Canberra: Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has warned that the country must take the rise of the far-right “seriously” ahead of the General Election on May 3.
Albanese, leader of the center-left governing Labor Party, on Saturday urged “mainstream politics” to speak out against “far-right figures” and the rise of the ideology.
He told reporters on the election campaign trail in Melbourne that he is still “shocked” about incidents of far-right groups protesting on the steps of the Victorian state parliament building and in the center of Adelaide, the capital of South Australia.
“We know the consequences of this. We need to take this seriously, these threats, because they are real,” he said.
The incumbent PM was speaking from a Chinese language school in Melbourne’s southeast, where he announced that a re-elected Labor government would boost funding for community language schools by 25 million Australian dollars (16 million US dollars).
Albanese said the pledge would help 90,000 students learn and maintain 84 languages “with a special focus” on Asian languages.
The southeastern state of Victoria, of which Melbourne is the capital, is considered a key battleground in the election.
Labor currently holds 24 of Victoria’s 38 seats in the 150-seat lower house of the federal parliament, where the government is formed, but is facing threats from the left-wing Greens in inner-city areas and from the opposition conservative Coalition in fast-growing outer metropolitan regions, Xinhua news agency reported.
Campaigning in his native state of Queensland on Saturday morning, opposition leader Peter Dutton said that Albanese has “abandoned” people in regional and outer suburban areas and has prioritized “affluent” voters in inner-city Sydney and Melbourne.
Despite opinion polls widely projecting that Labor is on track to win a second term in government at the election, Dutton on Saturday said there is “no doubt” in his mind that the Coalition will win power.
Both leaders made several stops across Australia on Saturday as the election campaign entered its final stretch.
After spending the morning in Melbourne, Albanese flew to the island state of Tasmania to attend an event for Labor Party volunteers before finishing the day in his native Sydney.
Dutton traveled from Queensland to Darwin, capital of the Northern Territory (NT), where he attended a roundtable event on the cost of living and crime alongside the territory’s Chief Minister Lia Finocchiaro.
Speaking to locals, Dutton invoked his time as a police officer in Queensland prior to entering politics to promise that a Coalition government would focus on community safety.
“It instills in you, I think forever, a real sense of what’s right and wrong, and what we’ve seen in the NT for a long time is just wrong,” he said.
Albanese and Dutton will face off in the fourth and final leaders’ debate of the election campaign on Sunday night.
(IANS)
