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Anthony Albanese, who this weekend became the first Australian prime minister to win reelection<\/a> since 2004, never once mentioned U.S. President Donald Trump on the campaign trail. Nonetheless, the consensus<\/a> is that Trump was all over this election\u2014even Albanese\u2019s victory address, albeit never by name.<\/p>\n In her introduction of the prime minister, Foreign Minister Penny Wong<\/a> said \u201csome might want to mimic the worst of other countries,\u201d but that Albanese \u201calways backs what\u2019s best about our country.\u201d The prime minister in turn emphasized<\/a> that \u201ctoday, the Australian people have voted for Australian values.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n Anthony Albanese, who this weekend became the first Australian prime minister to win reelection<\/a> since 2004, never once mentioned U.S. President Donald Trump on the campaign trail. Nonetheless, the consensus<\/a> is that Trump was all over this election\u2014even Albanese\u2019s victory address, albeit never by name.<\/p>\n In her introduction of the prime minister, Foreign Minister Penny Wong<\/a> said \u201csome might want to mimic the worst of other countries,\u201d but that Albanese \u201calways backs what\u2019s best about our country.\u201d The prime minister in turn emphasized<\/a> that \u201ctoday, the Australian people have voted for Australian values.\u201d<\/p>\n These were rebukes to the opposition more than barbs aimed at Washington. The opposition Liberals\u2014who are, despite the name, a conservative party, in a long-term coalition with the rurally focused National Party\u2014had taken a different tack through the campaign. Prominent Sen. Jacinta Nampijinpa Price had cheered<\/a> \u201cMake Australia Great Again\u201d in April; Price\u2019s coalition partner David Littleproud called<\/a> this phrasing a \u201cslip of the tongue,\u201d but some of opposition leader Peter Dutton\u2019s proposed policies were straight from Trump\u2019s playbook.<\/p>\n Before the campaign even started, Dutton named<\/a> Price to a \u201cgovernment efficiency\u201d role, promising to cut jobs in the education department and in government positions related to diversity and inclusion. Then, in the final weeks of the campaign, as polls suggested his imminent defeat, Dutton made a rightward lurch on culture war issues\u2014by attacking some uses of land acknowledgments<\/a> and suggesting politicians needed greater powers to deport<\/a> criminals who were dual nationals.<\/p>\n By the end<\/span> of 2024, a year of elections<\/a> worldwide, two trends had coalesced into conventional wisdom. The first was that as developed countries underwent significant economic and social upheaval following the pandemic, incumbents were toast<\/a>. The second was that as far-right parties enforced strict borders, immigration had undone<\/a> social democratic parties.<\/p>\n After unexpected victories for the center-left in Canada and Australia, however, whether the U.S. is a bellwether or an outlier for other democracies is up for debate. Trump\u2019s belligerent nationalism has made it difficult for right-wing politicians elsewhere to ride his coattails without seeming like they\u2019re betraying their own national interests. In Canada, the opposition Conservative Party, which had previously gone out of its way to associate with Trump, lost last week\u2019s elections after Trump\u2019s tariffs and threats of annexation against America\u2019s neighbor, despite a 22-point polling lead<\/a> on Jan. 20.<\/p>\n The leadup to the Australian election saw two moments of intense focus on Trump. The first was his Oval Office meeting<\/a> with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky in February. Australians were already wary of what Trump\u2019s \u201cAmerica First\u201d approach would mean for the country, with a March Lowy Institute poll finding public trust in the United States dropping<\/a> to its lowest level in two decades. The specter of the U.S. president dressing down the leader of a nation fighting invasion rankled Australians still further. Despite Dutton distancing himself<\/a> from Trump on Ukraine, the Liberals\u2019 poll numbers dropped precipitously<\/a> from the next week.<\/p>\n The second event was Trump\u2019s announcement<\/a> that Australian steel would not, as was the case in his first term, be exempted from a 25 percent tariff, and then, on \u201cLiberation Day,\u201d the news there would be no exemptions for Australia at all. Broad fear about Trump\u2019s protectionism was coupled with specific concerns about whether or not Australia should break<\/a> its 70-year security relationship with the United States\u2014including a pricey submarine contract<\/a>.<\/p>\n After the U.S. election, pundits had predicted<\/a> Dutton would follow Trump\u2019s lead and beat Albanese, seen as a milquetoast one-term centrist, with tough talk and tax cuts. But the tariffs shock put Dutton, a former police officer, out of step with the national mood. He had praised<\/a> Trump as \u201cshrewd\u201d and a \u201cbig thinker\u201d after Trump had proposed to \u201clevel\u201d Gaza, and intimated that he could have secured a better outcome with Washington than Albanese\u2019s no-deal. That approach backfired, and the internet crowned him \u201cTemu Trump<\/a>\u201d\u2014meaning that he was nothing more than a cheaper knockoff of the American leader. By the time the federal election was eventually called on March 28, it was considered Albanese\u2019s to lose.<\/p>\n Yet focusing on Trump\u2019s role alone misses that foreign policy, unlike in Canada<\/a>, was not even close to the most important political issue for Australian voters. Instead, surveys consistently ranked<\/a> cost of living (\u201ccozzie livs,\u201d according to the Australian penchant for abbreviation) at no. 1. Also ranked highly were affordable housing and improving health services<\/a>. Albanese riffed on this by brandishing<\/a> his own government-issued Medicare card as he unveiled an $8.5 billion influx into the public health care system. No one could call Albanese\u2019s campaign visionary: Along with the proposal to strengthen Medicare, he promised modest tax cuts, more money for child care, and cutting student loan debt, while remaining conspicuously quiet on climate change and foreign policy. Yet resisting the impulse to enter into a broader debate with Dutton on the national character and direction served him well.<\/p>\n In addition to warning about \u201cwoke<\/a>\u201d school curricula, the opposition advanced a central proposition of lower inflation, higher productivity, and lower taxes. The dog whistles were unnerving, though, and even as Coalition leaders stressed cheaper gas and tax cuts, voters didn\u2019t trust them not to gut institutions such as Medicare. Meanwhile, the Liberals\u2019 attempts to capitalize on antagonism toward migrants\u2014net overseas migration has been the main driver<\/a> of population growth over the last 30 years as fertility rates have fallen\u2014fizzled. Unlike in the United States, immigration didn\u2019t even rank in the top five voter concerns.<\/p>\n Dutton\u2019s perceived zealotry may have even worked against him, worsening a decadelong phenomenon of voters in metropolitan areas drifting away from the Liberals. The result was a loss of seats in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, and Adelaide to moderate \u201cteals\u201d: independents, usually women, who rallied around pillars of government accountability, anti-corruption, and combating climate change. In diverse outer metropolitan seats, voters also flocked to the center-left. With the primary vote slumping<\/a> to record lows, Dutton lost his own seat.<\/p>\n In contrast, Labor bucked predictions that it would win narrowly and possibly govern in a hung parliament with a resounding majority. The 2025 election might well be the party\u2019s highest two-party preferred vote ever<\/a>.<\/p>\n The Coalition wasn\u2019t the only victim of Labor\u2019s surge. Minor parties suffered major setbacks, despite Australia\u2019s long-standing ranked choice voting system, which usually allows them a stronger role than in first-past-the-post systems like the United States. While the Greens boasted about the party\u2019s highest-ever total votes<\/a>, they look likely to have ceded two seats in the House of Representatives\u2014both in Brisbane\u2014back to Labor.<\/p>\n Pauline Hanson\u2019s far-right One Nation, founded in the \u201990s as an anti-immigration party, failed to pick up the lower house seats it hoped for. Dutton\u2019s coalition struck a deal that suggested its voters<\/a> make One Nation their second pick in many districts<\/a>, contravening a long-standing agreement by the major parties to shun extremists. It was another sign that the Liberals had moved too far to the right.<\/p>\n Albanese has been<\/span> rewarded by the electorate for sticking to the center. When it comes to international relations, he may not have that luxury. \u201cThere will be tensions,\u201d the Quincy Institute\u2019s Sarang Shidore predicted, as Australia navigates a path between China, its biggest trading partner, and the United States, its long-term security partner. \u201cAlbanese will want to keep the economic engine going, while being careful on the security side.\u201d<\/p>\n Chinese influence is a fraught issue for Labor. In 2022, a plot by Chinese spies<\/a> to bankroll Labor candidates in the federal election was exposed by the nation\u2019s spy agency. This year, the incident was deployed by a Liberal campaign spokesperson\u2014part of a long and inglorious lineage of \u201credbaiting<\/a>\u201d in Australian election campaigns\u2014to play on a perception of Labor as soft on China.<\/p>\n And while the relationship between China and Australia has improved since they hit a nadir during COVID, with Beijing finally dropping<\/a> prohibitively high tariffs on Australian wine last year, things remain uneasy. In February, for instance, Chinese warships sailed in international waters between Australia and New Zealand unannounced until warnings<\/a> went out to airlines.<\/p>\n Trump appears to know who Albanese is, calling him a \u201cfriend\u201d when asked about the election on Air Force One on Sunday. (He has not been as familiar<\/a> with AUKUS.) While Albanese said the first official visit<\/a> of his second term will likely be to Jakarta, not Washington, Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney has invited him to the G-7 in Alberta next month. Trump, Carney, and Albanese should have lots to talk about.<\/p>\n In Australia, voters weren\u2019t merely expressing an aversion to Trump. They were also rejecting ideological extremism of all stripes. Labor\u2019s counterparts elsewhere, like the U.K.\u2019s Labour Party, have adopted a harsher tone<\/a> on issues like immigration out of fear of being outflanked by the far right. When Dutton called Albanese \u201cweak,\u201d Albanese responded<\/a> that \u201ckindness isn\u2019t a weakness.\u201d That might be a rallying cry for social democratic parties worldwide.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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