Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese of the Labor party has gained a massive victory in the recently conducted national elections 2025. He had defeated Liberal party candidate Peter Dutton. Albanese is set to lead his second-term government in Australia.
Albanese has been very critical of the Trump administration’s tariff policy. In a television debate, Albanese criticised Trump’s tariffs, calling them an act of “economic self-harm” and “not the act of a friend.
“He has different views, different values, I support free and fair trade. He doesn’t”, the Australian PM added.
According to the analysts, Trump’s harsh trade tariffs may have helped Australia’s left-leaning prime minister score a resounding election victory on Saturday.
Academicians noted that in Australian elections, US president Trump was not a major factor for voters who backed prime minister Anthony Albanese.
However, some suggested that Trump might have had a significant impact on the Labor party’s late rise in polls resulting in their big win.
Three months before the elections, the Labor party was trailing, and over time, they surpassed opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative coalition, leading in several opinion polls.
Henry Maher, a politics lecturer at the University of Sydney, noted that Dutton perceived “Trump-lite” policies—such as cutting public service jobs in a push for government efficiency that led to a shift in his voter base.
Speaking to a reporter of AFP, he said, “Of course, there are other concerns — cost of living, defence, health and everything else .”
“But if we want to understand why a good chunk of the electorate has changed across the election campaign over the last couple of months, I think that’s the biggest thing.”
Trump’s unpopular 10-percent tariff on goods from longtime ally Australia, and the financial market disruption caused by his global trade policy, may have unnerved voters, Maher said.
“In times of instability, we expect people to go back to a kind of steady incumbent,” he said.
‘Volatility’:
The Australian public’s confidence in one of its strongest allies, the United States, appears to have faded under Trump.
Only 36 per cent of Australians trust the United States, according to an annual poll by the Lowy Institute — down 20 percentage points from 2024.
Dutton, who lost his own parliamentary seat in the recent elections, earlier this year described Trump as a “big thinker” and “shrewd”.
But both he and Albanese remained rigid, insisting they wouldn’t give in to the American leader when it came to protecting Australia’s interests.
Kate Harrison Brennan, who was an advisor to Labor’s former prime minister Julia Gillard, said Dutton’s coalition had tried out policies that “looked quite similar to those in the United States”.
Trump “definitely” had an impact on the election, she added.
“Australians had seen the global disruption under Trump, that in turn, had benefited Albanese,” said Harrison Brennan, director of the University of Sydney’s Policy Lab.
“He’s made that case well, that in that type of changing world and volatility, he’d bring calm but effective leadership for Australia,” she said.
However, not all analysts agreed that Trump was the deciding factor.
Paul Williams, political scientist at Griffith University, said Albanese would have won even if Joe Biden was still in the White House.
‘Turning point’:
Williams noted that the Australian central bank’s decision to cut key interest rates in February represented a “turning point” in Labor’s fortunes.
“Obviously this has been a cost-of-living election, but my take is that the sting is coming out of the tail of the cost of living, because wages are catching up to inflation,” he added.
He didn’t think Dutton had borrowed policies from Trump.
The conservative leader had only proposed a few policies, like introducing nuclear power to Australia and had failed to explain them clearly to voters.
He was forced to scrap a short-lived plan to prevent public servants from working from home, a move that was poorly received and would have particularly affected female voters, Williams said.
These policy changes, along with others, led to accusations that Dutton couldn’t be trusted to govern.
On the eve of election, Albanese said “They have not gone through a single week of this campaign where they have not flipped and flopped,”
Undecided voters weren’t avoiding Dutton because he reminded them of Trump, Williams said.
“They’re avoiding him because of Peter Dutton. Peter Dutton lost this election because of Peter Dutton.”
