A record 8.5 million Australians have cast their ballots early

Despite opinion polls pointing to a loss for the Coalition, the Opposition Leader insists he can pull off an unlikely victory today.

Transcript

00:00After a gruelling five weeks on the campaign, Peter Dutton is making his final pitches to

00:07voters as they go to the polls today. The question now, has Peter Dutton done enough

00:13to convince Australians it's time for a change of government?

00:17The opposition leader has started election day here in Melbourne. For the first time

00:21in this campaign, he's visited the seat of Goldstein, taken by teal independent Zoe Daniel

00:27in 2022. She holds it on a margin of 3.3%. Liberal candidate and former MP Tim Wilson is

00:36recontesting that seat. He also stopped by in the seat of McNamara with the Liberal candidate.

00:42It's actually a safe Labor seat, more so under threat from the Greens. But the coalition's

00:48focus in Melbourne has been on a number of outer urban seats in the mortgage belt where cost of

00:54living pain is acute. Over the past week, Peter Dutton has travelled around the country,

00:59stopping in more than 20 electorates. In the final days of the campaign, he tried to frame the election

01:04not as a referendum on the campaign, but on the Albanese government. Now, despite some hiccups

01:11this week, opinion polls suggesting the coalition is on track for defeat, Mr Dutton is trying to show

01:17a sense of confidence. This election obviously is about who do people trust to manage the economy.

01:23Cost of everything has gone up over the last three years and Australians just can't afford three more

01:27years of a Labor government. We expect the opposition to head to Brisbane later, where he'll cast his own

01:32ballot in his electorate of Dixon. It is held on a margin of just 1.7% and is Queensland's most

01:39marginal seat. So the opposition leader trying to define history, hoping to become the first opposition

01:46to unseat a first-term government since the Great Depression.