Left-wing government projected to win Australian election

Telegraph

03-05-2025

Australia's centre-left Labor government is projected to hold on to power after a tense election shaped by concerns over housing, the cost of living and the looming shadow of Donald Trump.
Hungry voters munched on barbecued 'democracy sausages' after casting their ballot – a polling day tradition – while others in bright swimwear crammed into voting booths after taking an early morning plunge.
Projections suggest that voters swung in favour of Anthony Albanese, the Left-leaning incumbent prime minister, over the Liberal-National coalition, which is the opposition led by Peter Dutton.
Mr Dutton's policies and campaigning tactics have been compared to those of the US president, who has loomed over the vote since its earliest days. There is keen global interest over whether his tariff-induced economic chaos will influence the final result, as it did in Canada's election last week.
Mr Dutton, who is projected to lose his seat, could concede the election as early as Saturday night.
The Australian Electoral Commission is yet to formally call a winner.
However, projections by ABC, the national broadcaster, showed Mr Albanese's party as the winner and able to form a majority.
Polls closed at 6pm local time (9am UK time) in Australia's most populous eastern time zone, while voting in Western Australia, home to the city of Perth, ended at 11am UK time.
Opinion polls had shown Labor ahead, after trailing in the polls as recently as February to Mr Dutton's conservative coalition.
Mr Dutton fell out of favour with voters, especially women, when he promised to stop public servants from working from home – before suggesting that working parents could drop their hours if they needed greater flexibility.
He later backtracked on the pledge but by then his opponents had seized on the opportunity to point out that he was out of touch with working Australians in the middle of a cost-of-living crisis.
That image was not helped by revelations that he had made £14 million in property sales, and had also profited off share-market trades made just prior to the announcement of a government bank bailout during the global financial crisis.
Then came a disastrous press conference in which Mr Dutton invited his 20-year-old son to talk about how hard it was to purchase a house – another move that worked against him after opponents pointed out the family's sizeable trust.
However, in recent weeks, the greatest contributing factor to the swing against him is thought to have been the global uncertainty driven by Mr Trump.
Opponents cast Mr Dutton, a former policeman who had pledged to sharply reduce immigration and cut thousands of public service jobs, as 'Temu Trump'.
The election came less than a week after Canada's Liberal Party returned to power in a major political comeback, powered by a backlash against Mr Trump's tariffs and comments on Canadian sovereignty.