Albanese started his prime ministership on a high. Then in one month, things started to unravel

It was on election night, May 21, 2022, that a buoyant Anthony Albanese vowed his team would “work every day to bring Australians together” and lead a referendum to enshrine a Voice to parliament in the Constitution. Scott Morrison’s Coalition was swept from power in its worst election defeat in 70 years, while a record number of Greens and teal MPs had been elected to parliament, ushering in a new era of independents.

Albanese enjoyed unusually high approval rates during his first 18 months as leader while his government acted on climate, housing and healthcare.

But one month in 2023 changed his fortunes. October 7 and the war in Gaza spawned domestic tensions that have continued to challenge social cohesion. A week later, the referendum failed, in a bruising defeat for the government. Australians felt the pinch as interest rate rises peaked on November 7. The next day, a High Court decision released former criminals into the community and sent ministers scrambling.

From this point, the Coalition began to ascend in the polls, defying expectations it would spend this term in the wilderness. Peter Dutton seized control of the political narrative as Labor’s legislative agenda stalled. Inflation took its toll, left-leaning leaders fell across the globe, and the re-election of US President Donald Trump shifted the world order.

Now the two main parties are neck-and-neck in the polls. Labor starts the election campaign buoyed by an interest rate cut while Coalition MPs push Dutton to do more. The next five weeks could make the difference. This is how we got here.

July 29, 2022: Prime Minister Anthony Albanese proposes the referendum question for an Indigenous Voice to parliament at the Garma festival in Arnhem Land. As he calls on Australians to unite behind Labor’s campaign to recognise Indigenous Australians in the Constitution, polling suggests more than 60 per cent of Australians support the idea.

August 2022: Former prime minister Scott Morrison’s secret appointment to five additional ministries is revealed, sparking recriminations and an inquiry.

September 8, 2022: Labor’s signature climate change reform passes. For the first time, Australia has a legislated target to cut greenhouse emissions: to 43 per cent of 2005 levels by 2030.

That same day, Queen Elizabeth II dies. Parliament is suspended and Australians gain a one-off public holiday, but discussion of a republic is muted.

October 25, 2022: Labor hands down its first budget, with a $36.9 billion deficit, as the lingering effects of the pandemic and continuing war in Ukraine lead to rising costs of living, power prices and interest rates. Treasurer Jim Chalmers reveals a $20 billion energy transmission fund and a $7.5 billion cost-of-living relief package as energy bills are tipped to soar by 56 per cent.

Anthony Albanese, Joe Biden and Rishi Sunak at an AUKUS announcement in San Diego in March 2023.Credit: AP

December 2022: As parliament wraps up for the year, the Albanese government passes laws for a National Anti-Corruption Commission – another election promise and an issue that Morrison had failed to move on. Labor also passes its first tranche of industrial relations reforms, setting up a clash with big business.

January 2023: Inflation hits a 32-year high. New data reveals it had risen by 7.8 per cent over the past year, driven by pricier domestic holidays, international travel and higher electricity prices. High inflation will become a defining issue for the Albanese government, even as it slows to 2.4 per cent by the end of its first term.

February 6, 2023: Greens senator Lidia Thorpe splits from the minor party over the Voice to parliament, which she opposes. Declaring a black sovereignty movement, she moves to the crossbench, defying Greens leader Adam Bandt. Albanese also picks his first political fight over tax, announcing a tax hike for superannuation earnings on balances over $3 million.

April 1, 2023: Labor snatches the Melbourne seat of Aston from the Liberals, marking the first time in a century that a sitting government has won a seat from the opposition in a byelection. The byelection is triggered by the resignation of former Coalition minister Alan Tudge after his career was derailed by personal scandal. The victory is a boost for Albanese, whose approval rating bumps up to 27 per cent, according to the Resolve poll.

March 14, 2023: Albanese stands next to then-US president Joe Biden and then-UK prime minister Rishi Sunak in San Diego, to announce that Australia will build a new fleet of eight nuclear-powered submarines at a cost of $368 billion. It is the most significant decision since the three nations struck the AUKUS agreement in September 2021, and demonstrates Labor’s commitment to the defence pact Morrison signed.

March 27, 2023: The Greens and Labor cut a deal to deliver the government’s safeguard mechanism, another climate reform, which for the first time sets limits on Australia’s 215 biggest carbon polluters and puts a price on carbon pollution.

April 5, 2023: The Liberal Party announces it will formally oppose an Indigenous Voice to parliament. It follows the National Party in campaigning against constitutional change, with Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price at the helm. Shadow attorney-general Julian Leeser resigns from the Coalition frontbench so he can advocate for the Voice, while MP Andrew Gee leaves the Nationals to become an independent. Former parliamentarian Ken Wyatt, who was the Morrison government’s Indigenous affairs minister, quits the party in protest. Public support for the Voice starts diving.

May 9, 2023: Treasurer Jim Chalmers delivers the first budget surplus since 2007, of $4.2 billion. The Albanese government headlines its second budget with a $3.5 billion investment in Medicare as bulk-billing rates for GPs fall across the country.

June 15, 2023: Parliament’s culture comes under the microscope when Thorpe claims that Liberal senator David Van touched her inappropriately. Dutton forces Van to quit the party as two other women also allege Van sexually harassed them. Van denies the allegations but moves to the crossbench.

July 7, 2023: Robo-debt royal commissioner Catherine Holmes, SC, delivers her 990-page report into the illegal welfare crackdown, which she says was plagued by collusion and dishonesty. A sealed section of the report suppresses the names of people who should be referred for potential criminal or civil action, and it is not until February 2025 that the corruption commission commits to investigating six public officials.

September 2023: The Greens strike another major deal with Labor, this time on the heated political issue of housing. Months of back-and-forth have catapulted Greens housing spokesperson Max Chandler-Mather into the spotlight. The government establishes its $10 billion Housing Australia Future Fund, while the Greens secure an extra $1 billion for a separate public housing fund.

September 29, 2023: The Morrison-commissioned disability royal commission hands down its final report after 4½ years of hearings. The six commissioners split over the future of segregated schools, but unite in calling for a major legal overhaul to protect the rights of 4.4 million Australians with disabilities.

October 7, 2023: Terrorist organisation Hamas attacks southern Israel, killing 1200 people and taking 250 hostage. Israel retaliates with a war on Gaza that has since killed more than 48,000 Palestinians. On October 9, pro-Palestinian protesters take to the steps of the Sydney Opera House, where several people chant antisemitic slogans, spurring political condemnation and underscoring concern about rising antisemitism in Australia.

October 14, 2023: The Voice referendum fails, with three in five Australians voting against it. Dutton and Price declare victory and blame Albanese, saying he did not give voters details about how it would operate. Indigenous Australians who lobbied for the change say prospects for reconciliation are over, and condemn the racism their communities experienced during the campaign.

November 4, 2023: Albanese lands in Shanghai, becoming the first Australian prime minister to visit China since 2016. Australia’s relationship with China stabilises under his leadership, and all $20 billion of trade sanctions that China imposed against the Morrison government – including on barley, wine, lobster and timber – are lifted by the end of 2024.

November 7, 2023: The Reserve Bank ratchets up the cash rate by a quarter of a percentage point, taking it to a 12-year high of 4.35 per cent. It is the 13th increase since the bank started lifting rates in May 2022, and stays this way until February 2025. Mortgage affordability hits its worst level since 1990 in Sydney and Melbourne.

November 8, 2023: In a surprise decision, the High Court rules that locking people in immigration detention indefinitely is illegal, overturning a 20-year-old precedent, in the case that becomes known as “NZYQ”.

More than 200 former immigration detainees are released. Dozens commit further crimes, with the bashing of a Perth grandmother in her home six months later the most heinous example. The government’s poor preparedness for the decision exposes it to ongoing political attacks from the Coalition. Months of chaos ensue for ministers Clare O’Neil and Andrew Giles, who struggle to contain the fallout.

November 2023: Albanese’s net performance rating dips below zero, to negative four, according to this masthead’s Resolve poll. That means more voters disapprove than approve of his performance, and this keeps sinking until it reaches negative 26 in December 2024.

December 4, 2023: Labor MP Peta Murphy dies. Her push for gambling reform remains unfinished business of the Albanese government.

December 2023: A landmark NDIS review helmed by former Labor leader Bill Shorten recommends overhauling the $42 billion scheme, which has become one of the government’s biggest budget pressures. In another breakthrough, Albanese inks a national cabinet deal that places states on the hook for the scheme’s ballooning costs and requires them to boost disability support for Australians outside the plan.

January 24, 2024: Albanese overhauls Morrison’s stage 3 tax cut package, and promises tax cuts for 11 million Australians. He breaks his election promise to deliver the tax cuts in their original form – which he had repeated just a week earlier – but the gamble pays off because more people benefit from the new structure.

February 9, 2024: Daily Mail Australia publishes footage of former Nationals leader Barnaby Joyce lying on a Canberra footpath, which spells trouble for the maverick MP’s political career.

A few days later, at a restaurant on the same Canberra street, Albanese makes a Valentine’s Day marriage proposal to his partner, Jodie Haydon, who says yes.

February 27, 2024: Morrison leaves parliament after 17 years, saying he will not weigh in on domestic politics.

April 2024: Women are killed in a spate of high-profile murders across the country. Women across major cities march in rallies, and Albanese speaks at one in Canberra, but is drawn into a dispute with its organiser. A crisis meeting of leaders ends with a $925 million pledge for women fleeing violence.

May 2024: Labor wipes $3 billion from young Australians’ HECS debts and introduces $300 payments for students on placement. Energy bill relief and promises of a “Future Made in Australia” headline the government’s budget.

June 19, 2024: Dutton unveils the Coalition’s nuclear plan, listing seven locations for future power plants and setting up an election battleground over where Australia gets its energy.

June 25, 2024: Labor senator Fatima Payman becomes the party’s first member to cross the floor in decades when she sides with the Greens in a vote to recognise Palestinian statehood. The following week, Payman becomes the Albanese government’s first defection. She accuses the prime minister of pressuring her to join the crossbench.

June 26, 2024: WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange lands in Canberra after agreeing to a plea deal with United States prosecutors, bringing a sudden end to his long-running legal saga.

July 28, 2024: Ministers O’Neil and Giles, bruised from the immigration detention fallout, are moved out of their portfolios in the first major rejig of Labor’s frontbench, after Indigenous Affairs Minister Linda Burney and Skills Minister Brendan O’Connor resign. Experienced minister Tony Burke takes on Home Affairs, and by year’s end he does a deal with the Coalition to land a trio of migration bills that alarm human rights groups.

August 2024: Dutton calls for a stop to all migration from the war-torn Gaza Strip. As the Coalition mounts a political attack over security checks for Palestinians fleeing the war, rows over racism erupt in parliament.

September 9, 2024: The royal commission into veterans’ suicides says military personnel will continue to take their lives at staggeringly high rates without systemic change to the Australian Defence Force.

September 2024: The Israel-Hamas war spills into Lebanon, and several protesters wave Hezbollah flags at marches in Sydney and Melbourne. This sets off a fresh round of heated debate over whether people should protest on the anniversary of Hamas’ October 7 attack on Israel. In the weeks afterward, Labor MP Peter Khalil’s office is vandalised in a series of attacks on MPs’ offices over the conflict.

October 15, 2024: Albanese’s purchase of a $4.3 million cliffside home on the NSW Central Coast grabs headlines and frustrates colleagues.

Anthony Albanese addresses the parliament on the final sitting day of 2024.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

October 2024: King Charles makes his first visit to Australia as sovereign. Thorpe disrupts his appearance at the Great Hall of Parliament in Canberra, yelling he is not her king and that he committed genocide against Indigenous Australians.

November 6, 2024: Donald Trump is elected US president for the second time.

November 21, 2024: Shorten farewells parliament, leaving to lead the University of Canberra. Coalition frontbenchers Simon Birmingham and Paul Fletcher – both moderates and former ministers – also make surprise resignations in the next few weeks.

November 28, 2024: Labor pushes through 31 new laws in the rush of the year’s final sitting day. This includes its world-first social media ban for under 16s, as well as bills on housing, food prices, the Reserve Bank and aged care.

December 7, 2024: Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu links an arson attack on a Melbourne synagogue to what he calls the Albanese government’s “anti-Israel sentiment”, as diplomatic relations between the two nations plunge to a new low.

Netanyahu references Australia’s vote for a UN resolution earlier that week, which called on Israel to withdraw from the occupied West Bank and Gaza Strip, along with its refusal to grant a visa to a former Israeli minister the previous month. With antisemitic vandalism escalating in Sydney over the summer, Dutton blames Albanese for weak leadership. Several incidents are later linked to organised crime efforts, complicating the domestic picture.

February 11, 2025: Trump announces tariffs on steel and aluminium, starting a global trade war. Albanese asks Trump to spare Australia in a phone call that tests the countries’ relationship, and Trump says an exemption is under consideration. But no countries are spared, and Trump threatens further rounds of retaliatory tariffs.

February 18, 2025: As the monthly inflation rate for the year eases to 2.4 per cent, the Reserve Bank cuts interest rates for the first time since 2020. The cash rate falls from 4.35 per cent to 4.1 per cent, in a highly anticipated decision.

February-March 2025: Cyclone Alfred forms off the Queensland coast, leading residents in the state’s south-east and NSW Northern Rivers to brace for another natural disaster. The cyclone ends up weakening before it arrives, but its threat leads Albanese to delay an election. Dutton faces heat for attending a Sydney fundraiser on the eve of the cyclone, off the back of reporting on his property interests and share portfolio.

March 25, 2025: Chalmers hands down his fourth budget and reveals a deficit of $27.6 billion for 2024-25. The figure will rise to $42.1 billion in 2025-26. Billions in new health spending, as well as energy rebates and modest tax cuts, headline Labor’s pitch to voters. Albanese readies to call the election.

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