Labour Landslide !
A Tale of Two Labours As Right Wing Opposition In Australia Relegated To The Fringes
Rupert Murdoch’s Sky News was still trying to attack Anthony Albanese last night.
Headlines on the channel replayed Albanese falling off a stage on the campaign trail. Apparently he “lied”, they said, and that was a negative for Rupert Murdoch’s commentators, who had spun out multiple videos and negative headlines based on it.
Ditto the Australian Coalition Opposition Leader, Peter Dutton, who repeated that same “attack” line for weeks - as apparentely evidence of Albanese’s dishonesty.
If this is all they have then we are in good territory.
Albanese:
“I stepped off the stage and I didn’t fall over on the backside. I stumbled. That’s what happened. I laughed about it at the time, I’ve laughed about it since, it’s no big deal...
I fell for Newcastle a long time ago. It’s a great place.”
Anyone else would have forgiven a 62 year old for what is a very understandable situation. But not the people who work for “alternative news” and “don’t take what our people say seriously, we’re just entertainers” News Corp.
Or Dutton - the man who promised fossil fuel magnate Gina Rinehart he’d be the “best friend’ mining ever had, wanted to defund the Environmental Defenders Office, “cut green tape”1, cut EV incentive policies, attacked refugees, blamed immigrants (which build Australia), wanted to cut public education funding, and punched down on Indigenous Australians while putting out a non-credible economic plan.
It was all to no avail.
As Fairfax Media wrote late last night, Albanese delivered - not only did he not fall off the stage, he practically levitated.
An Extraordinary Success
Indeed Labour defied all expectations overnight.
Not only did Anthony “Albo” Albanese win, he owned.
The majority government is his.
Dutton’s ‘Back on Track’ pitch went down in tatters, as seats across Australia swung heavily to Labour.
Liberals’ losses could leave their Coalition party in only 5 of Sydney’s 29 electorates. They’ve been relegated to a fringe populist movement, exiled from Australia’s major cities.
Their Coalition with National and their alliance with Christians, Atlas Network affiliates, and fossil fuel money, was insufficient.
Australia’s Public Broadcaster, ABC, which Murdoch media regularly attacks, noted that the culture wars Dutton’s team used was a “crutch” which just didn’t work.
Nearly all commentaors agreed the Coalition’s campaign was a shambles.
But not Sky News.
Writer Andrew Bolt couldn’t accept what he was seeing as the results came in last night, writing an article for the Herald Sun where he claimed it was the Australian voters that were wrong. And he pitched further, saying Dutton’s team lost because they “refused to fight the ‘culture wars’”.
Conservatives there were hoping to emulate their unparalleled success in the Voice Referendum - but it was not to be.
Did you know NZ’s aspiring PM Chris Bishop also used the phrase “We want to cut red and green tape" when pitching the Coalition Fast-Track Bill last year?
More on what was different to the New Zealand campaign later.
Bye, Bye Dutton
Liberals leader Peter Dutton not only lost the federal election yesterday - an election that only a few months ago polling said was his - but he lost the electoral seat that he had held for 24 years.
The winner of that was Ali France, an extraordinary woman who had been chipping away at the Dickson electorate for 3 election cycles.
France is a fearless champion for Labour - she’s a former journalist, communications manager and para athlete.
Her leg was amputated in a serious car accident in 2011, when an 88 year old driver lost control of his vehicle, and pinned her against another car. She was with her younger son at the time, and managed to push the pram out of the way. He was safe. She was seriously injured.
France was inspired to join politics and run for office to advocate for people with disabilities afterwards.
Her eldest son Henry died from leukaemia last year, February 2024.
France intimately understood the importance of progressive policies - healthcare for all, disability support, dignity for families, and working for the local community.
Announcing her candidacy last year, France said she knew her eldest son would have been proud of her for doing so.
And she told The Guardian that although her campaign simply didn’t have the same amount of funding and advertising reach as Dutton, she and her team had worked hard at the grassroots level:
“[Dutton’s] a massive spender on his campaign, particularly advertising. We have never been able to compete with that. But what our campaign has always been about is a huge grassroots game. It’s about door-knocking, it’s about the high visibility. It’s about being at markets.”
A Disappointing Result for the Greens
The Greens and Labour broke their preference-swap pact last month after a dispute over a marginal Melbourne seat where Labour refused to back the Greens. The Greens then directed their how to vote cards to independents, including pro-Gaza candidates in Sydney and Melbourne.
That may have been a strategic play, but the party nevertheless fell short of expectations, losing a number of MPs as independents held their ground across the country.
Liberal preferences went to Labour, and Liberals’ resounding loss strengthened Labour’s results as well.
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