Federal election early voting revolution starts Monday but both parties still reluctant to reveal all

Updated

Close to two million Australians are set to vote before Labor releases its policy costings in the coming election.

Key points: Millions of Australians will vote early for the 2019 federal election

Traditionally political parties only reveal their full policies and costs in the last week of the campaign

The impact of the rise of early voting will be reviewed ... after this election

And if last election is anything to go by, the Coalition might have some eleventh-hour surprises of its own.

Early voting opens on Monday and the 2019 election is set to attract record numbers of pre-poll votes.

Labor's campaign spokesman Jim Chalmers has said his party would release its costings "in the usual way during the campaign".

"I think we'll release our costings in plenty of time for people to assess them," he said.

"We haven't decided on the day we'll do that."

Last election, Labor's costings were released six days before election day.

The Australian Electoral Commission expects close to two million voters will lodge pre-poll votes by then and many thousands more will have also lodged postal votes.

Professor Rodney Smith from the University of Sydney said the trend meant parties needed to win voters over earlier.

But, he notes, there's also a flipside.

"If people have already voted, they can't take their vote back," Professor Smith said.

"If you release a policy that's unpopular later, that's going to affect fewer voters."

Earlier this year, the AEC received a request from members of the Parliament's committee on electoral matters to investigate pre-poll voting once the election was over.

The majority of Australians are still voting in the week of the election — even when you include those voting early.

But Professor Smith said the pre-poll trend was likely to continue and more research is needed to determine the effect on the election.

"There is some evidence to say that more committed voters vote early but it's certainly not a black and white thing," he said.

"We just don't know enough yet about this phenomenon."

More than 500 early voting centres will be available, the majority opening on Monday.

Both the Labor and Liberal parties declined to respond to a request from the ABC about when they would formally declare all their policies and costings.

Topics: federal-election, government-and-politics, australia

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