Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil.
People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt.
Photo: AFP
“We will be a disciplined, orderly government in our second term,” Albanese said, after scooping ice cream for journalists in a cafe he used to visit with his late mother.
“We’ll work hard each and every day,” he promised, but took a quick break first for a Sunday afternoon visit to a craft brewery, Willie the Boatman, that serves “Albo Pale Ale.”
Dutton, a hard-nosed former policeman — who critics tagged “Trump-lite” for policies that included slashing the civil service — endured the rare humiliation of losing his own seat.
Photo: EPA-EFE
US President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, and the chaos they unleashed, might not have been the biggest factor in the Labor Party victory — but analysts said they helped.
“If we want to understand why a good chunk of the electorate has changed across the election campaign over the last couple of months, I think that’s the biggest thing,” University of Sydney politics lecturer Henry Maher said. “In times of instability, we expect people to go back to a kind of steady incumbent.”
The scale of Albanese’s win took his own party by surprise.
“It’s still sinking in,” Australian Treasurer Jim Chalmers said.
“This was beyond even our most optimistic expectations. It was a history-making night. It was one for the ages,” Chalmers told national broadcaster ABC.
However, the win came with “healthy helpings of humility,” because under-pressure Australians want “stability in uncertain times,” he said.
Albanese has promised to embrace renewable energy, cut taxes, tackle a worsening housing crisis and pour money into a creaking healthcare system. Dutton wanted to slash immigration, crack down on crime and ditch a longstanding ban on nuclear power.
Leaders around the world congratulated Albanese on his triumph.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he hoped to “promote freedom and stability in the Indo-Pacific” with Australia, a “valued ally, partner, and friend of the United States.”
An unnamed Chinese Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesperson said Beijing was “ready to work” with the Australian government.
Albanese said he had spoken with the prime ministers of Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, and received “some good text messages” from leaders in the UK, France “and a range of others.”
The prime minister said he planned to speak with the leaders of Indonesia and Ukraine, promising to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion.
“That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is,” he said.
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