Anthony Albanese faces a greater threat to his re-election than his predecessors

Anthony Albanese in question time at Parliament House in Canberra. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Martin Ollman

Having narrowly survived the political curse of Australia Day, which had claimed the leadership of three of his predecessors, Anthony Albanese now faces an even greater curse and threat to his re-election.

It’s not just journalistic hyperbole, it’s an inconvertible fact of political history: no first-term government since World War II has increased its majority at its first re-election attempt, with losses of between three and 20 seats.

This means the Albanese government, with a majority of two – thanks to its historic win in the Aston by-election – has to perform better in its re-election attempt than Robert Menzies embarking on the longest term of government in history; better than Labor’s longest-serving prime minister, Bob Hawke, and better than John Howard as he started Australia’s second-longest prime ministership.

Labor’s longest-serving prime minister Bob Hawke. Picture: Ray Strange

It goes without saying that to stay in majority government the Prime Minister will have to do better than Gough Whitlam who lost 14 seats, Labor’s Julia Gillard, who contested the re-election after Kevin Rudd’s removal and took Labor into minority government, and the Liberal’s Malcolm Turnbull, who wiped out Tony Abbott’s 2013 30-seat victory and left the Coalition on a one-seat knife edge.

The latest Newspoll survey result is a check to Labor’s mid-summer recovery after directing $104bn in tax cuts towards lower and middle-income earners.

According to Newspoll Labor’s primary vote fell from 33 per cent to 32 per cent – its lowest since the crushing to the indigenous voice to parliament referendum last year – curtailing a small recovery and suggesting the hint of a new downward trend.

At the election in May 2022 Labor’s primary vote was 32.6 per cent and relied heavily on Greens’ preferences and independents defeats of Liberal MPs to win the election with a wafer-thin majority.

Albanese, aware of the danger of falling support for a government heading into a new parliamentary year, fought for a recovery so that Labor went into 2024 with renewed momentum.

This Newspoll result suggests that any momentum has stalled and Labor’s task for the election, due to be called in 12 months, is harder than ever as it scrambles to try to clear problems on energy, tax, religion and carbon emissions.

The historical perspective makes the task even harder with no first-term government ever improving its majority and the smallest loss being just three seats – enough to remove the Albanese government.

Hawke, as Labor’s most successful leader, even allowing for a massive 23-seat increase in the size of the House of Representatives in 1984 went from a 30 per cent margin to just 10 per cent.

Former prime minister John Howard in his Sydney office. Picture: Jane Dempster

In 1998 Howard’s GST election decimated Liberal MP ranks and gave Labor a national two-party preferred majority but the massive 1996 victory ensured the first-term Howard government was re-elected.

Even Labor’s historic win in 1972 could not deliver the Whitlam government with more seats and, the man who removed him in 1975 with a landslide, Malcolm Fraser, went backwards in 1977.

Rudd and Abbott never got to contest the first re-election of their governments and both their replacements, Gillard and Turnbull, went badly backwards into minority and bare majority in 2010 and 2016.

Albanese does not have the benefit of a Whitlam, Fraser or Howard landslide, nor even the latitude of Hawke or Menzies, but, he is going to have to outperform them all at the next election just to stay in power.