The Labor Party led by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese won the Australian general election today, according to public broadcaster ABC projections based on early results.
Labor “will form a government in the next Parliament,” said ABC election analyst Anthony Green.
Conservative opposition leader Peter Dutton lost his seat, according to public broadcaster ABC projections based on partial results in his constituency.
Until the beginning of Donald Trump’s chaotic second presidency in the United States, right-wing populist imitators were drinking water in his name, from Canada to Australia.
Almost immediately, however, the reality of the Trump 2.0 era “hit” them. The first cold snap came just a few days ago from the so-called “Canadian Trump”, Pierre Poilièvre.
Until the beginning of the year, his party – the opposition Conservatives – had a double-digit lead in the polls over the center-left Liberals, “capitalizing” on popular discontent, amid an explosion in the cost of living and an acute housing crisis.
With the resignation of Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau in January, Poilièvre was opening… champagne, in anticipation of early elections. But when the time came to vote, on April 28, the Conservatives lost – despite the distance their leader belatedly took from Donald Trump – and the Liberals made a major turnaround under their new leader and Trudeau’s successor, Mark Carney.
Although he is not charismatic, the fact that he was a former governor of the Bank of Canada and the Bank of England made him seem like a “beacon” of stability and hope in the stormy era of Trump 2.0.
History will likely repeat itself this Saturday in distant Australia.
Its citizens are heading to the polls after the announcement of an early election by center-left Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, with the ruling Labor Party fighting to stay in power.
Here too, the cost of living and the housing crisis have angered a large segment of voters.
But what seems to be more troubling now is that a Trump scoundrel is at the helm of the opposition Liberal Party.
A… “Temu Trump”
From a humble background – the son of a builder and a secretary and a former police officer in Queensland – Peter Dutton managed to make a fortune early on, active in the real estate industry, before jumping into politics.
A conservative Liberal MP for 23 years, he has previously served as Minister for Immigration, Home Affairs and Defence.
He took over the party leadership after succeeding Scott Morrison, after the election defeat in 2022. Immediately after Trump’s election victory in the US last year, he eagerly presented himself as the Australian equivalent of Trump “as an ideological companion”.
Until the US president launched his trade wars, Dunton and his party were leading in the polls. His main slogan: a drastic reduction in immigration, a shrinking of the state, more fossil fuels and a shift to nuclear energy, prioritizing Australia’s national interests.
He even announced the creation of a “Government Efficiency” department, modeled on the American DOGE under the techno-oligarch Elon Musk. In his Australian MAGA (*) version, Dunton wants to put an indigenous politician, Jacinda Price, at the head, who promised to “make Australia great again”.
The Liberals dismissed the statement as a slip of the tongue, as the mood in Australia began to change, with polls showing a growing anti-Trump sentiment among voters, due to tariffs and stock market turmoil.
Dutton’s election manifesto has not changed significantly, however. While he has somewhat limited the populist “crowns” for mass layoffs of public servants, he says he wants to reduce immigration by a quarter.
He sees the measure as part of a solution to the housing crisis, in a country that otherwise relies heavily on foreign labor for its economic growth.
“Temu Trump” was one of the nicknames given to him by his political opponents, mocking Dutton as a cheap copy of Trump.
Between the US, China and a trade war
Labor and the Liberals, Australia’s traditional ruling parties, have no fundamental differences on issues of defence and national security.
They are openly in favour of strategic cooperation with the US. However, they have significantly different approaches when it comes to China, a key trading partner for Canberra, a key geopolitical rival of the US and now the No. 1 target of Donald Trump’s trade war.
The Labor government has sought to warm up relations with Beijing, with Prime Minister Albanese making the first visit by an Australian leader to mainland China since 2016 last year.
The previous Liberal government, by contrast, had launched a trade war against China. It cost the Australian economy billions, before finally de-escalating just last year.
Peter Dundon is considered one of the biggest anti-China “hawks”. As opposition leader and aspiring new prime minister, however, he has somewhat toned down his tone.
Especially in the run-up to the election, in constituencies with a strong presence of the Chinese community, whose vote is considered crucial in an electoral contest without a clear winner in sight.
The latest poll by the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI) at the University of Technology Sydney showed that only 38% of respondents believe that relations with China weaken the alliance with the US in the Indo-Pacific region.
61% are in favor of simultaneously maintaining good relations with Washington and Beijing – a difficult geopolitical balancing act in these turbulent times.
But “day by day, it seems, more and more Australians see Trump as a threat to the country,” with a new poll showing 68% of respondents saying his US presidency is bad for Australia. The corresponding figures were just 40% after the US presidential election last November and 60% in March.
Trump, the “third candidate” at the ballot box
More than seven in ten Australians now believe that Donald Trump’s actions will hurt their economic situation.
The majority no longer see the US as a reliable security partner, according to a poll for the Australian public broadcaster “ABC”.
Three months into Trump’s second term, 66% of Australians are in favour of further strengthening the national military capabilities.
Avoiding criticising Trump by name, Anthony Albanese accuses his political rival Peter Dutton and his party of being “so lazy in terms of policy-making” that they are copying that of the US.
He sees Labor’s ratings having recovered.
However, a sign of the times, it is considered extremely likely that no clear winner will emerge from the ballot box, with the emergence of a minority government, the first since 2010, whose survival will depend on the conditional support of independent MPs or small parties.
