Election 2025: Labor confident of claiming majority
Anthony Albanese’s strategists believe he is closer to majority government after a recovery in NSW and Victoria. Opposition frontbenchers are ‘dumbfounded’ by an unpopular Labor government.
Anthony Albanese’s top strategists believe he is edging closer to claiming a majority government victory on the back of a recovery in NSW and Victoria, as Coalition insiders concede their hit-list of winnable Labor seats is rapidly diminishing two weeks out from polling day.
Senior ALP figures and MPs are reporting growing optimism that Labor will win enough seats to offset any losses to the Coalition.
Amid growing anxiety in Coalition ranks over policy cut-through, election tactics and the damaging effects of Labor’s scare campaigns, opposition tacticians now think Peter Dutton’s path to victory has dramatically narrowed since January.
The ALP-held marginal seats of Gilmore on the NSW south coast and Aston in suburban Melbourne have been nominated as the only certainties expected to fall to the Coalition, alongside likely gains in Bennelong, Ryan and Monash.
Top targets for Labor to offset losses include the Greens’ Queensland seats of Griffith and Brisbane, where the ALP is understood to have its nose ahead in a tight three-cornered contest.
Despite rising confidence in Labor ranks, an ALP powerbroker warned that the party was “still under a lot of water” in Victoria and that results in Melbourne seats such as McEwen and Chisholm could come down to preferences and how much the Coalition gains from minor parties.
Ahead of pre-polling centres opening on Tuesday, the senior Labor figure also cautioned that 20 per cent of voters remain undecided, which heaps pressure on the leaders to avoid mistakes in the final fortnight of the campaign. Both of the major parties are bracing for historically low primary votes, which means preferences from the Greens, One Nation, Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots and independents will be pivotal.
Labor and Coalition sources said Mr Dutton had struggled to recover from the working-from-home policy he was forced to ditch, Mr Albanese linking the Liberal leader’s election agenda to Donald Trump, and ALP and teal scare campaigns targeting his commitment to climate change and plan to build seven nuclear reactors.
Coalition figures are concerned about a stabilisation for Labor in NSW, which has strengthened ALP support in top Liberal target seats including Paterson in the Hunter region, Werriwa in western Sydney and Robertson on the Central Coast.
In the wake of a polling surge away from the Opposition Leader and Coalition, dozens of outer-suburban, regional and inner-city seats that Liberal and Nationals strategists had hoped to win have become either neck-and-neck or out of reach.
A Coalition source said while Mr Dutton could still pick up seats in NSW, Victoria, South Australia, Tasmania, Western Australia and the Northern Territory, the “pathway in every state is narrowing fast”.
“At the start of the year the Coalition was in a position to beat an unpopular first-term government,” the source said. “Very few first-term governments have been this bad. After that swing in the polls to the Coalition following the voice, we have squandered it.
“The polling results disguised structural problems, policy depth and capability sets that have been exposed during the campaign.
“There are so many factors that would have to go perfectly now. We’d have to see all of that anger towards the Victorian state Labor and Albanese governments convert into dramatic swings to us, and win the 50-50 contests across the country.”
Multiple Coalition insiders lamented that senior Liberal and Nationals frontbenchers and strategists were being frozen out of key decision-making and day-to-day campaigning, and claimed that policy had been drawn up on the run, with shadow cabinet expenditure review committee meetings convened on election-eve and mid-campaign to sign-off on key measures.
Coalition sources also believe it was a mistake for Mr Dutton to have appointed Jacinta Price as opposition government efficiency spokeswoman. Some described borrowing Elon Musk’s DOGE-like concept as an “own goal”, which had been ruthlessly weaponised by Labor.
Several senior Labor figures told The Australian a majority government was in sight, with suburban voters shifting back to the Albanese government on the back of an “unconvincing campaign” by Mr Dutton. This is a distinct shift from March, when most Labor figures were preparing for minority government at best.
A Labor minister told The Australian that the feedback from voters was: “We’re disappointed because we thought you would do better. The baseball bats aren’t out, but there is a level of disappointment … the feeling is that they are willing to give us another go and don’t want to risk it on Dutton”.
Labor MPs said they were “staggered” by how bad the Dutton campaign has been, with one claiming it was the worst federal Coalition campaign since John Hewson lost the “unlosable” 1993 election. MPs compared Mr Dutton’s performance with Julia Gillard in 2010 and Bill Shorten in 2019.
Liberal frontbench sources said while Mr Dutton and opposition MPs would keep fighting to the end, they were “dumbfounded” that the Coalition hadn’t been more effective in winning the economic narrative over a big-spending and unpopular Labor government. Another source said the rollout of major economic and energy policy should have occurred sooner.
While Labor strategists earlier this year were concerned the party could lose up to eight seats in Melbourne, there is now confidence this could be limited to Aston.
Aston was held by the Liberals for 33 consecutive years until Labor’s Mary Doyle won it in a by-election in 2023 after the retirement of former minister Alan Tudge.
Labor MPs say there are also tight contests in the Melbourne seats of Chisholm, McEwen and Macnamara, although they are more confident of holding these seats than they were a month ago. Wills MP Peter Khalil is facing a tough fight with the Greens after electoral redistributions cut his margin.
In NSW, party figures say Labor’s fortunes have improved although there are tight contests in Bennelong, Paterson and Robertson. Despite the Coalition campaign headquarters being based in Parramatta, a Liberal source said it was unlikely they would win the seat held by Andrew Charlton on a margin of 3.7 per cent.
ALP strategists are expecting trends across the country, particularly in outer-suburban and regional seats, showing big swings against the Labor government. While Coalition candidates are expected to eat into Labor margins, most are expected to fall short in key races.
A Labor MP said the party had been let “off the hook” on budget management by the Liberals matching the Albanese government’s big-spending approach. They also said there was a growing voter perception that Mr Dutton did not look ready to be prime minister, which has been accentuated through campaign mistakes.
Labor, which is confident of maintaining its Perth stronghold of seats which delivered Mr Albanese majority government in 2022, is improving in the three-cornered contest with the Liberals and Nationals in the new WA electorate of Bullwinkel, but was likely to fall short. ALP figures believe they could pick off the Liberal seats of Sturt in Adelaide and Bass or Braddon in Tasmania. Coalition sources said they were confident of retaining the seats.
Labor-held seats previously considered winnable by the Coalition are now considered too close to call or favouring the ALP. These include Labor’s battleground seats of Werriwa, Paterson, Hunter and Robertson in NSW, McEwen, Chisholm and Bruce in Victoria, Blair in Queensland, Lingiari and Solomon in the NT, Tangney and Hasluck in WA, Boothby in South Australia and Lyons in Tasmania. Mr Dutton and Nationals leader David Littleproud are expected to campaign in the two Northern Territory seats in the coming week.
The Coalition, which is hoping to win back the teal seats of Curtin, Goldstein and Kooyong, faces tough fights with Climate 200-backed independent candidates in Bradfield, Cowper, Calare, Forrest and Wannon.
While the Coffs Harbour-based Cowper is expected to remain a Nationals seat, the inner-Sydney Liberal electorate of Bradfield and Dan Tehan’s regional Victorian seat of Wannon are expected to go down to the wire.
Teal independents are also running in Calare, Moore and Monash, which were won by the Liberals and Nationals in 2022 but turned independent after Andrew Gee, Ian Goodenough and Russell Broadbent defected to the crossbench. All three are running as independents.
Coalition sources said Calare could be tough to wrestle back because the Nationals must secure a substantial primary vote to offset preferences to Mr Gee from Labor and teal candidates.
Despite cashed-up Labor and union campaigns in Queensland, including in the Cairns-based seat of Leichhardt and southeast Queensland electorates of Longman and Dickson, Labor and Coalition sources said the seats would likely remain in Liberal National Party hands.
More Coverage
Add your comment to this story
Labor’s super-duper fibs on super tax revealed
If Labor lied about what it was saying publicly about new taxes in 2022, what is it planning behind closed doors in 2025 that it won’t tell us about?
Liberals’ $1.55m lifeline saves Pesutto’s career
John Pesutto has been thrown a $1.5m lifeline by Liberal Party chiefs, which also prevents a potentially damaging by-election.
To join the conversation, please log in. Don't have an account? Register
Join the conversation, you are commenting as Logout