Election Reflection - Australian Politics in 2025

I met Anthony Albanese after a Midnight Oil concert in 2017. Chatted to him for a couple of minutes and came away happy to have met the bloke. Thoroughly decent, I thought. And he knew his Oils. Big tick.

The fact is, I'd already decided I liked Albo. Hard not to like (or at least respect) the life and journey of a man who's gone from being the son of a single mother on a disability pension and who grew up in a council flat, to eventually rise to occupy the highest office in the land. It's important to acknowledge just how rare this is in a global context. The only person in the UK or America in the past century who's become Prime Minster or President from financial circumstances even remotely comparable is Jimmy Carter. That's a profound fact, and one we need to celebrate regardless of our political alliances.

And my alliance is clear; I am an unabashed leftie. I am a progressive. I am pro-Union. No point in writing this reflection without declaring otherwise. But this does not mean I am incapable of objectivity. The only way to truly understand politics is to strive to appreciate the whole picture, and this cannot be done from a singular viewpoint.

Politics is increasingly partisan. It's not quite as hyper-partisan here as it is in America, but there's still a pretty pronounced quasi-tribal divide. The tribal division seems most problematic on the Right, in that the Liberal Party has changed markedly in the last thirty years, relative to its proximity to what was notionally the centre. In contrast, Labor hasn't really moved. This has come about for a few different reasons. To understand the election result that just occurred, this needs to be understood.

Small 'l' liberalism was essentially committed to minimising governmental 'interference', both economically and personally. The Liberal Party compromised its position on this in respect to the personal aspect when began to adopt increasingly conservative positions on a number of social issues. At grassroots levels, the Party became the party of choice for many who identified as conservative Christians. These people became increasingly powerful within party ranks, not only allowing them to have a significant impact on the selection and preferencing of candidates but actually facilitating the rise of the conservative Christian Prime Ministers, Tony Abbott and Scott Morrison. No doubt these results were greatly celebrated by significant sections of the Party's Christian-Conservative wing and their supporters both in the media and the general population, but there was a problem. These victories came at considerable cost.

Australia is not a particularly conservative nation, because despite the still significant number of people who identify as religiously affiliated, we have become an essentially secular nation. The societal positions advocated by the Christian Right have been rejected by the population at large. We have an entrenched position on abortion on the grounds of a woman's right to choose. We have accepted euthanasia and the right to die. We have embraced same-sex marriage. We are broadly accepting of gender diversity and inclusivity. The problem for the Liberal Party at large has been the degree of focus that the Christian Right of the Party has placed on these issues, given they have essentially been resolved in the minds of the broader population. And within the broader Christian population, it is important to recognise that the conservative or strictly doctrinal position advocated by the larger Christian Churches (Catholic, Anglican, Uniting) are not necessarily the ones that 'everyday' Christians endorse. Many are capable of recognising that their religion is for them, and not something that can readily be imposed onto others. Many are simply more progressive and inclusive than the Church to which they belong.

Further to this, many who identify as religious do not focus solely or intensely on these elements that are essentially personal. Many, like myself, focus on the more fundamental, Christ-centred priorities of empathy, compassion and care, which manifest in socioeconomic and environmental policy. And this is where the Liberal Party in 2025 starts to become seriously unstuck.

It's all well and good - as Peter Dutton did - to campaign vociferously about the pain being experienced by many regarding costs of living, but he needed to have substance and solution behind him. Dutton and the Liberal Party really struggled here. A 12-month fuel excise reprieve had the ring of a mobile phone contract to it, and Dutton's assertion that it would save people around $14 a week was ill-advised, given that most who are really, really, struggling don't use a full tank of people a week, because they cannot afford to own a car. Free public transport might have been a better policy, but it wasn't on the table.

There were other policy problems. A proposed cutting of $400 billion from the foreign aid budget in this geopolitical environment was extremely unwise. Trump has upended the globe with his tariff scattergun and called into question decades-old strategic alliances with allies. Foreign aid has long been recognised as an extremely effective form of soft power internationally, and with America creating a power vacuum, now is the time to actually increase foreign aid in order to strengthen our geopolitical position.

This was a strategic misstep, but the political misstep was larger. It carried with it the stench of Trumpism, which is something from which the Australian population has decisively and collectively recoiled. Over two-thirds of Australians dislike and distrust him. Anything resembling an alignment with him was always going to be political suicide. Dutton made this all too easy for Albanese and the Labor Party to ruthlessly exploit.

Albanese's diplomatic resolve also worked well. By declining to impose reciprocal tariffs, affirming that our pharmaceutical benefits scheme was non-negotiable and encouraging people to buy Australian, he offered reassurance. At best, Dutton could match this, which meant he would lose an 0-0 draw on penalties on grounds of incumbency. Unfortunately for him, though, he increased the loss by appealing to his strongman image; a bluff that quickly crumbled on scrutiny. He'd never met Trump, and he had no explicit strategies to which he could specifically point that might secure Australia an even better tariff deal that the one presently in place and which was/is on par with the very best that any country in the world has secured.

It was a silly move because not only did it lack viability or credibility itself, but it flew directly in the face of his attempts to try and prove that he has a softer side. This is a tough sell for a former policeman, a former Immigration Minister and a former Defence Minister at the best of times, and Dutton made it worse by being consistently combative. In the 'debate' on Channel Seven (more of a gameshow, really) Dutton couldn't resist interjecting and talking over Albanese, no doubt in an attempt to make him look weak and therefore not up to the job. It didn't work. Albo simply smiled and let him do so, allowing Dutton to entrench his image as a bully in the minds of many who'd already suspected that this is what he was.

And sticking with that debate, Dutton did himself no favours at all when he under-guessed the price of a carton of eggs by more than half. Is this a cheap, 'gotcha' level way of rating, appraising or choosing a leader? Of course it is. It's not a decider for me by any stretch of the imagination, but when you are a very, very rich man as Dutton is (through his considerable property portfolio) and you're trying to campaign for battlers, it was likely a blunder that cost him votes. Some people don't need much more than something like that to make up their minds. He's out of touch. I'm going with the other guy.

For others, the decisive issue was the nuclear policy. Akin to going to an election proposing a GST or the abolishment of negative gearing, it was a huge risk, and I for one cannot understand why he took it. An opposition to renewables in a country that is economically and socially embracing them makes no sense. Australia has more access to the resources and requirements of renewable energy in practically every imaginable form than just about every other nation on the planet. Nuclear will forever invoke in the minds of many, recollections of Chernobyl and Fukushima, the permanent and insoluble problem of nuclear waste, and our old friend, Blinky the three-eyed fish. This is tough imagery to shake. Yes, it's only imagery, but a costing of $600 billion is more tangible. A failure to explain how this would be accounted for simply didn't wash with many.

This dovetails into the old truism of the Liberal Party's superior economic management skills. I think history has finally put this furphy to rest. The fact that the Albanese Government managed to reduce inflation whilst maintaining employment levels and avoiding a recession is remarkable. The government has managed two surpluses whilst legislating tax cuts. These are not small things. It's now likely that only older voters and intergenerational Liberal voters who hold onto this myth. And even their faith is likely to be shaken by the frankly appalling performance of Angus Taylor throughout this campaign. I mean, seriously; who in their right mind goes to an election pledging to repeal a tax cut? It beggars belief. The fact he's on the list of possible replacements for Peter Dutton should be viewed with positive alarm by those who've historically voted for the Liberal Party.

Those in the Liberal Party who were keen (and are still keen) to fight for political supremacy via a 'culture war' are on even more shaky ground, despite the fact that Australia is a racist country in many ways. Racist, yes, but it hasn't liked advertising the fact for quite some time. It doesn't feel comfortable hearing the quiet stuff said out loud. But the truth of that racism emerged during the Voice Referendum. It was an ugly time. It hurt a lot of people. Significantly, a lot of people who voted no do not want to go back to that time, which Dutton seemed not to understand. The invocation of a renewed culture war produced a shudder from many. And rightly so. Politicians who speak of indoctrinating curriculum in schools clearly haven't read them. You'll find more than a few painful and unpleasant facts in the HASS curricula, but you won't find anything that encourages feelings of white guilt or, as the egregious late historian, Keith Windschuttle put it, a 'black armband' view of history.

Whilst we're on the topic of education, it's worth noting at this juncture that one of the major reasons for the differences between American and Australian voters is our respective education systems. Put simply, ours works and theirs does not. Even when factoring in the incredible top end of America's education system and its tertiary institutions, the average education level for American citizens is comparable to that of an Australian Year 5 student. This is staggering, and it is why so many Americans fell for Trump's lies. Literally millions voted for him in the belief that tariffs are paid by the exporter and not the importer. People all over the world can fall for disinformation campaigns, as Australians did with the Voice, but the Voice disinformation campaign worked because it played to existing prejudices. It's quite hard in Australia to drum up new ones that convert the sceptical majority.

Which brings us nicely to the issue of wokeness, in that whilst it does have some sociopolitical currency in Australia, it doesn't come close to offering the Right the same level of purchasing power as it does in the USA. The 'issue' of trans rights and trans identity is still a very real one in Australia, but it's a niche issue for the majority. A very small percentage of people are likely to vote one way or another based on a party's position on it. There just aren't enough single-issue voters for whom this is their issue. Giving it much oxygen in the election campaign was numerically unsound, and yet, Dutton tried to do so, which can most likely be attributed to listening to the wrong people. Yes, Sky News, I'm looking at you.

So why did the polls get it wrong? Why has Labor emerged with a much larger majority than anticipated? I can't be certain of this, but I can only assume that polling voters is a lot harder in 2025 than it was twenty years ago because millions of people now no longer answer their phones when they don't recognise the phone number. We are too used to using this as a way of filtering out scam callers. Younger demographics are the most likely to do this, too, and they are much more progressive than the seniors who will actually answer the phone.

And whilst Dutton is not a misogynist of the same ilk as Abbott or Scott Morrison, he still presided over a predominantly male cabinet and failed to offer any meaningful policies that might address the appalling statistics that reveal the extent of the problem Australia has when it comes to violence directed against women. There's only so many times a bloke can claim to have a softer side before people just stop listening. Albo is unquestionably perceived by the electorate at large as a kinder, more empathetic person, and attempts to paint this as weakness have failed twice over. It's an appeal to the specific kind of masculinity that invokes the very worst of it. More women traditionally vote Left than Right, and Dutton made no inroads in redressing this. In fact, his framing of work-from-home as a political issue was a spectacular misfire, in that it grossly misjudged the importance of the work-life balance that being able to work from home created, particularly (but not exclusively) for women. Just look at Queensland, where Labor has struggled for some time: they went into this election with one female member; they now have seven. If the Party turns to Hastie - another militant conservative - his misogyny, homophobia and racist tendencies will doom the LNP to the wilderness for a generation. It will virtually affirm that they have become the Australian Christian Party in all but name. Doubling down on the embodiment of what was just unequivocally rejected by the nation would be a new highwater mark for political suicides, and yet, I'm not sure that the zealots who now form the bulk the Party are actually able to change their views and policies. As is usually the case, zealots seldom can.

But an enfeebled opposition is a world away from what actually makes for a good government. It would be wrong to say Albanese has gotten everything right. There are some massive oversights in Labor policy. As a good friend recently noted, a lack of focus on AI and the impact it is going to have in the next decades is concerning. I can understand why it wasn't an electoral issue, though. Too many don't understand enough about it, which leaves the party who raises it vulnerable to a range of disinformation and fear-invoking counterattack. It is best left to policy development within government and not as a platform on which to try and get into government. But it definitely needs major attention, and I'm yet to hear anything that convinces me it's going to. Another significant issue is the AUKUS mess. That's going to take some serious skill to clean up. And many Australians are rightly troubled by the underwhelming response to Israel's genocidal actions in Gaza.

Regardless of these issues, the majority position Albanese now has in the House of Representatives gives him a level of political clout not seen in twenty years. He's the first Prime Minister to win re-election since John Howard. In fact, he is the first Prime Minister to increase his first-term majority in a subsequent election since Bob Hawke in 1987. This is significant. And given he is now only the third Labor Prime Minister to ever do this (after Hawke and Curtin), his place in the ALP pantheon of greats is well and truly assured.

We now need to see what he will do with this power. Two victories do not make him a great Prime Minster. It will take a lot more time for there to be a meaningful assessment of this one way or another. Most leaders who are attacked from the left and the right of their positions simultaneously tend to be steering a pretty steady course in the right direction. It is noteworthy, I think, that Albanese recently described himself as a 'reformer, not a revolutionary.' And with the Greens holding the balance of power in the Senate, Albo is going to be pulled to the Left at times, in ways that will likely be progressively beneficial, whilst giving him political cover that will appease centrists and those Labor diehards who find the Greens and/or some of their policies unpalatable.

The path back to relevance for the Liberal Party is going to be long, steep and precarious. Nationally, they now find themselves in a position that isn't far away from their State position in Western Australia. Losing twelve seats to Labor is huge, and there will be more as the counting is finalised. If it were not for the Queensland LNP Party, the state of oblivion that the Liberal Party has now reached would be more starkly apparent. Nationally, they have one nine seats. Nine. Only one more than the Nationals. Their rebuilding platform is more of a wonky column.

The big problem resides in the 30-odd percent who voted for Liberal Party. If they are broadly comprised of the 'always-Liberal' voters and those who think that moving increasingly to the Right is the way forward, they may well struggle to survive, let alone improve their position. There simply aren't enough votes there. But how can a group who have embraced such thinking ever make their way back to the centre or to small 'l' liberalism? I'm genuinely not sure they can. The former Liberal Opposition Leader, John Hewson, hasn't changed his politics much in the years following his election defeat in 1993, but his views are now to the Left of what has become mainstream Liberal politics. This is telling, and all too evident when Dutton - in an election campaign in 2025 - calls the ABC 'hate media'. This might have worked for Trump, but it just doesn't work here. The ABC gets attacked for political bias by both sides. It gets investigated and scrutinised endlessly and is always vindicated. That kind of attempt to play the man rather than the ball doesn't pass the pub test in Australia in 2025.

Australia really is the lucky country, and I for one am optimistic about the future, despite the massive challenges that exist. We are rich in practically every kind of resource. We have some seriously significant issues when it comes to dealing with the increased extreme weather events that climate change has (and will increasingly) cause, but we have the resources to address this. Geopolitically, we are strategically and economically important. We have the ability to find a nuanced position between China and America and actively benefit from alliances with both. We enjoy a high quality of life and have one of the only full-functioning democracies in the world. We are, frankly, a nation that over-invests emotion and debate in pathetically small things. It's time for us to step back a bit, detach from the high-sugar, high-fat diet of a 24-hour news cycle and start remembering the importance of big-picture politics and long-term political vision. This is how, as Bob Hawke put it, we ensure that we're not only the lucky country, but the clever country.