Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was reelected on Saturday, 3, and his labor party should get the largest number of chairs in the House of Representatives, surpassing the conservative bloc of liberal and national parties, according to projections from the country’s leading communication vehicles.
– Similar to what happened in Canada, where conservatives led until Donald Trump’s victory in the US and his rhetoric of transforming Canada into the “51st American state”.
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The turnaround was largely driven by anger over President Donald Trump’s trade war and its impact on Australia, a military ally and commercial partner near the US.
Trump’s rates – first 25% of Australia aluminum and steel, and then 10% of all other products – led voters to choose balanced albanese and move away from their conservative opponent Peter Dutton, whose policies and rhetoric echoed the US President Sean Kelly, a political columnist at Sydney Morning Herald.
“Trump totally dominated the trajectory of this election,” Kelly said, adding that Global Uncertainty triggered by Trump has made “Albanese’s boring a very attractive merchandise.”
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The Trump factor in Australian politics
Albanese is the latest left -wing leader to achieve reelection thanks to the rebound effect of Donald Trump’s election. Australia’s liberal party also led the polls before Trump’s victory and the imposition of the president’s tariff. Peter Dutton, leader of the Liberal Party, a former police officer with a reputation for being a hard line with crime and immigration, was criticized throughout the campaign for being ideologically close to the president of the United States.
Dutton, who even praised Trump this year, calling him “great thinker,” acknowledged the defeat and said he had phoned Albanese to congratulate him. Admitting the loss of his own chair as a representative of Dickson in Parliament, a position he held for two decades, Dutton said he also talked to the labor candidate Ali France.
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Dutton, who even praised Trump this year, calling him “great thinker,” acknowledged the defeat and said he had phoned Albanese to congratulate him. Admitting the loss of his own chair as a representative of Dickson in Parliament, a position he held for two decades, Dutton said he also talked to the labor candidate Ali France.
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“We didn’t go well enough during this campaign. This is obvious tonight, and I accept full responsibility for it,” he said, promising a reconstruction of the conservative block. “We were defined by our opponents in this election, which is not the true story of who we are.”
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At the beginning of the campaign, influenced by the way candidates could negotiate with Trump on the rates, labor were behind the polls, but managed to turn the game, as estimates point out. With 68% of the votes counted, the website of the Australian Electoral Commission designed that the Labor Party would win 81 of the 150 chairs of the House of Representatives.
“Our government will choose the Australian path, because we are proud of who we are and everything we build together in this country. We do not need to beg, borrow or copy anywhere else. We do not seek our inspiration abroad. We find it right here in our values and our people,” said Albanese, under applause, at the Sydney work party.
Trump’s rebound effect
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“Throughout the world, Trump’s unpopularity represents an opportunity for center-left political parties,” Michael Fullilove, CEO of the Lowy Institute, a Think Tank of Sydney, told The Washington Post.
The greatest history of the Australian election was the collapse of Dutton, the leader of a conservative coalition composed of the Liberal Party and the Rural National Party.
The former police officer had crashed a cultural war similar to Trump’s diversity programs and “progressive” school programs, promising an Australian version of US doge.
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But as Trump’s tariffs shook Australians’ faith in the United States and increased fears of a recession, nicknames such as “Doge-Y Dutton” and “Temu Trump” began to bother, analysts said.
“One factor we can all identify is the Trump factor,” liberal Senator James Paterson told Australian Broadcasting Corp. when the results began to be disclosed. “It was devastating in Canada for conservatives, where Canadian conservative leader Pierre Poilievre lost 20 points in a few months. And I think this has been a factor here.”
However, Dutton has also been harmed by a number of errors, including late policy ads, incorrect embarrassing statements, and twists on important issues.
However, Canada received a harder treatment than Australia, and Albanese’s response was more contained. His rigid response was to call Trump’s fares “an unminable act.”
In part, this is due to the fact that Australia is economically less linked to the United States than Canada and therefore not to feel the same immediate impact of tariffs. But this also reflects longtime dependence on Australia from US military power.
Australia between the US and China
Both Albanese and Dutton, a former defense minister, doubled the US security alliance, including an agreement for Australia to buy nuclear submarines to contain the growing Chinese military assertiveness in the region.
But Beijing is also Canberra’s largest commercial partner and Australia wants to maintain the flow of ships from its iron ore to China, even when Australia buys Washington weapons.
“The biggest challenge for the next government is to manage the strategic triangle between Washington, Beijing and Canberra,” Fullilove said. “The US is our great security ally and China is our most important economic partner – and they are currently in conflict.”
Australian elections rarely revolve around foreign affairs, he noted, but both Albanse and Dutton did their best to avoid international issues in the campaign.
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“We are a nation of 27 million people occupying a continent far from our historical sources of security and prosperity,” he said. “The international order we depend on is wearing out. We need to respond adequately to changes in the world.”
Albanese will now have to guide Australia in the midst of a trade war between the US and China, which can be prolonged while following its progressive domestic agenda.
Faces costs of cost of living and housing, said Kelly. However, even before his first election in 2022, Albanese was already presenting himself as a discreet leader – an intentional distancing of the intensity of Autralian leadership during Covid and Trump chaos.
“What he identified a long time ago … was the idea that voters were tired of conflict,” said Kelly. “And, as it happened, it played in favor of his strengths. He’s not a great showman. He is not a great speaker. He is not a flashy guy. It can be said that he was taking advantage of his possible weaknesses, but that is what a good politician does.”
The result was an extraordinary reversal compared to six months ago, when Albanese was behind the polls after the biggest stumble of his term: the emphatic defeat of an October 2023 constitutional referendum to create an indigenous advisory body, or “voice” for Parliament.
