Australian PM basks in win, vows 'orderly' government
Australia's left-leaning Prime Minister Anthony Albanese basked today in his landslide election win, promising a "disciplined, orderly" government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil.
Residents clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee Jodie Haydon visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and TV journalists.
Mr Albanese's Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton's conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt.
"We will be a disciplined, orderly government in our second term," Mr Albanese said, after serving up ice cream for journalists in a cafe he used to visit with his late mother.
"We'll work hard each and every day," he promised.
Mr Dutton, a hard-nosed former policeman - who critics tagged 'Trump-lite' for policies that included slashing the civil service - endured the rare humiliation of losing his own seat.
US President Donald Trump's trade tariffs, and the chaos they unleashed, may not have been the biggest factor in the Labor Party victory - but analysts said they helped.
"If we want to understand why a good chunk of the electorate has changed across the election campaign over the last couple of months, I think that's the biggest thing," said Henry Maher, a politics lecturer at the University of Sydney.
"In times of instability, we expect people to go back to a kind of steady incumbent."
The scale of Mr Albanese's win took his own party by surprise.
"It's still sinking in," Treasurer Jim Chalmers said.
"This was beyond even our most optimistic expectations. It was a history-making night. It was one for the ages," Mr Chalmers told national broadcaster ABC.
But the win came with "healthy helpings of humility", he said, because under-pressure Australians want "stability in uncertain times".
Mr Albanese has promised to embrace renewable energy, cut taxes, tackle a worsening housing crisis, and pour money into a creaking healthcare system.
Mr Dutton wanted to slash immigration, crack down on crime and ditch a longstanding ban on nuclear power.
Before the first vote was even counted, speculation was mounting over whether the 54-year-old opposition leader could survive an election loss.
"We didn't do well enough during this campaign. That much is obvious tonight and I accept full responsibility," Mr Dutton told supporters in a concession speech.
Economic concerns have dominated the contest for the many Australian households struggling to pay inflated prices for milk, bread, power and petrol.
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