The Prime Minister of Australia, Anthony Albanese, was on his way to taking his party to his greatest electoral victory since World War II, which gave him a strong mandate to address the much necessary economic reform and negotiate with the Trump administration on tariffs.
Albanese will begin his second term as a Labor hero after two consecutive victories in Saturday’s elections, becoming the first prime minister to achieve it since 2004.
In a surprising result, the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, lost his seat. With 60% of the votes scrutinized, the Labor Party led with 55.9% compared to 44.1% of the opposition, according to the Australian Electoral Commission. This result was much more forceful than the surveys predicted, since it is projected that the Labor Party win at least 86 of the 150 seats in Parliament, with 14 still to decide.
US President Donald Trump had dominated the campaign with his global tariff program, which unleashed turbulence in the markets. Dutton, who praised the US leader shortly after his return to the White House, He was forced to retract his position, since the surveys showed that Trump was deeply unpopular among the Australians.
“Today, the Australian people have voted for Australian values”the prime minister declared after proclaiming his victory in Sydney. “For justice, aspiration and opportunities for all.”
Albanese conducted a practically impeccable campaign, reversing the surveys at the beginning of the year that aimed at serious problems. Instead, Dutton had difficulties, contradicting himself frequently, backing in his policies and even being forced to apologize for mistakenly quoting the Indonesian president.
“We did not do it well enough during this campaign, that is evident tonight and I accept all the responsibility for it.”Said Dutton.
The Central Government of Albanese had faced difficulties such as persistent inflation, high interest rates and a real estate crisis that threatened a negative reaction of the electorate. The Government tried to appease these concerns with additional fiscal cuts and returns in a pre -election budget.
The recovery of the Labor Party It was driven by the global volatility generated by the Trump tariff program, which it presented during the first week of the campaign. In Australia, uncertainty abroad usually attracts voters towards the president in exercise, which contributed to a more focused on Albanese’s electoral campaign.
The prime minister campaigned on a stability platform, while establishing comparisons between Dutton, former Queensland police, and Trump.
“In these times of global uncertainty, Australians have opted for optimism and determination,” Albanese said in his victory speech. “The Australians have chosen to face the global challenges in the Australian way, taking care of each other while we built the future.”
The victory of the Labor Party occurred days after the Central Central Government of Canada got a fourth term, A strongly influenced result by the expectations that the new central leader and central banker Mark Carney would be able to handle the US leader.
What investors expect from Australian elections
Albanese will have to deal with an economy at a crossroads, since its main growth engines – china, immigration and real estate sector – are under pressure. The obvious answer, according to economists, It is an important reform program to reactivate economic dynamism and raise the standard of living, a task that the successive prime ministers have avoided due to the political risks involved.
Both parties tried to convey that they had a solution to the Australian real estate crisis. Albanese promised to invest billions of dollars in properties for those who buy for the first time, Also allowing them to acquire housing with deposits of only 5%.
At the same time, the Labor Party has the opportunity to consolidate its clean energy policies and offer greater certainty to investors.
The central government introduced a series of decarbonization objectives and renewable energy during its first mandate and promised to invest significantly in clean energy and manufacturing. During the electoral campaign, he announced a new cheapest domestic battery program to subsidize storage behind the accountant and thus relieve the cost of cost of living.
Both the Labor Party and the Coalition promised a greater expense during the campaign at a time when the country’s budget It is already deeply deficient and is not expected to have surplus again for years.
This led to S&P global ratings to warn that its AAA rating for Australia could be at risk if campaign promises result in higher structural deficits, debt and interest costs. Australia is one of the few nations that has an AAA rating of the three agencies, and losing one of them would politically harm the party that supervised it.
In a rarity for Australia, the 2025 electoral campaign was affected by events that occurred abroad.
On April 2, five days after Albanese convened the vote, Trump announced his plans to apply “reciprocal” tariffs, Including a 10% charge to Australian exports, which generated concern among voters while worldwide markets collapsed.
Then, in the fourth week, when the Australians began to vote in advance, Pope Francis died, which led both games to briefly pause their campaigns.
