Australian shares are expected to open very nearly flat today, losing less than 0.1% according to ASX 200 futures – though things could go anywhere near that we’ve hit Day One of the 2025 Australian Election campaign.

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After months of waiting, Anthony Albanese called the election for Saturday, May 3.

Albo – who said he was “born ready” at a presser this morning – is all confidence. So too Peter Dutton, though he’s not spoken since the poll call yesterday.

Most recently, Dutton already staked out ground for one early election battleground: He and the Liberals have pitched lower power prices as a key tussle point, with their solution being to “force” more gas into domestic markets.

HotCopper is sure we’ll see plenty more skirmishes in the weeks ahead as May 3 rushes up quite quickly – and it’s one every Aussie investor will watch closely.

In company news, Bellevue Gold (ASX:BGL) still has the brakes on this Friday. The gold miner is mulling a possible downward adjustment for its production guidance and asked to stop ASX trade until it has completed a review.

Impact Minerals (ASX:IPT) will be one to watch too after wrapping up its renounceable rights issue from Feb. 28; the explorer issued 605M new shares and 302M new options and has walked away with a little over $3.6M in its pockets.

On HotCopper forums, Helix Resources (ASX:HLX) has chins wagging after acquiring the 23sqkm, seven-tenement White Hills copper-gold project in Arizona.

Westar Resources (ASX:WSR) is also being watched a major board reshuffle this week.

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Looking at forex, the Aussie dollar is buying 62.9 US cents.

To commodities, which are in the greenback,

Iron Ore has jumped another 1.2% to sell at $103.65 a tonne in Singapore,

Brent Crude is trading at $74.02,

Gold is trickled higher, to $3,078 per ounce, and, 

US natgas futures are today selling at around $3.92 per gigajoule.

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