Australia’s prime minister told government colleagues Tuesday that an early general election within weeks was “a live option,” an official said. Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull alone decides the timing of the next election. He has maintained that he plans for his government to run a full three-year term which would make the election due around September. But he told his colleagues at their first meeting at Parliament House for the year that the election could be called much sooner, a government minister said. Turnbull said he could call a double dissolution election, so-called because both the House of Representatives and the Senate are dissolved.
Turnbull told his colleagues “we can reasonably expect an election to be at the normal time, in the August-to-October period, but that is not set in stone,” the minister told reporters on condition of anonymity because he was speaking as a spokesman for the meeting rather than as himself. “He said a double dissolution was a live option, which would have to be weighed up,” the minister said.
An ordinary election in which the entire House of Representatives and half the Senate go to the polls can be held any time from Aug. 6 until Jan. 14 next year.
Full Article: Australian official says PM is considering an early election – Yahoo News.