From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Claire Harvey. It's Monday, May five, twenty twenty five. A newly empowered Anthony Albanesi has brought Labor to a whopping ninety seats in the House of Representatives. Labour's picked up seats in the Senate to meaning it will no longer need to negotiate with crossbenches and can get legislation through with the support of the Greens. Only now there will be a
cabinet reshuffle and a new agenda. Business is worried there'll be more industrial relations changes, the energy sector wants the government to recommit to gas, and it seems working from Home is here to stay. Peter Dutton is out of Parliament and a devastated Liberal Party is searching for a new leader and a new identity. Front Runners for the
leadership include Dude Angus Taylor, Susan Lee and Dantean. But there'll be a reckoning on how the party wins back voters who've gone to the teals today and every day.
The Australian has all the best coverage of federal, state and local politics, and you can be the first to know on all the big stories by joining ours subscribers at the Australian dot com dot a U. Today The Australian's Editor at Large, Paul Kelly on what Albow two point zero means for all of us This morning, Anthony Albanezi wakes up as the most powerful prime minister in generations.
My fellow Australians, he's broken all the so called rules like first term prime ministers never increase their majority.
Serving as your prime minister is the greatest honor of my life.
Like Australians would never forgive him for the disaster of the.
Voice, and I acknowledge the traditional owners of the land on which we made and I pay my respects to elders past, present and emerging today and every day.
Like Labor would be brutally punished for presiding over huge cost of living increases.
Now, we didn't do well enough during this campaign. That much is obvious tonight, and I accept full responsibility for that.
None of those predictions came true. Peter Dunton is out of Parliament. The Coalition has been reduced to half as many seats as Labor in Queensland alone, a state where Labor has previously been written off, Labor won at least six seats. The Greens have grown their primary vote but lost seats, and the Teals have held and gained some ground. Paul Kelly is The Australian's Editor at Large and Australia's most revered political journalist. Paul, You've covered politics for more
than five decades. Where does this election sit.
This is the most extraordinary election I've seen in my five decades. This is a turning point election for the country. Nobody predicted the scale of this result. It's transformed Anthony Albanezi into a prime Minister of immense authority and of long standing significance. This Labor government will govern for a long period of time and it's left the Liberal Party in ruins. One of the questions, of course, is whether
the Liberal Party is actually capable of recovery. If it is, that recovery will take many years.
At his victory speech in twenty twenty two, Albanezy introduced the idea of a voice to Parliament, a policy that ended in defeat and confusion. In twenty twenty five, he didn't articulate any new policy ideas, but he did celebrate Medicare.
His kart's not Labor red or Liberal blue. It is green and gold. It is a declaration of our national values in our national colors.
And the trade union movement to.
The Labor Party's heart and soul, our rank and file members and the mighty trade union movement of Australia. The Labor Party will always stand up for jobs and people's wages and conditions.
After the twenty twenty two election, Paul Labor enacted a wave of IR reforms that it hadn't taken to the campaign, things like the right to disconnect, which was a Greens idea. Should we now expect another wave of IR reform.
I think the government of the Labor Party will come under immense pressure from every progressive group in the country, demanding money, policies and concessions, and my suspicion is that Anthony Alberzi will respond to that with a lot of discretion, caution and authority. What's happened in this campaign is the country's moved to the left in economic, social and cultural terms. But I think Albanzi will still want to govern from what he sees as being the Labor center.
There was a lot of talk during the campaign that this election would be about one issue cost of living? Was that true in the end, Well, it was true.
The election was about cost of living, but this was really to say, this was a really deceptive issue because the Peter Dutton campaign was far too narrow. I mean it almost got to the stage where the Liberal Party stood for cheaper petrol. That's not good enough, that's not good enough. The Liberal brand was lost. The sense of what the Liberal Party represents, what the Liberal Party stands for, was lost. It's one thing to say the issue is
cost of living. We've got to introduce concessions, cheaper petrol and other changes in order to convince people we want to look after them. But that only works if you've got a strong political brand behind it. I think what happened in this campaign is people didn't really know what the Liberal Party stood for. The Liberal Party forgot totally the advice from John Howard that it needs to be a broad church. It wasn't. It ran on thin policies,
it contracted the entire debate. So I think strategically and tactically the Liberal Party misjudged, and in particular Peter Dutton misjudged.
In the Senate. Labour's position has improved and it no longer needs crossbench support. It can get legislation through with the support of the Greens only. The Greens have lost two seats in Queensland and leader Adam Bant had a very tough fight in his seat of Melbourne, but their primary vote increased and Band says they kicked out Peter Dutton. Anthony Albanezi is now very dominant and his left faction
is dominant too. He gets to reshuffle the cabinet, of course, and you'd think that people who were once leadership contenders like Tanya Plibasik Jason Clair are going to have to get used to a very new reality. Do you think he's going to be brutal in reshaping that cabinet?
No, I don't. He will make some changes and the order to make some change after this result, but I think there will be a lot of stability. There will be quite a commitment to the status quo in the senior positions. After that, of course, there should be some change, and I'm certain there will be some change.
Coming up. Where did the Liberals go from here? Up close, Peter Dutton is smart and witty, a likable, family oriented former cop and.
Dad and I said to the Prime minister that his mum would be incredibly proud of his achievement tonight, and he should be very proud of what he's achieved, thank you.
But in caricature, like in the work of The Australian's own cartoonist Johannes Leek, he's Lurch Voldemort, a zombie, a gray faced, hulking undertaker.
We've been defined by our opponent in this election, which is not the true story of who we are. But we'll rebuild from here. We'll do that because we know our values, we know our beliefs and will always stick to them.
Was it a mistake to choose Peter Dutton.
No, I don't think it was, because after the previous election in twenty twenty two, when Josh Friedenberg lost his seat, it became obvious that Peter Dutton was a senior Liberal and I think the party did the right thing putting him in. I think we've got to be very careful about judgments in retrospect. I mean it looked for quite a lot of the past term as though Peter Dutton was doing pretty well. Peter Dutton made some really significant mistakes. Firstly,
I think he was trying to win on grievance. There were seven quarters of negative GDP per capita. This was the greatest fall in Australian living standards in half a century. He thought the electorate was coming against Albanisi with baseball bats. He misread that that was wrong. It wasn't that bad. The second mistake he made was not to knuckle down and produce substantial opposition policies at a much earlier stage.
He deferred the hard policy work and what that meant was that when the campaign came they were underprepared, they hadn't done the hard work, and they were brutally exposed on that front during the course of the campaign.
The moderate wing of the Liberal Party has been outsourced to the Teals. They now win seats that the Liberals could once rely on. Does the party need to change to try to win those people back, or do you think there's a different way forward for the Liberal Party.
Now there's only one way forward for the Liberal Party, and it's got to avoid any suggestion that there's a silver bullet on either the right or the left. So if they're a party conservatives saying the answer is to put a lot of political water between the Liberals and the Labor Party by moving further to the right and
becoming more conservative. That is a lecture of doom. On the other hand, if there are progressive liberals saying what we've got to do is we've got to move further to the left and understand what's going on in terms of cultural change, that is also the path of doom. The only way forward is to run a broad church. That is the John Howard philosophy. You've got to understand how the country's changing, and that means the Liberal Party's
got to change. But it's got to change in terms of a broad church being a party of both liberal and conservative traditions, and it's got to reinterpret what the broad Church means for the decade of the twenty twenties. And in particular, that means it's got to address its fundamental identity problems with this country. First of all, it's a lack of support among the professional, corporate and managerial classes. Secondly, it's problem with women. Thirdly, its problem with the under
forty vote. Fourthly, it's problem with multicultural Australia. Fifthly, its problem with public servants. In other words, it's got to rethink its identity from top to bottom.
The front runners are Angus Taylor, Dan Tien and Susan Lee. Right now, for the Liberal leadership, that's a huge task that you've just outlined. Do you think any of them have what it takes to turn this party around.
We'll have to see. They've lost so many people for one reason or another out of the parliament Josh Friedenberg or Christian Porter, or Mantius Corman or Christopher Pine or Greg Hunt or Scott Morrison or Malcolm Turnbull or Tony Abbott and now Peter Dutton. I mean, you could just think of what sort of front bench you could put together with all the people that they've lost, and that talent train is a real problem. So I think it's going to be a very difficult, a very challenging and
a hard road back for the Liberal Party. Now Albanzey knows that. I think the really interesting thing is whether Albanese succumbs to Hubris. I don't think he will. I think he's more in touch with the community than people think. I think he's realistic, he doesn't have a huge ego about himself, and I think he judgment is judgment about government and stability and his capacity to read the Australian Electric is pretty impressive.
Paul Kelly is The Australian's Editor at Large. You can read his outstanding analysis and all the rest of the news you need right now at the Australian dot com dot au