Australia's Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks to supporters after winning the general election at the Labor Party election night event in Sydney on May 3.SAEED KHAN/AFP/Getty Images
The ruling Labor Party stormed to victory in Australia’s election Saturday, with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese becoming the country’s first leader to win back-to-back elections in over two decades.
Early results showed Labor was on course to increase its majority in parliament, only months after polls suggested the Liberal-National Coalition — which governed Australia from from 2013 to 2022 — was on an easy path back to power.
Speaking to supporters in Sydney, Mr. Albanese said voters had made a “clear choice,” adding it “means so much that in these uncertain times the people of Australia have placed their trust in Labor again.”
Like Canada’s election less than a week ago, the Australian contest was dramatically reshaped by U.S. President Donald Trump’s global trade war, with voters seeing Mr. Albanese better placed to deal with the volatile American leader than his opposition counterpart Peter Dutton, who spent much of the campaign running away from comparisons to Mr. Trump.
In another echo of the Canadian results, Mr. Dutton lost the Queensland seat he had held for 24 years. Unlike Conservative Leader Pierre Poilievre, that will likely spell the end of Mr. Dutton’s parliamentary career. The Opposition Leader faced a barrage of criticism for how he ran the Coalition campaign, including from senior Liberal figures, with the party losing seats across the country.
Conceding both the general election and his own race Saturday, Mr. Dutton said “we didn’t do well enough in this campaign, that much is obvious.”
“Our Liberal family is bleeding across the country tonight,” he said. “We’ve been defined by our opponents in this election, which is not a true story of who we are but we will rebuild.”
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton joined by wife Kirilly and their children Harry, Tom and Rebecca leave the stage during a Liberal Party election night event at W Hotel on May 3 in Brisbane.Dan Peled/Getty Images
Polls had shown many voters were not convinced by Mr. Albanese’s record, but the Coalition failed to capitalize on that, and Australian political analysts were damning in their assessment of Mr. Dutton’s gaffe-filled and at times contradictory campaign. Laura Tingle, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation’s chief political correspondent, described the opposition’s efforts as “pretty catastrophic,” while on right-leaning Sky News, analyst Chris Uhlmann was even more critical, saying the opposition had “gone backwards since day one.”
“They blew it, they blew it every single week, I don’t think there was a single day that you could say the Liberal Party won this campaign,” Mr. Uhlmann said.
Speaking to the ABC, Coalition spokesman James Paterson drew a direct parallel between his side’s situation and that of the Canadian Conservatives.
“One fact I think we can all acknowledge and recognize is the Donald Trump factor,” Mr. Paterson said. “It was devastating in Canada for the Conservatives where the Canadian Conservative Leader lost 20 points over the course of a few months. I think that has been a factor here.”
Mr. Albanese did appear to reference Mr. Dutton’s appeal to Trumpism in his speech, saying “we do not need to beg or borrow or copy from anywhere else.”
“We do not seek our inspiration overseas,” Mr. Albanese said. “We find it here in our country and our people.”
Concerns about trade and Mr. Trump were by no means the only factor however, and polling had begun to shift in Labor’s favour following the release of a March budget and positive economic data showing progress on inflation and other issues. Treasurer Jim Chalmers told the ABC that Labor had “won the argument over the economy, particularly the cost of living.”
At a packed and jubilant Labor election party in Sydney, supporter Tim Bradshaw said the results were “a great win for us, a great win for the country.”
“It’s great to know that the Australian people have accepted Labor’s message of hope,” he said. “It was a very positive campaign with a lot of hope and a focus on building a better future for Australia.”
Kitty Farrell, who voted for Mr. Albanese in his Grayndler constituency, said she had been confident in a Labor victory, but was taken aback by how convincing it was, with the national broadcasters calling the result by 8:30pm, less than three hours after the first polls closed.
“Honestly, I thought it was going to be tight,” she said. “The current political climate is really dynamic.”
In contrast to Canada, where concerns over how a prospective government would respond to Mr. Trump’s trade war led voters to back the two main parties in numbers not seen for decades, Australia has broadly continued a trend towards fragmentation, with independents and smaller parties like the Greens picking up seats around the country.
According to ABC political analyst Casey Briggs, fewer Australians than ever are reliably voting for the same party from one election to next, with almost two-thirds of voters expected to shift their support this year, compared to just 28 per cent in the 1960s.
Voting is compulsory in Australia, and elections always take place at the weekend. The unique atmosphere this creates was on view Saturday. At Pagewood Public School in the south Sydney suburbs, hundreds of locals (and their dogs) gathered to cast their votes, catch up with friends and neighbours, and enjoy a traditional “democracy sausage” fried up by volunteers.
Eating sandwiches in the sun, a relief after days of torrential rain, many expressed disbelief that any country would do differently, and particularly at the idea of voting on a work day as in Canada.
Jean O’Rourke, a voter, said Australia’s sausage sizzles and fete-like atmosphere helped assuage any sense of bitterness or partisanship, as even rival party volunteers — and one candidate — were on site bantering with each other and posing for photos.
“It makes you feel like part of the community,” Ms. O’Rourke said.
Mr. Albanese echoed this sense of moving beyond partisanship in his speech Saturday, acknowledging both first-time Labor voters and those who had cast ballots for opposing parties.
“Let us all reflect on what we have in common,” he said. “We are all Australians. Let all of us work together to build our national unity on the enduring foundations of fairness, equality and respect for one another.”