Federal election wrap

FEDERAL ELECTION 2025

The results are in – and what a set of results they are.

While pollsters picked up the strong swing to the ALP during April as the Dutton campaign faltered, the nation has been surprised by just how emphatic Labor’s win was.

At the time of writing, with around 80 per cent of the vote counted, the ALP had secured 88 seats in the lower house (76 needed for a majority), the Liberal National Party (LNP) Coalition 40 seats and other parties 10 seats with 12 seats still too close to call.

The ALP won 34.8 per cent of the primary vote, with the LNP at 32.2 per cent, The Greens at 11.8 per cent, Independents at 7.5 per cent and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party on 6.3 per cent.

On a two-party preferred basis, the ALP won 54.9 per cent with the LNP at 45.1 per cent.

On the Central Coast, all three sitting ALP MPs were returned – Gordon Reid in Robertson, Emma McBride in Dobell and Pat Conroy in Shortland (see separate stories, page 5).

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese delivered a rousing and very much on-message, slogan-laden speech to the ALP faithful in his seat of Grayndler after it took less than three hours of counting for opposition leader Peter Dutton to concede defeat.

Dutton also lost his seat of Dickson to three-time contender Ali France from the ALP.

And so, the post-mortems have started, most notably at Liberal Party headquarters where the search for answers and a new leader is underway.

Media is awash with analysis and opinions into the failed campaign by the LNP – the Australian Financial Review’s online podcast with Phillip Coorey, John Kehoe and Michael Read being one of the more insightful.

Most attribute the LNP’s drubbing to three factors – Trump, Dutton and TikTok.

That Trump is the dominant factor is hard to deny.

The trough in Albanese and the incumbent ALP administration’s popularity in the polls clearly coincides with Trump’s inauguration with the major reversal coinciding with his early April tariff bombshell.

The same pattern could also be observed playing out in Canada a few weeks in advance of Australia.

And if you want more evidence of the Trump factor, look no further than the increase in the ALP vote in Victoria, of all places where Jacinta Price (and the former Dan Andrews ALP state government) was toxic just three months ago.

Overlay Dutton’s campaign blunders, the first and biggest of which was to back nuclear energy in lieu of more renewables.

In the closing weeks of the campaign, just when the ALP campaign machine was humming and Albanese was stapling his Medicare card to his forehead, the LNP realised their centrepiece policy was scaring people and found themselves trying not to mention it.

Dutton’s last-minute decision to offer up of his own electorate as a site for a nuclear station only ensured his early retirement.

The reversal on the LNP’s ‘back-to-the-office’ mandate and a series of gaffes including in relation to Russian airbases in Indonesia further compounded public perceptions of incompetence.

No wonder Albanese wanted four televised debates.

When all the coalition needed to do was to show the country a compelling, responsible alternative to the current administration, it showed them an empty cupboard.

By contrast, the ALP’s campaign machine performed even better than Oscar Piastri’s McLaren F1.

The ALP remained on-message throughout around protecting Medicare and Australian healthcare, building new homes and addressing the cost-of-living crisis.

All three are a complete fiction of course, but never let the truth get in the way of a good campaign slogan.

“They cut, you pay.”

What exactly was being cut? And who was paying?

Nothing and nobody in fact, but social media filled the silence with a narrative that Dutton would be raising taxes and cutting healthcare to pay for his nuclear power stations.

Which brings us to the last factor, TikTok.

More specifically, a decisive factor in the emphatic nature of the ALP victory lies in its clinical mastery of social media and the way its internal pollsters provided the co-ordinates of vulnerable voter cohorts to launch TikTok missiles.

As a case in point, when Dutton offered up his seat of Dickson to be the home of a nuclear power station, we are told the ALP campaign machine was almost immediately targeting cohorts of locals there through TikTok and other platforms with their own scary narrative.

We close out our 2025 election coverage with a few missives on what it all means.

Firstly, it appears Labour and The Greens will control the Senate without the need for any of the other cross-benchers.

Our first prognosis is that The Greens will likely be more conciliatory to Labor going forward, especially if Adam Bandt loses his seat of Melbourne and Senator Sarah Hanson Young takes charge.

This means the tax on earnings of superannuation funds in excess of $3M looks almost certain to be legislated.

Our second prognosis is that we are likely to see further deterioration in public finances in the wake of weaker commodity prices, falling national productivity, a demographic narrowing of the taxpayer base and an inevitable increase in defence spending.

No TikTok campaign can overcome the absence of brave structural reform.

Finally, our prognosis for the future of the LNP coalition is that the coalition itself may come under scrutiny.

While a new leader may be appointed in coming weeks, the scale of Labor’s win means the LNP is now likely to spend at least six years in opposition.

Many in the Liberal Party will therefore eventually look to a younger, more visionary and ideally female leader to win back modern centrist voters, especially in the cities where they have just been gutted.

Their partnership with the Nationals however will always pull them back to the more conservative right (Malcolm Turnbull’s leadership spill in favour of Tony Abbott following Turnbull’s support for the Rudd government’s climate policies being the best example).

And from the Nationals’ perspective, not only will they be fuming over the Dutton-led campaign disaster, but they may well ask: If the purpose of the coalition is to help win the city vote, what good are the Liberals if they can’t even do that?

We’ll watch that space with great interest.

Ross Barry