Trump costs conservatives the Australian election, and 4 other takeaways

SYDNEY, Australia — Incumbent Prime Minister Anthony Albanese secured a come-from-behind win for his center-left Labor Party in Australia’s election Saturday while his right-wing challenger lost his seat.

The Labor landslide came after Albanese’s government spent months trailing the opposition in polling, but gained support rapidly in the wake of U.S. President Donald Trump’s clash with Ukrainian leader Volodymyr Zelenskyy and his “Liberation Day” tariffs.

Here are five takeaways from Albanese’s triumphant return from the polling doldrums.

1. Trump gate-crashed the conservatives’ campaign

Donald Trump may not have been on Australia’s ballot paper, but his shadow loomed large all the same.

Over his three years as opposition leader, Peter Dutton, the hard-right prime ministerial candidate of the conservative Liberal Party of Australia, embraced MAGA-style politics and bigged up Trump. In February, for instance, Dutton called Trump a “big thinker” and lauded his “art of the deal” negotiation tactics after the American president called for the U.S. to take over Gaza and turn it into a Middle East Riviera.

Dutton’s campaign borrowed heavily from the U.S. Republican Party’s policies under Trump, with the Liberal leader arguing for significant cuts to the public service and championing a DOGE-inspired government efficiency unit. Dutton also unveiled (and then abandoned) a policy to force all public servants in the Australian capital Canberra back into the office full-time.

Dutton’s embrace of MAGA policies backfired spectacularly.

Albanese and the Labor Party successfully argued the work-from-home ban would limit women’s access to the workforce; that the cuts to the public service would lead to reduced services and DOGE-style chaos.

But it was the U.S. president’s increasing unpopularity in Australia that really hurt Dutton’s image.

The public sharply turned against Trump after he berated Ukraine’s President Zelenskyy in a disastrous meeting in the White House in late February, and soured further after Trump slapped tariffs on countries including Australia in April.

A poll by YouGov for Australia’s Q&A program last month found 66 percent of respondents said the U.S. couldn’t be trusted as a security ally, up from 39 percent last June. YouGov Director of Public Data Paul Smith called the shift a “fundamental change of worldview.” Seven in 10 Australians reported being concerned Trump would make them poorer.

The same poll found 55 percent thought Albanese would be best equipped to look after Australia’s interests when it comes to dealings with Trump’s America, compared to 45 percent who nominated Dutton.

Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton speaks to the media during a press conference on Day 1 of the 2025 federal election campaign. | Jono Searle/EPA-EFE

In a nod to the role Trump played in the election, Albanese said during his victory speech on Saturday: “Our government will choose the Australian way because we are proud of who we are.”

“We do not seek our inspiration from overseas. We find it right here in our values and our people,” he added, in a dig at Dutton’s Liberals.

Albanese said he knew “the world has thrown a lot at our country” since he was last elected three years ago. “That is why it means so much that in these uncertain times, the people of Australia have placed their trust in Labor once again.”

Albanese’s win mirrored the stunning victory of Mark Carney’s center-left Liberal Party in Canada, where conservative Pierre Poilievre lost both the election and his own seat, despite being 25 percentage points up in polling at the end of 2024 over unpopular then-Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

A POLITICO/Focaldata poll of Canadians days before the election there found three-quarters of them disliked Trump — and a majority believed Carney, rather than Poilievre, would be better suited to managing the relationship with the U.S.

2. Cost of living trumps culture wars

Australia is facing a cost-of-living crisis, with rising inflation, unaffordable housing and persistently high interest rates squeezing households. Albanese focused his campaign on these voter concerns, and policies he said would address them.

Dutton, meanwhile, chiefly fought a culture war.

Taking inspiration from Trump, Dutton said that Indigenous “welcome to country” ceremonies, which are performed by Aboriginal or Torres Strait Islander elders to welcome visitors to their ancestral lands, are “overdone,” and claimed “we need to stop the teaching of some of the curriculum that says that our children should be ashamed of being Australian.”

In a nod to Trump’s attacks on the media, Dutton labeled Australia’s national broadcaster, the ABC, and the left-leaning Guardian newspaper “the hate media,” after they reported in the last week of the campaign that he was on track to lose the election.

Ultimately, the arguments did little to convince Australians that Dutton was a safe pair of hands, or best placed to turn around their economic fortunes and look after their interests.

3. Appealing to the far right comes at the expense of the center

Why did Dutton choose to focus on culture wars instead of the economy?

The answer to that question ought to be familiar for European center-right forces: he was seeking to head off the far right.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese greets the crowd after giving a speech at the Labor Election Night function. | Lukas Coch/EPA-EFE

Amid rising support in the polls for far-right parties including the Trumpet of Patriots and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, Dutton sought to undercut their appeal by taking on some of their policies and aping their language.

But by attempting to woo these voters, Dutton alienated centrists, with his polling tanking among younger voters and women. That saw the Liberal Party bleed votes to both the Labor Party and to the so-called Teals — a group of socially liberal independents running on platforms championing climate action.

4. Dutton lost his seat after a nuclear disaster

How did Dutton go from being ahead in the polls just a few months ago to being booted out of parliament altogether?

The Liberal Party leader, who during an election debate refused to say global warming was getting worse, campaigned on a platform of slowing the rollout of renewables and bringing nuclear power to Australia — despite federal and state bans on the latter. The plan would cost taxpayers billions and was widely slammed as expensive, impractical and unlikely to ever eventuate.

Seeking to defend his signature policy against ferocious attacks from the Labor Party and the Greens, Dutton made a crucial gaffe in the final leaders’ debate of the campaign. He said he would be on board with a nuclear power plant in his electorate of Dickson, a key, marginal seat in the traditionally conservative state of Queensland.

The Labor Party jumped on that statement, with Australia’s Treasurer Jim Chalmers saying: “Ali France [the Labor candidate for Dickson] is not going to build a nuclear reactor in your local community but Peter Dutton wants to. I would encourage you to think about that as you choose your local member.”

The voters of Dickson thought about it, and voted Dutton out.

5. Positivity wins

Ultimately, Albanese ran a mostly positive campaign built around the promise of make voters’ lives better and to stand up for fairness and kindness. Dutton’s was a darker platform, seeking to make Australians fear another three years of Labor.

Albanese’s politics of nice won.

“Today the Australian people have voted for Australian values … for fairness, aspiration and opportunity for all,” the prime minister said in his victory speech Saturday. “For the strength to show courage in adversity and kindness to those in need.”

He even shut down an anti-Dutton heckler during his speech, saying: “No. No. What we do in Australia is we treat people with respect.”

But while Dutton may have embraced some of the bombastic stylings of Trump and his Republican Party during his campaign, there’s one thing you won’t hear him do: question the election results.

In a gracious concession speech, Dutton apologized for a campaign that he admitted “clearly wasn’t good enough,” and said: “I accept full responsibility for that.”

Dutton even praised France, the Labor Party candidate who unseated him in Dickson on her third attempt, saying she would “do a good job as a local member.”