By Andrew Brown and Jacob Shteyman in Canberra
Hostilities in the battle for the prime ministership have been briefly paused as leaders struck a more subdued tone on the campaign trail on Good Friday.
With most of the country putting thoughts of an election on the backburner during the Easter break, Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton also adopted a more laidback approach.
The prime minister joined Bennelong MP Jerome Laxale for a casual stroll with their dogs Toto and Toby at a park in the marginal seat.
Chatting with some locals, the conversation naturally turned to the prime minister’s pet passion – the South Sydney Rabbitohs – who face a tough test against the NRL ladder-leading Bulldogs on Friday afternoon.
“Souths are gonna win, the Easter bunnies,” Mr Albanese quipped.
Mr Laxale won the seat in Sydney’s inner north from the Liberals at the 2022 election, but a redistribution has put the electorate notionally into the opposition column on a minuscule margin of 0.04 per cent.
Meanwhile, the opposition leader attended one of Australia’s largest Good Friday services at the Monastery of Saint Charbel in western Sydney alongside 20,000 Maronite worshippers.
Mr Dutton was alongside former prime minister Scott Morrison at the service, along with Labor’s Tony Burke, MP for the church’s local electorate of Watson.
The opposition leader is hoping the Easter break can lead to a campaign reset, with fresh polling showing the coalition on track to record an unwelcome election record.
The latest YouGov poll, provided to AAP, showed the coalition tied with Labor for first preferences after its primary vote fell to 33 per cent.
If the poll results were replicated at the May 3 election, the coalition would receive its lowest share of primary votes since the Liberal Party was formed in 1944.
YouGov’s director of public data Paul Smith said the opposition would need a miracle to be able to recover, with the election just two weeks away.
“This is a dramatic fall from the coalition’s position only a few weeks ago in February from being in the box seat to win the election,” he told AAP.
“It would take a historic turnaround for the coalition to win … given voters are already receiving their postal votes and pre-poll starts on Tuesday.
“The coalition is running out of time.”
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