The voters were the biggest losers in Australia

After three years of mediocrity, the Australian Labor Party, led by Anthony Albanese, has been re-elected and will increase its majority. This comes after first being elected in 2022 with an all-time low 32 per cent primary vote.

The centre-right Coalition led by Peter Dutton, which includes the Liberal and National parties, fell at the last hurdle, losing seats all over the country including that of Dutton who lost the constituency he had held since 2001, suffering the same fate as Canada’s Conservative leader, Pierre Poilievre.

Amazingly, Albanese’s victory means he is the first Prime Minister to win consecutive elections since John Howard in 2004. A remarkable achievement for such an unremarkable political leader.

The biggest loser of this election, however, is not the Coalition, but the Australian public. Australians remain starved of a better way, which neither side offered. Around a third of voters in this election and the previous one rejected both major parties.

Much like Britain, where Keir Starmer’s Labour was elected with just 33.7 per cent and with fewer votes than Jeremy Corbyn’s 2019 result — the public are unenthused and disengaged.

Yet unlike Britain and its First Past the Post system, Australia’s preferential voting means a political force akin to Nigel Farage’s Reform Party would be locked out due to the need to attract preferences from other parties. And where voting is voluntary in Britain, it is compulsory in Australia, which dampens any motivated minority turnout. 

So, the only choice left for Australians is for reform to take place within the major parties. Only this can reverse the complete policy inertia and management of national decline we find ourselves in for the five-week campaign was shallow, with no proper policy debate or truth-telling about the pressing issues of our time — a sad indictment.

Structural change? Forget it. We are officially in a doom loop

Often we are told that the answer to any problem is “more funding”. Structural change? Forget it. We are officially in a doom loop. Under Labor, government spending as a share of GDP is at record levels. Now we are guaranteed more debt and deficit, with gross debt projected to reach an eye-watering A$1.2 trillion by 2028-29.

The Coalition’s costings were nothing special either. We were told they would reduce gross debt by A$40 billion over four years, and improve the budget bottom line by A$14 billion.

How? By cutting 41,000 public service jobs and eliminating funding for several Labor initiatives. Vague. The guillotine was to come down on foreign aid also, despite Australia and the US wrestling Chinese influence and assertiveness in the Indo-Pacific. However, we were assured the Pacific, Indonesia, and Timor-Leste, would all be spared. Although ignoring South Asia and other multilateral regional initiatives would see Australia take a backseat in our region.

A political miscalculation by the Coalition was, prior to the election being called, voting against Labor’s decision to cut the lowest income tax rate from 16 per cent to 14 over two years. Although it was dismissed as “only $5 to $10 per week”, the move was permanent and sold by Labor as a “top up” for 14 million hardworking Australians.

It was good politics by Labor and wedged the Liberals, who are meant to be the party of lower taxes. Instead, they pledged to repeal the tax cut if elected and give a one-off tax rebate, plus cut fuel excise for just one year. Great, but what comes after? Like Britain, taxes are simply too high. Any reduction, no matter how small, should be met with an automatic “yes”.

Labor was also effective in their scare campaign against the Coalition’s nuclear energy proposal, repeating ad nauseum the untruth that it would cost A$600 billion. This figure was propaganda cooked up by a renewable energy advocacy group. But a lie goes halfway around the world before the truth has its boots on.

The Coalition should have highlighted Labor’s hypocrisy over their stance on nuclear energy. Here, they are happy to commit to nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS defence pact, yet are ideologically opposed to nuclear power being part of Australia’s domestic energy mix.

The only way Australia can ever achieve the legislated net zero emissions target by 2050, without further impoverishing households and industry, is to introduce nuclear energy. Nuclear energy is good enough for France, Finland, and countless other countries, but is prohibited in Australia, which has over 40 per cent of the world’s uranium reserves. It is nonsensical. China currently has 58 nuclear reactors and plans to build 118 more by 2035. 

I dare say that if successive British governments had not neglected its nuclear power industry and invested more in small modular reactors, then Britons would not be suffering from the highest electricity prices in Europe.

Instead, politicians in Australia and the UK have committed us to a reckless policy which will cost trillions, make our countries weaker and, worse, was never properly debated in our respective parliaments. 

Sir Jim Ratcliffe warned only last week that deindustrialisation achieves nothing for the environment and merely shifts emissions, businesses, and jobs elsewhere. Former British prime minister Tony Blair, too, sounded the alarm when he said current net zero policies were “doomed to fail”.

Going down the renewable route only enriches China as most of the world’s wind turbines and solar panels are manufactured there. Reshaping energy policy is critical for the sake of Australia’s economic and national security.

And speaking of security, at the eleventh hour, the Coalition announced plans to boost defence spending from 2 per cent of GDP to 2.5 per cent in five years. Rather than attracting the praise it deserved, it looked like an afterthought.

Labor’s commitment to spending only 2.3 percent of GDP by 2033 is laughable considering the security environment emerging in our region, not to mention the fact that a Chinese flotilla held war games off the Australian east coast recently.

There is some talk about an “anti-Trump bump” though this was less of a factor in Australia than in Canada. Nevertheless, global uncertainty can make voters seek the comfort of an incumbent they know.

Canada’s proximity to, and economic reliance on, the US always meant a candidate who had economic credentials and stood up to threats of annexation was going to mobilise the public. Canada exports 77 per cent of its goods to the US and is now facing a recession due to Trump’s tariffs.

Headlines about tariffs and what they mean for Australia would certainly have caused some angst. The point remains that Australia and the UK have long served as America’s fidus Achates — loyal companions who followed it into wars. It is offensive that both countries were not exempt from these tariffs, especially when we both maintain relatively balanced trade relationships with the US, unlike China and Germany.

The challenge ahead for Australia’s Liberal and National parties resembles that confronting the British Conservative Party. Both are quickly learning that, unlike in government where resources are endless, being in opposition means doing all the hard work yourself, including policy development.

This means engaging with pet intellects within the party. Margaret Thatcher had Keith Joseph. Who did Dutton have? Who does Kemi Badenoch have now following last week’s disastrous local election results?

To use the Tories as an example, there are peers in the House of Lords who have a wealth of political experience or expertise yet seldom are asked to assist on policy. It is a waste. The Liberal and National parties have access to similar minds.

The other reality that centre-right parties must face is the generational shift in the electorate. This Australian election was the first time Millennials and Gen Z voters collectively outnumbered Baby Boomers. This must be reflected in policy.

And finally, the low primary vote of centre-left parties suggests the public knows that spending more and regulating more is not the real answer to their problems. It feels good in the moment, but the problem remains.

Centre-right politicians need to admit and explain that the political and economic consensus is broken, and that throwing more money at our problems is not always the answer. This means a total change. Centre-right parties need an offering that is about enriching people’s lives and strengthening the country.

Admittedly this is no small task for any opposition, but politics is about words, about arguments, and about debate. In Australia, the Coalition found that out the hard way.