Albanese has seen off Dutton and Bandt. Now he faces his greatest challenge

Labor will lionise the victors of 2025 for a triumph that nobody dared to predict. But the government and its leaders, including Anthony Albanese, may also need to remember the muddle of 2024 if they are to stay grounded and live up to the word they are using so much this week – humility.

It is hard to recall now, with all the Labor back-slapping and Liberal back-stabbing, that the government was in such trouble last year. But it was only six months ago that some observers thought Albanese would have to step down after the election because he was so unlikely to govern with a majority, if he governed at all.

Illustration by Simon LetchCredit:

The Treasurer, Jim Chalmers, was candid about this when he appeared on the ABC on election night. “We were in all sorts of trouble,” he said of the challenges last year. There is no secret that the government was on the nose with voters over the cost of living, and it took a long time to lift itself back into contention for the election.

Now the savagery in the caucus on Thursday, when factional bosses tore down two cabinet ministers, raise the prospect that the government may sink into squabbling.

The stories about the election victory now obscure the doubts about whether it would happen. No matter how many tales are told after the event, very few believed Labor would lift its numbers in parliament into the high 80s or beyond. One, ACTU national secretary Sally McManus, said privately at Easter that Labor could win in a landslide. Nobody used that word in public.

Albanese was the most confident of them all. The prime minister owns the outcome because so much of the campaign was about the competing leaders, and voters clearly rejected Peter Dutton. But he also owns it because he set the timing, lined up the policies that resonated with voters and, in many cases, chose winning candidates for marginal seats.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has decapitated the parties on his left and right by driving Peter Dutton out of his seat of Dickson and forcing Greens leader Adam Bandt out of Melbourne.Credit: James Brickwood

This last point is especially important because the Labor caucus will be energised by the class of 2025, adding to the smaller class of 2022. This cohort is linked forever to Albanese, in the same way that John Howard was a hero for the Liberal class of 1996 when he won power that year. Politics is a pragmatic business, but it has its sentimental side as well.

The Labor class of 2025 will be remembered for making history. It is not just that a Labor prime minister has won a second term for the first time since Bob Hawke in 1984, nor that a government has gained a rare swing in its favour at a second election. It is that they have broken the curse of Australian politics in recent years when every prime minister had one term only.

This is a redemption for Labor after the knifing of Kevin Rudd in 2010 and the toppling of Julia Gillard in 2013. Voters lost faith in politics during that era. The Scanlon Foundation found that 48 per cent of Australians said in 2009 the government could be trusted to do the right thing. By 2012, it was only 26 per cent.

Labor bears the blame for that coup culture. And it bears the blame for bringing out the knives again on Thursday. Behind the talk of unity and humility is the old story of vicious ambition and division.

For now, Albanese gets to savour the victory. He has decapitated the parties on his left and right by driving Dutton out of his seat of Dickson and forcing Greens leader Adam Bandt out of Melbourne. Labor was harangued for years by the leaders on both sides, becoming their punching bag on every issue from Gaza to housing, and now it gets its revenge.

Albanese has thrust his elbows out and shoved the Greens and the Liberals to each side. He has expanded the middle ground in Australian politics and claimed ownership of the centre – possibly for many years to come. After years of doubt about whether the centre could hold in an era of fragmenting media, Labor gets room to move and space to breathe.

Now the pressure is on the two edges. The Greens have lost members over Gaza and the intolerance of different opinions within their ranks, hardening the left. The Liberals have shrunk while their branch members mainline Sky After Dark, hardening the right. The challenge is far greater for the Liberals, a party of government, compared to the Greens, a party of protest.

Dutton spent much of the campaign claiming he would govern like Howard, the gold standard for the Liberals, but he never sounded like the former prime minister. He seemed constantly anxious and angry. The leader who channelled Howard best was Albanese, who was calm and disciplined throughout.

When Albanese said Australians had “conflict fatigue” his message ran parallel with Howard’s talk of Australians being comfortable and relaxed. Albanese went further than this, as well, with one of his best remarks of the entire campaign: “kindness isn’t weakness.” That was the cut-through line of the Nine Network debate.

Albanese and his colleagues are enjoying their success at the very time they talk about humility. They are not that good at hiding their gloating. And they are fighting over the spoils of the victory already. The nastiest fight is in the Right, where the Victorians demanded a place in the ministry at the expense of the NSW branch. This has cost Industry Minister Ed Husic his position, even though he was a good minister and deserved better.

This is a remorseless business. The Deputy Prime Minister, Richard Marles, is using his position at the top of the Right to elevate his Victorian supporters, such as Sam Rae, by removing the Attorney-General, Mark Dreyfus. This is another step in promoting people on the right who are loyal to Marles rather than to the old warlord, Bill Shorten, who exited in January.

Marles is on the march. He and Rae are terminating opponents in a calculated move through the party. This puts Chalmers, seen as a natural successor to Albanese, on notice.

The Left faction is playing more politely, but only because it settled some of its concerns last year when two cabinet ministers, Linda Burney and Brendan O’Connor, stepped down. Another faction member, Stephen Jones, quit the outer ministry and did not contest the election. The faction can promote people into the vacancies without tearing anyone down.

The factional moves are ugly when Albanese promised stability at the election. The Labor rules are clear, but the factional bosses and young upstarts have begun the second term with a bloodletting. For all Labor’s talk of diversity in politics, the caucus just required Albanese to remove Dreyfus, a Jew, and Husic, a Muslim. And the prime minister chose to accede, regardless of his authority from the election.

The risk is that the internal games wipe away the Labor discipline that was so evident in the election campaign. In other words, the danger is that the government that triumphed in 2025 will start to look more like the government of 2024, struggling to remain disciplined and united. Australians will not care much for Labor’s gloating if the ministry spends its time on personal fights rather than fixing the cost of living.

One Labor MP, who fought hard to keep the government alive, admits to being elated and anxious at the same time. A good football team knows that the moment they score a goal, they are at their most vulnerable, the MP said. That is when they can lose focus and find the other side are back on the offensive.

Things change fast in politics, and victors can be humbled in no time.

David Crowe is chief political correspondent for The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.