Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Labor Party won the country’s federal election against the right-wing Coalition camp in a race dominated by U.S. President Donald Trump and his trade war.
Although official counting continues, Australia’s national broadcaster ABC News called the election for Labor early, saying that the Liberal-National Coalition “is no position to win, leaving Labor the only alternative government.”
Opposition leader Peter Dutton, Albanese’s main opponent, is projected to not only lose the election, but also his own parliamentary seat, which would be a first for an Australian federal opposition leader.
In his victory speech celebrating being reelected in a landslide for another three-year term, Albanese said he knew “the world has thrown a lot at our country” over the previous three years.
“That is why it means so much that in these uncertain times, the people of Australia have placed their trust in Labor once again,” he said.
In a pointed reference to Trump and the American-style political campaigning adopted by Dutton, Albanese said: “We do not need to beg, or borrow or copy from anywhere else. We do not seek our inspiration overseas. We find it right here, in our values and in our people.”
In his concession speech, Dutton acknowledged his party “didn’t do well enough during this campaign,” adding: “I accept full responsibility for that.”
The final phase of the Australian election campaign was dominated by Trump’s tariffs and the cost of living, with polls shifting toward Albanese’s incumbent Labor Party after a series of Dutton gaffes.
A RedBridge-Accent poll published by News Corp newspapers on Thursday showed that about 48 percent of Australians picked the uncertainties triggered by Trump as one of their top five concerns, while 42 percent remained wary of the opposition’s plans to build nuclear plants across the country to help replace coal-fired power, as Reuters reported this week.
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