The demographic freight train arrived on Saturday night and smashed up the last remnants of the metropolitan Liberal Party, sending one unequivocal message: this is not John Howard’s Australia.
In the dying days of the federal election campaign, Peter Dutton started increasingly talking about the “quiet Australians” borrowing from Scott Morrison’s use of the term. What he failed to see was that rather than quiet they were the young Australians who were about to flex their considerable political muscle as the largest voting block to repudiate him and his party.
Getting into their algorithms was key — sending political messages that connected with their lives was consequential. Differentiating from Trump’s America was central as was sending a potent message that stability was needed at a time of great international upheaval.
The 2025 federal election was the first election where Gen Z and millennials outnumbered boomers in every state and territory, dramatically changing the way political parties had to campaign and target voters. But Peter Dutton repeatedly talked about his political hero John Howard — he was effectively making reference to a former prime minister that the largest voting cohort would have no living memory of.
Howard — a legend of the Liberal Party — governed in very different times for a very different version of Australia. The Liberal Party failed to read the mood of the country promising to get “Australia back on track” when it was only three years ago that Australia had decided the train tracks it was travelling on were the wrong ones. What track did they want to get Australia back on? It was never entirely clear.
Clues of an impending landslide
A week or so ago I had a private conversation with ACTU leader Sally McManus. She’s agreed for me to share insights from that conversation here.
McManus told me she was certain Labor was about to win in a landslide. Labor and union campaigners had detected a swing of substantial proportions to the government. While cost of living anger had been acute — Labor had managed to articulate an alternative of stability and had turned around the “are you better off than you were three years ago?” question to one about whether voters would be better off over the years ahead. On that question they sent their answer in clear terms.
“The signs of a possible landslide were there before pre-poll opened and when Peter Dutton failed to announce policies that challenged Labor’s on cost-of-living announcements at their duelling campaign launches his fate was sealed,” McManus said.
“The public had already lost trust in Coalition policies with their flip-flopping on working from home. Trump made people risk-averse and Dutton had painted himself as risky. Combine risky, general un-likability and answers to cost of living that did not compete with Labor’s — all the elements for a landslide were there.”
To top it off Albo had a stellar campaign, she said, while Dutton needed to tighten the polls by at least 1per cent in the final two weeks of the campaign.
“Instead he made it worse by just being himself,” McManus told me for this column.
Two important false positives
Opposition is a tough slog but there are two key moments that set the Coalition on a false journey of confidence. The first was the discipline and unity early on after their last election loss in 2022.
It was often talked about in glowing terms that the Liberal Party had few recriminations and struggles. Yet it always seemed to me that the time to do soul searching was early on.
Peter Dutton became the only Liberal leadership contender standing when his only real rival, Josh Frydenberg, was vanquished when he lost his seat at the last election. There was a review, but it seemed that the messages were not deeply interpreted and acted on.
Instead the Opposition started leaking on the eve of the election. The timing was breathtaking. What’s the point of discipline when it collapses when it matters most?
The second false positive was on the Voice to Parliament.
The “no” victory gave the opposition a false sense of understanding the country. The “no” vote was understood by some around Dutton as a broader sense test of where the Australian public was at on a range of other issues too.
It was a resounding “no” vote on one proposal, with no bipartisan support, on a topic most Australians had little connection with. Victory on this gave some in the Liberal Party a sense that victory could continue, and grievances of the working-class suburbs could be harnessed, the same way. It didn’t materialise.
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Labor must now deliver
While Liberal Party members thumped their chests about navigating the difficult world we live in, they didn’t land the answer to the question of who was best placed to deal with the insecurity we are all right to feel.
Instead, the Labor party appeared to be speaking to how to navigate that scary world we have inherited.
And while this stunning victory for Albanese must feel sweet, the grievances around cost of living and the economy being registered in the opinion polls were not a fabrication or a false narrative. They were real. They were felt acutely by voters.
This means that for Labor to prove voters made the right political choice Albanese and his ministers must deliver on those promises. Childcare and raising bulk billing rates are are tangible measurable promises. Thumping victories can erode when people feel let down.
Albanese’s test will be to ride his frontbench and the bureaucracy to deliver on his promise that no one is left behind.
It was only late last year that he was staring down the barrel of a historic loss. He would remember that feeling. That feeling is what needs to drive the next phase of action.
Patricia Karvelas is presenter of ABC TV’s Q+A, host of ABC News Afternoon Briefing at 4pm weekdays on ABC News Channel, co-host of the weekly Party Room podcast with Fran Kelly and host of politics and news podcast Politics Now.
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