May 19, 2025 • 25 mins
It’s been three weeks since Albanese and Labor’s big win. MPs are settling in, the dust’s still clearing, and we’re looking at how they pulled off the second-term landslide, and what’s next.
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Speaker 1 (00:00):
Well, Anthony Albanezi won. That landslide victory was historic. He's
only the third Labor leader to win two terms, after
Gough Whitlam and Bob Cork. We went through each week
in the campaign and now we're going to do a
bit recap of what happened, and I'm joined here today
for a bit of a post mortem by seven years
political reporter and national security out of team Lester Teim.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Welcome, Nice to see you, Josh.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Hello, everyone ready a gay.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Campaign. We're taking away work from those on this side.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Start the pose the income. So it was a landslide win.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Anthony Albanesi and Labor got more than ninety seats, which
was better than even the most optimistic polling suggested.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Tim, did you see that coming?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
You know, me and nobody else in the country. I
think pretty much there'll always be somebody after the lectures.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Ah idea that was going to happen. Yeah right.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I mean the outlier of poles was the Yugo pole
in the last week, right, and it predicted what eighty
four seats for Labor, maybe even as high as eighty six,
and a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Will go yeah right.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
The general prognosis was seventy two to seventy eight seats.
Remember the majority seventy six in the House of Representatives,
so ninety four is really actually quite an embarrassing underestimate
in terms of polling. But at least they got the
(01:42):
result right.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Labor won it, and.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
I think the Polses have got a harder job now.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
We see so many you know, we've got the Tills,
which they won a swag of seats. You've got the
Greens who lost seats but have got a big primary vote.
So there's so many people out there. One in three
people aren't voting for the major parties, and I think
that's what makes it so for the posters to predict
where they're scatter gun of preferences.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Getting yes, the old two party preferred measure, the old
two major parties, and maybe one House lower House seat
out of one hundred and fifty goes to a Green
or an independent. Those days, those days are gone. And yeah,
it's quite different, quite different electorate. But we haven't I think,
(02:24):
fully switched to that yet and changed the way we
view possible outcomes of election. So yeah, it's a it
is a tough act for the posters, but it's one
we expect him to get close to right.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
And I think that might be in the secret source
of why Anthony Albanezi one I know one Plait of
Balalas was talking about he spoke to different groups. There's
so many disparate groups. There's Uni students, younger families, older
people that he was he almost sort of had a
policy for everyone. Why do you think Anthony Albanesi and
label were able to win and so convincing?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Well, I think the first thing to say is they
were lucky.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
They were very lucky in a lot of ways. I
think there's big trends that were at play in this
election that left the Liberals with what was very much
a moving target in terms of what they were campaigning for,
what they thought they were going to get, made every
reason to think it. I think back say September, October
(03:22):
November last year, what they thought they were going to
get and what they finished up with were really quite different.
And so I think the Liberals prepared for the wrong election.
They prepared for an election where Donald Trump wasn't anywhere
near the negative he became right. I think whilst I
don't think they ever were going to simply take the
(03:43):
Trump playbook and run it entirely. I don't think there's
any doubt they were tempted to look at the early
November result in the US and what lessons they could
draw from it, and some policies came out of that.
This idea of sacking public servants, which became frankly part
(04:04):
of the Liberal Party tragedy during the election campaign, had
its finger had the Trump fingerprints on it, No doubt
about that. The plan cutbacks and so forth. So I
think the big thing, the big first thing to acknowledge
is that Labor got a lot of.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Luck looking at than a Peter Dutton in the opposition.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
That feeds in well because Peter Utton had to backflip
on policies like getting those public servants to work from home.
And I think even voters potentially who weren't impacted by
that sort of went well, if this guy's backflip being
on this, what else is he going to backflip on?
And I think what your backflip wants? You opened Pandora's
(04:48):
box for the other side to run as many scare
campaigns as.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
They want, quite and the backflip there, the backflip on
work from home and essentially on the sacking of the
public servants, which became I will do it all through
natural and natural attrition. Those changes became doubly poisonous for
the Liberals. They were poisonous because if a backflip like
(05:12):
that is very unusual in an election campaign, so it
looked indecisive, but it had another effect. The Liberals had
decided that they were going into this campaign with the
old small target strategy, and there's a lot of Australian
history to support that. I think the nineteen ninety three
election that's the big benchmark where Houston ran fight back
(05:37):
in a very detailed policy and keeping aid him alive
with the detail of that policy over time, and it
became then accepted wisdom that you don't take too much
detail to a federal election bill shortened with hindsight. Took
too much detail back in twenty nineteen and he lost
(05:58):
them because he and so you can understand.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
They took a small target in twenty tweeny two, anyone.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Right, So the evidence by late twenty twenty four for
this year's election was small target good. What happened was
they had a small target, they lose a couple of
their key policies. They weren't happy about talking about the
most monumental policy, the nuclear power policy. They finished up
(06:24):
with a beer cupboard pretty much, and frankly had nothing
positive to talk about. They were left with it with,
you know, I think, in deep trouble, looking like they
weren't offering anything, so they became, you know, the lesson
that your cupboard.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Can be too there you do need an offering.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
And potentially Labor utilized that to put the target on
Peter Dunton as like personality politics, the way they were
comparing him to Donald Trump, and also usual on the
fact maybe the general public didn't know a lot about
Peter didn't What they did know about him was from
his time as Immigration Minister or a Home Affairs as
the tough guy of the Liberal Party. And I think
(07:07):
Labor kind of tried to amplify that potentially.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Is it yeah, and did a pretty good job of it,
right And you know, Peter Dutton because it's your job
to and I do as well, because it's mine, And
he's a very affable, likable bloke. But I don't think
the campaign set him up that way at all. They
never humanized him, really, they never had. We never saw
(07:34):
him really mixing and relating to people, whereas Anthony ALBANIZI
loved him or hating did particularly. Actually it was the
campaign came into those closing days was getting out more
mixing with people, and there was a you've got a
sense of the human So I think there was a
mistake there too.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
I think Belle Shorton was quite prophetical.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
He came on the National News seven National News at
the start of the year and said the trick for
the Liberal Party will be you've either got to define
Peter Dutton yourselves or the opposition the other side will
define him. And I think that wrung out to be
true because Labor did define Peter Dutt in the end.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Yeah, I think they missed the advice. I don't think
there was any concentrated effort to define him, and that
was sad because.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
If you get to know the guy.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
I said, aside his policies, he's certainly a conservative, of course,
but set aside his policies, he's a very genuine guy
who wanted the best for his country and that's what
he was aiming for. But we never got that since
we never saw it.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Tim, you've done a few election campaigns over your time.
You were over in the States. As our US correspondent
have come back, what changed from previous campaigns to this one?
What stood out to you? What was different about it?
What did you enjoy? What was it like traveling around?
I think you're on the bus for most of the
time and on the plane.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
What was that like?
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Oh, I've got a great fun. It's a Lolli shop
for us. So it's not everybody's cup of tea. I
understand that, but it's wonderful to do and wonderful to
see differences. This one, no doubt, has become more defensive
and more risk averse than they have been in the past.
(09:22):
I would say often that I'd remember Rudd's campaign from
O seven is a feature and we got sick to
death of being dragged through shopping centers, watching Kevin Rudd
and John Howard glad hand as many people as they could,
actually getting out and shaking people's hands. I don't think
(09:43):
I saw it, certainly, not a big indoor shopping mall.
This whole campaign not one of them, because I think
partly because security would be saying to both leaders, we
don't want to have to secure.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
That, so they'd be mixed in and we didn't see
security issues or protests.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
We did, we did right at the start too.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
But I think there was also a bit of the
media management in that. But look, we don't want to
deal with hit by a rotten egg or yelling protesters
or that kind of stuff. TV will get way too
focused on it. Yes, let's stay away from it. So
certainly more risk adverts.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
On election night, you were with Labor and Anthony Alberanees
and you spoke for a number of the party elders
and the president and Tony Burke.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Pretty historical win. How did they characterize Anthony Albenezy win.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Well as just that historic? I mean they acknowledged that
he was. He's now in the pantheon of Labor leaders
who've brought them extraordinary success. Even more though it's only
his second term. You could see they fit all will
Surely this sets up a third Surely we couldn't lose
(11:04):
twenty seats next time around unless we manage it really badly.
I'm not sure that's necessarily right. By the way, I
think if the seat swings one way, there's a capacity
for it to swing back as a matter of physics,
you know, And I guess.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
There's a risk now that they overreach, as governments do
when they get a big majority. They think we have
a mandate on everything we believe, and we're going to
go gun ho and then potentially do things that the
middle Australia, the middle group go oh, I don't like that,
and then they start to get that animosity towards the other.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
I think that for historians who no politics, they'd look
back to two thousand and four when John Howard won
both houses of Parliament and that the cockiness that that generated,
not necessarily in Howard but certainly certainly in the party,
and the damage that that cockingness brought them three years
(12:00):
later for work choices. Yeah, certainly with work choices and
the downfall of the Howard government and Howard losing his
own seats from historic wind historic loss in three short years.
So Labor will likely win the next election. But don't
believe anybody who tells you it's an absolute guarantee, because
(12:24):
it's not.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And I think Anthony Abernez he has read the history books,
he was around in the Howard area. He's try to
keep that cockiness and that arrogance down so far.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Yeah, but that's a battle and it's a battle too.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
I think one of the big questions for our Benezi
going forward to but there're a lot often but among
them should be what's he doing in terms of his
own succession plans? But who succeeds him? How does he
manage that? When does he manage that? Because we haven't
had a leader in sixty years now pretty much who's
(13:00):
left under their own steam. So yeah, but they all
get that wrong reliably. Perhaps his greatest, greatest accolade might
be easy able to do that smoothly and continue Labour's
strength in office.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
That will be a big test. But yeah, La labor
I did.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Extraordinarily well in the election, undoubtedly an historic win, but
they had the breeze at their back, so.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
They need to factor that.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
In and not everyone on the winning side probably right
now feels like a winner. There was a cabinet reshuffle
after the election that changed the ministry and that's done
in Labor by the factions and it's a result in
a bit of a nasty situation. You've got Ed Husick,
who was the Industry and Science Minister has been removed
because there was too many New South Wales right MP
(14:00):
in the ministry and you've had Mark Drapers removed. He
was a Victorian, right MP, there was another Victorian, right
MP installed. Lead's a bit of a bad taste in
your mouth after you've had an amazing win.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Right completely.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
And the difficulty for labor is as much as they
might try to say, oh, Jose, how much talent we've got, Well, okay,
but you've sacked two very good ministers, at least on
their performance, and at least from everything we know, they
were good performers. And so I think I think justifying
(14:37):
that's a bit tough. And I think most people with
a political sense know that this was the factions the
moment after the pressure of public appearances dropped away because
the election had been had playing politics, not making selections
based on merit alone, that's nonsense. They were playing politics
(14:59):
and two two are their best cocked it as a result.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
And as people at home might not realize this, but
some of politicians and MP Spiers's political rivals aren't necessarily
on the other side of the fence.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
No, completely, No absolutely.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
I mean it's been a little while since we've had
a good old Australian leadership fight. We were doing a
raid of knots there for a few years, but that's right.
Internal party animosities are huge and managing them is difficult.
One of the curious things about the Cusick Dreyfus one, though,
(15:39):
is I think we still don't really know what role
Anthony Alberzi play. There was a suggestion in the press
that this was a snub to ALBERNIZI and weakened him
because he had to copy it. I'm not sure he did.
Maybe he was just happy to let the factions do
(16:00):
something and quietly agreed with it. I don't think we've
and the evidence on that to really.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
I think the Deputy Prime Minister Richard Malt, who's the
leader of the right side of the party where a
lot of these changes happened, as the one copying the
head well.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
And I don't think there's any doubt he was right
in the middle of it, right, So he's he's an
obvious case to common questions.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
And probably avoiding doing too many.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Press conferences right now for exactly exactly that reason, because
he'd get a few. Albot can't avoid them quite so
readily being the Prime minister.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
But I think he's he was certainly at a distance.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
But whether he he saw merit in letting it go,
or whether he had to cop letting it go because
he dare not take on the factions.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
I don't think we can be sure.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
And not all's happy on the coalition.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Inside they've had to elect a new leader, of course,
because Peter Dutton lost his seat of Dixon, and they've
made a pretty historic choice.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
They have, and Susan Lee is a choice of moderation
over over their tendency towards.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
The right of their party.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
And I think it's a choice against making the move
towards the lessons coming out of the US or or
you know, to Trump isn't frankly, so many would applaud
that somewhat. So there's a division of opinion. Don't think
(17:39):
Angus Taylor's going anywhere. I don't think Angus Taylor's ambition
goes anywhere. So so Susan Lee will be doing her
job constantly aware that she can't afford mistakes.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
She's got to get it right.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Looking over, yeah, I think completely that's not necessarily a
bad thing. Certainly not the first leader to be in
that situation. But she has a viable contender who is
ambitious and who has already shown that he can get
many votes in the party room. They only need it
freed across from her to him and he'd be opposition
(18:20):
leader today. So that's an interesting dynamic going forward, and
Susan Lee has a big job to watch that, but
also to manage the coalition, which is a very big
job now, and to do so in a way that
takes into account the reasons they lost the election.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
And I don't think they've worked that out. They've got
a while ago.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
The Nationals do we stick with natzera missions by twenty fifty?
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Do we stick with nuclears?
Speaker 1 (18:51):
So there are the questions they're going to work out,
and potentially the National Party and the Liberal Party may
split and go their own ways through a bit.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
While in opposition.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Quite well, it's looking I'm in on the twenty to
fifty target, it's looking quite likely that they won't rich
an agreement on that easily. The Nationals appear committed to
the idea. Well perhaps that's a bit too much to
say just yet, but certainly there is a strong argument
in the Nationals but they should give that away now.
(19:24):
I can't imagine that's going to be easy for the
Liberals to do, particularly as the Liberals try to work
a way to get back into urban seats in the election.
We've just seen that's where they've been given a complete
hiding over two elections now, so they've got to get
back there. Well, abandoning climate targets I wouldn't seem to
(19:49):
be the way.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
To do that.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
No, Forbot, it's.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Going forward. Anthony Albanezi is jet sittting around the world.
We saw him in Indonesia the Palace, the cat, the
President's cat, quite making a few headlines there. As he's
trying to get on with being the prime minister. The
swearing has happened. He wants to move on from the
(20:13):
election as precleasy can I guess.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yeah, naturally enough.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
It's a it's a great win for him, but he's
got got a lot that he'd want to do, and
so yeah, he's moving on. It's got a lot of travel,
so he'll he'll cop the airline Albo tag and criticism again.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
I'd reckon over the next month.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
The last eighteen months of the prime ministership, he didn't
do too much well, No, he knew.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
An election was coming, right, so he parked the jet and.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
A few new leaders to meet him, and he hasn't
met with Donald Trump yet. He hasn't met with Canada's
Prime Minister Mike Carney. Kestarma, who you know, he's good
friends with him, want to catch up with him. So
and obviously global trade has been upended by Donald Trump,
so that's there's merit to he needs to go overseas.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
And during the election campaign he was coping criticism for
having not done more to get to Donald Trump. So's
he's got to be seen to be pretty active on
the front of developing reassuring Australians that he's got the
US relationship under control and he's doing all he can in.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Relation to the.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Donald Trump moves. So yeah, he needs to do a
bit of travel.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
And also in Indonesia, we saw Russia way to base
the military planes there during the election and that's why
one of the reasons why Anthony albanies he got on
a jet straight to Chakata. He's good friends with Probo Subianto.
But the Indonesians put on quite the arrival party for.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Ann astonish astonishing seed. I mean that the one difficulty
of that is having Probo here in Australia. I'm not
quite sure camera will rustle up that pageantry.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
For him, it.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Was it was we roll out the cannons out of
the front.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
With a few cannons out the front.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Maybe that's also the cost of them. I don't know
if the Australian taxpas or the similar welcome for world
leaders that probably start getting a bit annoyed about how
much money we were spending on welcoming overseas leaders.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
Well, yeah, we're pretty understated people Australia.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
I don't think the Jakarta welcome is their copybook just yet,
but it was pretty extraordin.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
We will sum up. Now, what's your final reflection on
the last couple of months.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
What have we learned?
Speaker 4 (22:42):
What was the one thing that's sort of stuck out
to you?
Speaker 3 (22:45):
I think that lesson Well, I think there's a few
lessons out of the election.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
One. Luck matters, and labor got way over share of
the luck.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
I don't think there's anything doubt, any doubt about that.
I think a small target didn't work for the Libs.
I think they thought they could get close to Trump
and that in the end poisoned them. That was by
the time we got to election day, you didn't want
to be anywhere near Trump, and that, perhaps more than
(23:21):
any single thing, explains the quite remarkable change in opinion polls.
Remember Anthony Albanesi in January was losing and the only
question then was in fact remember the beginning of the
election campaign, first full day campaigning, and Peter Dutton said
that his press conference in Brisbane in a brewery, he said,
(23:43):
does anyone here seriously believe that Anthony Albanesi and Labor
can win a majority? Well, Peter, they won ninety four seats,
so perhaps that's the biggest lesson of more don't try
and predict an election on day one because you might.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Be badly wrong.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
I'd be interesting to see an interview with John Howard
because I think a number of things he's said in
the past kind of ran Tran's campaign. You can't fatten
a pig on market day was his famous saying about
policy development, you need to have the policies done. I
think he probably, if he was being honest, would admit
that Dutton's comments where he verbal the Indonesian president probably
(24:24):
it's smart and maybe the general public looked at that
and went is this guy ready to be the prime
minister if he's.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
There was also the comments on Curabilly wanting to live
in Sydney not in Canberra, which in the end really
turned south on him and I think cost him as well.
So yeah, there were Look, hindsight is a wonderful thing,
but looking back on it, it's pretty easy to see
(24:52):
some big holes in the way the coalition, the Liberals.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
In particular, and it's always easier for the Prime Minister
who's regularly in the media spotlight. He's doing press consens
every day, he's match fit, and for the opposition leader
they're always coming from a handicap start.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yeah, yeah, maybe I think they could have done more
to put Peter Dutton out there, and perhaps should have.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Done more before the election campaign.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
Again on sight, but you're right in the end, ALBERNIZI
loved the campaign. It just he seemed to enjoy it.
For Peter Dutton, it just got tough a bit death,
no worries.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Thanks for joining me on the Snapshot podcast him appreciate time,
been great.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
And thanks for tuning in once more.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
This has been a recap of the twenty twenty five
election and a look ahead to what's going to take
place over the next three years. Thanks for joining us.
I'm Josh Martin, the political report of seven years. This
is Tim Lester, our national security editor. Thanks for your
time and will Chatson take care
Well, Anthony Albanezi won. That landslide victory was historic. He's
only the third Labor leader to win two terms, after
Gough Whitlam and Bob Cork. We went through each week
in the campaign and now we're going to do a
bit recap of what happened, and I'm joined here today
for a bit of a post mortem by seven years
political reporter and national security out of team Lester Teim.
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Welcome, Nice to see you, Josh.
Speaker 3 (00:24):
Hello, everyone ready a gay.
Speaker 2 (00:37):
Campaign. We're taking away work from those on this side.
Speaker 4 (00:42):
Start the pose the income. So it was a landslide win.
Speaker 1 (00:51):
Anthony Albanesi and Labor got more than ninety seats, which
was better than even the most optimistic polling suggested.
Speaker 4 (00:57):
Tim, did you see that coming?
Speaker 3 (00:58):
You know, me and nobody else in the country. I
think pretty much there'll always be somebody after the lectures.
Speaker 2 (01:05):
Ah idea that was going to happen. Yeah right.
Speaker 3 (01:08):
I mean the outlier of poles was the Yugo pole
in the last week, right, and it predicted what eighty
four seats for Labor, maybe even as high as eighty six,
and a lot of people.
Speaker 2 (01:19):
Will go yeah right.
Speaker 3 (01:21):
The general prognosis was seventy two to seventy eight seats.
Remember the majority seventy six in the House of Representatives,
so ninety four is really actually quite an embarrassing underestimate
in terms of polling. But at least they got the
(01:42):
result right.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
Labor won it, and.
Speaker 4 (01:44):
I think the Polses have got a harder job now.
Speaker 1 (01:46):
We see so many you know, we've got the Tills,
which they won a swag of seats. You've got the
Greens who lost seats but have got a big primary vote.
So there's so many people out there. One in three
people aren't voting for the major parties, and I think
that's what makes it so for the posters to predict
where they're scatter gun of preferences.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Getting yes, the old two party preferred measure, the old
two major parties, and maybe one House lower House seat
out of one hundred and fifty goes to a Green
or an independent. Those days, those days are gone. And yeah,
it's quite different, quite different electorate. But we haven't I think,
(02:24):
fully switched to that yet and changed the way we
view possible outcomes of election. So yeah, it's a it
is a tough act for the posters, but it's one
we expect him to get close to right.
Speaker 1 (02:37):
And I think that might be in the secret source
of why Anthony Albanezi one I know one Plait of
Balalas was talking about he spoke to different groups. There's
so many disparate groups. There's Uni students, younger families, older
people that he was he almost sort of had a
policy for everyone. Why do you think Anthony Albanesi and
label were able to win and so convincing?
Speaker 2 (02:56):
Well, I think the first thing to say is they
were lucky.
Speaker 3 (03:02):
They were very lucky in a lot of ways. I
think there's big trends that were at play in this
election that left the Liberals with what was very much
a moving target in terms of what they were campaigning for,
what they thought they were going to get, made every
reason to think it. I think back say September, October
(03:22):
November last year, what they thought they were going to
get and what they finished up with were really quite different.
And so I think the Liberals prepared for the wrong election.
They prepared for an election where Donald Trump wasn't anywhere
near the negative he became right. I think whilst I
don't think they ever were going to simply take the
(03:43):
Trump playbook and run it entirely. I don't think there's
any doubt they were tempted to look at the early
November result in the US and what lessons they could
draw from it, and some policies came out of that.
This idea of sacking public servants, which became frankly part
(04:04):
of the Liberal Party tragedy during the election campaign, had
its finger had the Trump fingerprints on it, No doubt
about that. The plan cutbacks and so forth. So I
think the big thing, the big first thing to acknowledge
is that Labor got a lot of.
Speaker 4 (04:22):
Luck looking at than a Peter Dutton in the opposition.
Speaker 1 (04:27):
That feeds in well because Peter Utton had to backflip
on policies like getting those public servants to work from home.
And I think even voters potentially who weren't impacted by
that sort of went well, if this guy's backflip being
on this, what else is he going to backflip on?
And I think what your backflip wants? You opened Pandora's
(04:48):
box for the other side to run as many scare
campaigns as.
Speaker 3 (04:50):
They want, quite and the backflip there, the backflip on
work from home and essentially on the sacking of the
public servants, which became I will do it all through
natural and natural attrition. Those changes became doubly poisonous for
the Liberals. They were poisonous because if a backflip like
(05:12):
that is very unusual in an election campaign, so it
looked indecisive, but it had another effect. The Liberals had
decided that they were going into this campaign with the
old small target strategy, and there's a lot of Australian
history to support that. I think the nineteen ninety three
election that's the big benchmark where Houston ran fight back
(05:37):
in a very detailed policy and keeping aid him alive
with the detail of that policy over time, and it
became then accepted wisdom that you don't take too much
detail to a federal election bill shortened with hindsight. Took
too much detail back in twenty nineteen and he lost
(05:58):
them because he and so you can understand.
Speaker 4 (06:01):
They took a small target in twenty tweeny two, anyone.
Speaker 3 (06:04):
Right, So the evidence by late twenty twenty four for
this year's election was small target good. What happened was
they had a small target, they lose a couple of
their key policies. They weren't happy about talking about the
most monumental policy, the nuclear power policy. They finished up
(06:24):
with a beer cupboard pretty much, and frankly had nothing
positive to talk about. They were left with it with,
you know, I think, in deep trouble, looking like they
weren't offering anything, so they became, you know, the lesson
that your cupboard.
Speaker 2 (06:42):
Can be too there you do need an offering.
Speaker 1 (06:45):
And potentially Labor utilized that to put the target on
Peter Dunton as like personality politics, the way they were
comparing him to Donald Trump, and also usual on the
fact maybe the general public didn't know a lot about
Peter didn't What they did know about him was from
his time as Immigration Minister or a Home Affairs as
the tough guy of the Liberal Party. And I think
(07:07):
Labor kind of tried to amplify that potentially.
Speaker 3 (07:09):
Is it yeah, and did a pretty good job of it,
right And you know, Peter Dutton because it's your job
to and I do as well, because it's mine, And
he's a very affable, likable bloke. But I don't think
the campaign set him up that way at all. They
never humanized him, really, they never had. We never saw
(07:34):
him really mixing and relating to people, whereas Anthony ALBANIZI
loved him or hating did particularly. Actually it was the
campaign came into those closing days was getting out more
mixing with people, and there was a you've got a
sense of the human So I think there was a
mistake there too.
Speaker 4 (07:55):
I think Belle Shorton was quite prophetical.
Speaker 1 (07:58):
He came on the National News seven National News at
the start of the year and said the trick for
the Liberal Party will be you've either got to define
Peter Dutton yourselves or the opposition the other side will
define him. And I think that wrung out to be
true because Labor did define Peter Dutt in the end.
Speaker 3 (08:13):
Yeah, I think they missed the advice. I don't think
there was any concentrated effort to define him, and that
was sad because.
Speaker 2 (08:21):
If you get to know the guy.
Speaker 3 (08:24):
I said, aside his policies, he's certainly a conservative, of course,
but set aside his policies, he's a very genuine guy
who wanted the best for his country and that's what
he was aiming for. But we never got that since
we never saw it.
Speaker 1 (08:42):
Tim, you've done a few election campaigns over your time.
You were over in the States. As our US correspondent
have come back, what changed from previous campaigns to this one?
What stood out to you? What was different about it?
What did you enjoy? What was it like traveling around?
I think you're on the bus for most of the
time and on the plane.
Speaker 4 (09:00):
What was that like?
Speaker 3 (09:00):
Oh, I've got a great fun. It's a Lolli shop
for us. So it's not everybody's cup of tea. I
understand that, but it's wonderful to do and wonderful to
see differences. This one, no doubt, has become more defensive
and more risk averse than they have been in the past.
(09:22):
I would say often that I'd remember Rudd's campaign from
O seven is a feature and we got sick to
death of being dragged through shopping centers, watching Kevin Rudd
and John Howard glad hand as many people as they could,
actually getting out and shaking people's hands. I don't think
(09:43):
I saw it, certainly, not a big indoor shopping mall.
This whole campaign not one of them, because I think
partly because security would be saying to both leaders, we
don't want to have to secure.
Speaker 1 (09:58):
That, so they'd be mixed in and we didn't see
security issues or protests.
Speaker 2 (10:03):
We did, we did right at the start too.
Speaker 3 (10:07):
But I think there was also a bit of the
media management in that. But look, we don't want to
deal with hit by a rotten egg or yelling protesters
or that kind of stuff. TV will get way too
focused on it. Yes, let's stay away from it. So
certainly more risk adverts.
Speaker 1 (10:29):
On election night, you were with Labor and Anthony Alberanees
and you spoke for a number of the party elders
and the president and Tony Burke.
Speaker 4 (10:38):
Pretty historical win. How did they characterize Anthony Albenezy win.
Speaker 3 (10:44):
Well as just that historic? I mean they acknowledged that
he was. He's now in the pantheon of Labor leaders
who've brought them extraordinary success. Even more though it's only
his second term. You could see they fit all will
Surely this sets up a third Surely we couldn't lose
(11:04):
twenty seats next time around unless we manage it really badly.
I'm not sure that's necessarily right. By the way, I
think if the seat swings one way, there's a capacity
for it to swing back as a matter of physics,
you know, And I guess.
Speaker 1 (11:20):
There's a risk now that they overreach, as governments do
when they get a big majority. They think we have
a mandate on everything we believe, and we're going to
go gun ho and then potentially do things that the
middle Australia, the middle group go oh, I don't like that,
and then they start to get that animosity towards the other.
Speaker 3 (11:37):
I think that for historians who no politics, they'd look
back to two thousand and four when John Howard won
both houses of Parliament and that the cockiness that that generated,
not necessarily in Howard but certainly certainly in the party,
and the damage that that cockingness brought them three years
(12:00):
later for work choices. Yeah, certainly with work choices and
the downfall of the Howard government and Howard losing his
own seats from historic wind historic loss in three short years.
So Labor will likely win the next election. But don't
believe anybody who tells you it's an absolute guarantee, because
(12:24):
it's not.
Speaker 1 (12:24):
And I think Anthony Abernez he has read the history books,
he was around in the Howard area. He's try to
keep that cockiness and that arrogance down so far.
Speaker 2 (12:35):
Yeah, but that's a battle and it's a battle too.
Speaker 3 (12:39):
I think one of the big questions for our Benezi
going forward to but there're a lot often but among
them should be what's he doing in terms of his
own succession plans? But who succeeds him? How does he
manage that? When does he manage that? Because we haven't
had a leader in sixty years now pretty much who's
(13:00):
left under their own steam. So yeah, but they all
get that wrong reliably. Perhaps his greatest, greatest accolade might
be easy able to do that smoothly and continue Labour's
strength in office.
Speaker 2 (13:18):
That will be a big test. But yeah, La labor
I did.
Speaker 3 (13:26):
Extraordinarily well in the election, undoubtedly an historic win, but
they had the breeze at their back, so.
Speaker 2 (13:35):
They need to factor that.
Speaker 1 (13:36):
In and not everyone on the winning side probably right
now feels like a winner. There was a cabinet reshuffle
after the election that changed the ministry and that's done
in Labor by the factions and it's a result in
a bit of a nasty situation. You've got Ed Husick,
who was the Industry and Science Minister has been removed
because there was too many New South Wales right MP
(14:00):
in the ministry and you've had Mark Drapers removed. He
was a Victorian, right MP, there was another Victorian, right
MP installed. Lead's a bit of a bad taste in
your mouth after you've had an amazing win.
Speaker 2 (14:12):
Right completely.
Speaker 3 (14:14):
And the difficulty for labor is as much as they
might try to say, oh, Jose, how much talent we've got, Well, okay,
but you've sacked two very good ministers, at least on
their performance, and at least from everything we know, they
were good performers. And so I think I think justifying
(14:37):
that's a bit tough. And I think most people with
a political sense know that this was the factions the
moment after the pressure of public appearances dropped away because
the election had been had playing politics, not making selections
based on merit alone, that's nonsense. They were playing politics
(14:59):
and two two are their best cocked it as a result.
Speaker 1 (15:04):
And as people at home might not realize this, but
some of politicians and MP Spiers's political rivals aren't necessarily
on the other side of the fence.
Speaker 2 (15:13):
No, completely, No absolutely.
Speaker 3 (15:17):
I mean it's been a little while since we've had
a good old Australian leadership fight. We were doing a
raid of knots there for a few years, but that's right.
Internal party animosities are huge and managing them is difficult.
One of the curious things about the Cusick Dreyfus one, though,
(15:39):
is I think we still don't really know what role
Anthony Alberzi play. There was a suggestion in the press
that this was a snub to ALBERNIZI and weakened him
because he had to copy it. I'm not sure he did.
Maybe he was just happy to let the factions do
(16:00):
something and quietly agreed with it. I don't think we've
and the evidence on that to really.
Speaker 1 (16:06):
I think the Deputy Prime Minister Richard Malt, who's the
leader of the right side of the party where a
lot of these changes happened, as the one copying the
head well.
Speaker 3 (16:17):
And I don't think there's any doubt he was right
in the middle of it, right, So he's he's an
obvious case to common questions.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
And probably avoiding doing too many.
Speaker 3 (16:30):
Press conferences right now for exactly exactly that reason, because
he'd get a few. Albot can't avoid them quite so
readily being the Prime minister.
Speaker 2 (16:41):
But I think he's he was certainly at a distance.
Speaker 3 (16:44):
But whether he he saw merit in letting it go,
or whether he had to cop letting it go because
he dare not take on the factions.
Speaker 2 (16:56):
I don't think we can be sure.
Speaker 4 (16:58):
And not all's happy on the coalition.
Speaker 1 (17:00):
Inside they've had to elect a new leader, of course,
because Peter Dutton lost his seat of Dixon, and they've
made a pretty historic choice.
Speaker 3 (17:08):
They have, and Susan Lee is a choice of moderation
over over their tendency towards.
Speaker 2 (17:18):
The right of their party.
Speaker 3 (17:19):
And I think it's a choice against making the move
towards the lessons coming out of the US or or
you know, to Trump isn't frankly, so many would applaud
that somewhat. So there's a division of opinion. Don't think
(17:39):
Angus Taylor's going anywhere. I don't think Angus Taylor's ambition
goes anywhere. So so Susan Lee will be doing her
job constantly aware that she can't afford mistakes.
Speaker 2 (17:56):
She's got to get it right.
Speaker 3 (17:57):
Looking over, yeah, I think completely that's not necessarily a
bad thing. Certainly not the first leader to be in
that situation. But she has a viable contender who is
ambitious and who has already shown that he can get
many votes in the party room. They only need it
freed across from her to him and he'd be opposition
(18:20):
leader today. So that's an interesting dynamic going forward, and
Susan Lee has a big job to watch that, but
also to manage the coalition, which is a very big
job now, and to do so in a way that
takes into account the reasons they lost the election.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
And I don't think they've worked that out. They've got
a while ago.
Speaker 1 (18:46):
The Nationals do we stick with natzera missions by twenty fifty?
Speaker 4 (18:50):
Do we stick with nuclears?
Speaker 1 (18:51):
So there are the questions they're going to work out,
and potentially the National Party and the Liberal Party may
split and go their own ways through a bit.
Speaker 4 (18:59):
While in opposition.
Speaker 3 (19:00):
Quite well, it's looking I'm in on the twenty to
fifty target, it's looking quite likely that they won't rich
an agreement on that easily. The Nationals appear committed to
the idea. Well perhaps that's a bit too much to
say just yet, but certainly there is a strong argument
in the Nationals but they should give that away now.
(19:24):
I can't imagine that's going to be easy for the
Liberals to do, particularly as the Liberals try to work
a way to get back into urban seats in the election.
We've just seen that's where they've been given a complete
hiding over two elections now, so they've got to get
back there. Well, abandoning climate targets I wouldn't seem to
(19:49):
be the way.
Speaker 2 (19:49):
To do that.
Speaker 4 (19:50):
No, Forbot, it's.
Speaker 1 (19:53):
Going forward. Anthony Albanezi is jet sittting around the world.
We saw him in Indonesia the Palace, the cat, the
President's cat, quite making a few headlines there. As he's
trying to get on with being the prime minister. The
swearing has happened. He wants to move on from the
(20:13):
election as precleasy can I guess.
Speaker 2 (20:15):
Yeah, naturally enough.
Speaker 3 (20:17):
It's a it's a great win for him, but he's
got got a lot that he'd want to do, and
so yeah, he's moving on. It's got a lot of travel,
so he'll he'll cop the airline Albo tag and criticism again.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
I'd reckon over the next month.
Speaker 1 (20:33):
The last eighteen months of the prime ministership, he didn't
do too much well, No, he knew.
Speaker 2 (20:37):
An election was coming, right, so he parked the jet and.
Speaker 1 (20:42):
A few new leaders to meet him, and he hasn't
met with Donald Trump yet. He hasn't met with Canada's
Prime Minister Mike Carney. Kestarma, who you know, he's good
friends with him, want to catch up with him. So
and obviously global trade has been upended by Donald Trump,
so that's there's merit to he needs to go overseas.
Speaker 3 (21:01):
And during the election campaign he was coping criticism for
having not done more to get to Donald Trump. So's
he's got to be seen to be pretty active on
the front of developing reassuring Australians that he's got the
US relationship under control and he's doing all he can in.
Speaker 2 (21:24):
Relation to the.
Speaker 3 (21:27):
Donald Trump moves. So yeah, he needs to do a
bit of travel.
Speaker 1 (21:32):
And also in Indonesia, we saw Russia way to base
the military planes there during the election and that's why
one of the reasons why Anthony albanies he got on
a jet straight to Chakata. He's good friends with Probo Subianto.
But the Indonesians put on quite the arrival party for.
Speaker 3 (21:49):
Ann astonish astonishing seed. I mean that the one difficulty
of that is having Probo here in Australia. I'm not
quite sure camera will rustle up that pageantry.
Speaker 2 (22:04):
For him, it.
Speaker 4 (22:06):
Was it was we roll out the cannons out of
the front.
Speaker 2 (22:09):
With a few cannons out the front.
Speaker 1 (22:12):
Maybe that's also the cost of them. I don't know
if the Australian taxpas or the similar welcome for world
leaders that probably start getting a bit annoyed about how
much money we were spending on welcoming overseas leaders.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
Well, yeah, we're pretty understated people Australia.
Speaker 2 (22:29):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (22:30):
I don't think the Jakarta welcome is their copybook just yet,
but it was pretty extraordin.
Speaker 4 (22:36):
We will sum up. Now, what's your final reflection on
the last couple of months.
Speaker 2 (22:41):
What have we learned?
Speaker 4 (22:42):
What was the one thing that's sort of stuck out
to you?
Speaker 3 (22:45):
I think that lesson Well, I think there's a few
lessons out of the election.
Speaker 2 (22:50):
One. Luck matters, and labor got way over share of
the luck.
Speaker 3 (22:58):
I don't think there's anything doubt, any doubt about that.
I think a small target didn't work for the Libs.
I think they thought they could get close to Trump
and that in the end poisoned them. That was by
the time we got to election day, you didn't want
to be anywhere near Trump, and that, perhaps more than
(23:21):
any single thing, explains the quite remarkable change in opinion polls.
Remember Anthony Albanesi in January was losing and the only
question then was in fact remember the beginning of the
election campaign, first full day campaigning, and Peter Dutton said
that his press conference in Brisbane in a brewery, he said,
(23:43):
does anyone here seriously believe that Anthony Albanesi and Labor
can win a majority? Well, Peter, they won ninety four seats,
so perhaps that's the biggest lesson of more don't try
and predict an election on day one because you might.
Speaker 2 (24:01):
Be badly wrong.
Speaker 1 (24:03):
I'd be interesting to see an interview with John Howard
because I think a number of things he's said in
the past kind of ran Tran's campaign. You can't fatten
a pig on market day was his famous saying about
policy development, you need to have the policies done. I
think he probably, if he was being honest, would admit
that Dutton's comments where he verbal the Indonesian president probably
(24:24):
it's smart and maybe the general public looked at that
and went is this guy ready to be the prime
minister if he's.
Speaker 3 (24:31):
There was also the comments on Curabilly wanting to live
in Sydney not in Canberra, which in the end really
turned south on him and I think cost him as well.
So yeah, there were Look, hindsight is a wonderful thing,
but looking back on it, it's pretty easy to see
(24:52):
some big holes in the way the coalition, the Liberals.
Speaker 1 (24:55):
In particular, and it's always easier for the Prime Minister
who's regularly in the media spotlight. He's doing press consens
every day, he's match fit, and for the opposition leader
they're always coming from a handicap start.
Speaker 3 (25:09):
Yeah, yeah, maybe I think they could have done more
to put Peter Dutton out there, and perhaps should have.
Speaker 2 (25:16):
Done more before the election campaign.
Speaker 3 (25:19):
Again on sight, but you're right in the end, ALBERNIZI
loved the campaign. It just he seemed to enjoy it.
For Peter Dutton, it just got tough a bit death,
no worries.
Speaker 1 (25:32):
Thanks for joining me on the Snapshot podcast him appreciate time,
been great.
Speaker 4 (25:36):
And thanks for tuning in once more.
Speaker 1 (25:38):
This has been a recap of the twenty twenty five
election and a look ahead to what's going to take
place over the next three years. Thanks for joining us.
I'm Josh Martin, the political report of seven years. This
is Tim Lester, our national security editor. Thanks for your
time and will Chatson take care
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