The sheer drama of this victory cannot hide the trouble for the future

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Historic. Stunning. Extraordinary. There is no way to convey the sheer drama of this election result without reaching for words that sound overblown. But the victory for Anthony Albanese and his Labor colleagues is an incredible moment.

Albanese has shocked many of his own supporters with the scale of their success and the way they have driven Peter Dutton and the Coalition into the ground.

Anthony Albanese at Sydney’s Five Dock Public School on Saturday with Reid MP Sally Sitou, Albanese’s fiancee, Jodie Haydon, and dog Toto.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

The opposition leader has lost his seat in parliament and some of his shadow ministers are heading the same way. The survivors will form a Liberal rump, searching for leadership, and the recriminations will be savage.

The story of the campaign is simple: Labor prepared with care and fought with discipline; the Coalition planned complacently and fought atrociously.

The story of the election, however, is complex: Labor achieved its goal of increasing its majority – emphatically – but faces a severe challenge in lifting a jaded electorate that is so bruised by the pressure on household finances.

Dutton sought to frame Albanese as a weak leader in the worst government since the 1970s, but the polls found that voters returned to Labor and its leader after drifting away last year over the economy.

The election twisted all the old attack lines. Albanese outlined a big agenda and threw himself into a strong campaign, while Dutton hedged for too long and presided over a weak and shambolic campaign.

If there is a word for this Labor victory, it is certainly not weak.

The media dynamic was part of this outcome. The defeat for the Coalition is so severe, so powerful, that the conservatives and their supporters must confront a question: how did they delude themselves into thinking they had a successful agenda when they were failing all along?

Dutton and the Liberals argued for three years that the media was too hard on them. In fact, the media was too soft. Dutton was not placed under enough scrutiny during the term – mostly because he dismissed the “hate media” and spoke to friendly media instead. He avoided questions from the media he did not like.

Peter Dutton hugs son Harry as Tom Dutton looks on after the family voted on Saturday. Credit: James Brickwood

This made it astonishingly easy for the Liberals to convince themselves they were a gift to voters, because Sky News and others told them so. Dutton achieved much by keeping the Coalition together in the past three years. But he never faced the “stress test” he needed, and it showed during the campaign.

Caught up in their inflated anger at the other side, the Coalition campaigned as if they had a right to return to power – not as if they had to fight to deserve every vote.

US President Donald Trump overshadowed the election with every edict from the White House, not least his April 2 decision to impose tariffs on Australia and other countries, throwing global growth into doubt and markets into freefall.

Australians were drawn to safety and security in the Trump era, and they turned to Albanese. This makes it easy to suggest the prime minister got lucky, like his Canadian counterpart, Mark Carney, who also won this week. In fact, Albanese was positioning himself for three years as a safe and “orderly” leader. He was an anti-Trump before Trump returned to the White House.

Was Labor saved by the cyclone? The arrival of Cyclone Alfred off the Queensland coast shaped the timing of the election. It made a federal budget necessary on March 25 – an event some of those around Treasurer Jim Chalmers did not expect. And yet, the budget helped Labor outline an agenda for the term ahead.

The cut to personal taxes turned into a masterstroke when Dutton chose to oppose it – an unbelievable move that meant the Liberal Party was no longer the party of lower taxes.

But the campaign drama cannot hide the danger signs for the future. It is not just that Trump is proving that Australia can no longer rely on its great ally – it is that he ushers in an era of economic turmoil and strategic danger.

The economy is not robust enough, productivity is not high enough, the budget is not strong enough and our political decisions are not tough enough for the times.

Albanese and Chalmers are returned to their jobs with an emphatic victory. But everything at this election proves that their jobs will not get any easier.

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