It’s a slaughter. Albanese threw off the frightened rabbit disguise and revealed he was a terminator
In the end it wasn’t even close. For all the talk — including from Crikey — about a hung parliament, about low primary votes putting far more seats in play, about how One Nation preferences could save the Liberals, we didn’t even make it to 8.30pm on election night. Anthony Albanese and Labor butchered their opponents on the field of electoral battle in a way rarely seen in federal elections — with opposition leader Peter Dutton their biggest victim.
The swing started early for Labor, right from the earliest 0.1% results as they trickled out from the Australian Electoral Commission. It never abated. In some electorates — like Peter Dutton’s own seat of Dickson — things just got worse and worse for the Liberals and the LNP. Dutton was out by 8.42pm, when the ABC declared he was a goner. Election after election, Labor had claimed it could knock off Dutton. Once again this year, it seemed improbable, but Ali France turned out to be the woman who didn’t so much cry wolf as cut the wolf up into small pieces and savour each slice.
Even in Victoria, where likely Labor losses springing from the bad odium of the Jacinta Allan government were assumed to require offsetting elsewhere, Albanese remarkably picked up seats off a small swing to the government. Coalition frontbencher Michael Sukkar was smashed in Deakin. Once-blue ribbon seat Flinders looks on the verge of turning to Labor. Leadership prospect Keith Wolahan has been outed in Menzies. And Labor finally broke through in Queensland with a 3.6% swing: it could pick up seven seats in the Sunshine State.
It represents the most significant political turnaround since Paul Keating launched his all-out assault on John Hewson in February 1993 and snatched the sweetest victory of all a month later. In January, Albanese looked like a rabbit in the political headlights, with Dutton carrying all the political momentum and looking like the next prime minister. But since coming back from the Christmas break, Albanese has played a blinder: coming out hard very early in the new year, targeting his spending promises to play to Labor’s strengths and wedge the opposition, playing the “safe pair of hands” role as the newly inaugurated Donald Trump began causing chaos, effectively using the problems caused by Cyclone Alfred, which pushed him into an unplanned budget, and then running a relentless, disciplined campaign aimed at Labor’s strengths and the Coalition’s weaknesses.
Like 2001, when John Howard reversed a huge poll deficit and then effectively exploited asylum seekers and 9/11, Albanese’s run from January to May 3 will go down as a playbook for victory against what seemed, at the outset, improbable odds.
Collateral damage are the Greens, whose dream of forcing Labor into minority faded early in the night and who look like they could lose two of their four seats. One Nation also underperformed. But this is a victory for the ages for Labor, delivered by Albanese, who has suddenly ascended into the pantheon of Labor heroes with a devastating win that will send the Coalition even further away from government, leaving it questioning where it can possibly go from here with no leader and few worthy replacements.
Did you expect such a bloodbath?
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