2022 Australian Federal Election (Mercbl)

The 2022 Australian federal election was held on Saturday 21st of May 2022 to elect members of the 47th parliament of Australia. The election had been called following the dissolution of the 46th parliament of Australia as elected at the 2019 federal election. All of the 151 seats in the House of Representatives (lower house) and 40 of the 76 seats in the Senate (upper house) were up for election.

The third-term incumbent Liberal/National Coalition Government, led by Prime Minister Scott Morrison, was defeated by the opposition Australian Labor Party lead by opposition leader Anthony Albanese. The Labor Party claimed a six-seat majority with 81 seats, the Liberal/National Coalition finished with 64, the Centre Alliance finished with 2 and the remaining 4 going to the Australian Greens, Katter's Australian Party and two independents.

The electoral system of Australia enforces compulsory voting and uses full-preference instant-runoff voting in single-member seats for the House of Representatives and optional preferential single transferable voting in the Senate. The election was administered by the Australian Electoral Commission.

Background
The 2022 election was largely defined by the Morrison government's response to the COVID-19 pandemic, including the rollout of the COVID vaccine to the Australian public, while the Labor opposition also greatly criticized corruption in the Morrison administration, promising to create a National Anti-Corruption Commission. The weeks preceding the election also saw increased tension between the major Australia ally the United States of America and the Islamic Republic of Iran, leading to Defense Minister Peter Dutton participating in a disastrous interview on the ABC's 7.30 program on the 24th of March where he was perceived as overly hawkish and callous towards the possibility of Australia's involvement in a new war in the Middle East less than a year after Australian and American withdrawal from Afghanistan and the Fall of Kabul in August 2021. The next day Prime Minister Scott Morrison failed to assuage public fears in a press conference the next day, neither criticizing Dutton's comments nor properly clarifying the Coalition's position on the issue.