention and surprise us all by ending the guessing game — and catching almost everybody off guard — by calling an unlikely poll in mid-January for February 22?”

The same day, news.com.au reported: “Labor insiders believe that a surprise April 12 federal election is firming with the prime minister considering firing the starting gun straight after the WA election.”

In the Saturday Paper’s January 11 issue, a story said that “government insiders — and the Coalition — assume an early April date, announced in early March”.

Speculation aside, there are some fairly straightforward bits of information that can be relied on for those who want to play the guessing game at home. 

Current House of Representatives terms expire on July 25, and constitutionally a lower house election must be held within 68 days of that date, so it can’t be later than September 27. 

However, half of all senators’ terms will expire on June 30, and the seats must be filled before then. Traditionally, half-Senate and House of Representatives elections are held together, and the latest possible date to do that is May 17.

Good luck guessing!

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