'Trump Factor' Helps Australia's Centre-Left Party Win Re-Election

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese was a happy man on Monday, having won a decisive electoral victory on Saturday and retained power for a further three years.

Albanese said he had a “warm conversation” with US President Donald Trump after his centre-left Labor party beat the conservative Liberal-National coalition – a formidable comeback given he had slipped behind in the polls several months ago.

Two of the factors seen to have helped the Labor Party’s surprisingly strong victory were concern about Trump’s tariff policies and Republican support for his conservative opponents.

ALSO SEE: Japan Tells US: No Trade Deal Unless Auto Tariffs Scrapped

“I had a warm and positive conversation with President Trump … and I thank him for his very warm message of congratulations,” Albanese said during a media briefing.

“We talked about how AUKUS [defence pact] and tariffs will continue to engage, we will engage with each other on a face-to-face basis at some time in the future. And I thank him for reaching out in such a positive way.”

Albanese’s government in 2023 committed to spend A$368 billion ($238 billion) over three decades on AUKUS, Australia’s biggest-ever defence project with the United States and Britain, to acquire nuclear-powered submarines.

Cost-of-living pressures and concerns about Trump’s policies had been among the top issues in the Australian election, polls showed.

About 48% of voters picked the uncertainties triggered by Trump as one of their top five concerns, one survey said, after his tariff plans sent shockwaves through global markets and raised concerns of voters on the impact on their pension funds.

In April, a poll by the Lowy Institute found two-thirds of Australians had little or no trust in the US, a historic low in the poll’s two-decade history.

Trump said earlier on Monday he did not know anything about the Australian election, though he praised Albanese.

“I don’t know anything about the election other than the man that won, he’s very good,” Trump told reporters at the White House after disembarking from the Marine One helicopter.

“Albanese I’m very friendly with … I can only say that he’s been very, very nice to me, very respectful to me.”

The United States enjoys a trade surplus with Australia but imposed a 10% tariff in April prompting Albanese to call it “not the act of a friend.”

Albanese confirmed that he had accepted an invitation from Canadian PM Mark Carney to attend the G7 leaders meeting in Alberta next month — which could open up an opportunity for a face-to-face meeting with Trump in Canada or the US, ABC News reported.

Decisive House majority

Labor is leading in 85 electorates in the 150-seat lower house as of Monday morning, as vote counting continued, data showed. At least a dozen seats are too close to call, with more than three-quarters of votes tallied.

Albanese, Australia’s first prime minister to win a second consecutive term in two decades, had struggled to lift ratings through 2024 as households grappled with high costs.

But inflation eased this year, and polls reversed in March after the conservatives unveiled proposals to slash the government workforce and ban federal employees from working from home, which was compared to Trump’s policies.

The shadow of Trump likely cost opposition leader Peter Dutton his seat, mirroring the Trump backlash in Canada’s election a week earlier, analysts said.

Opposition lawmaker Jason Wood, who is leading in his electorate in Melbourne’s southeast, said his party initially thought Trump’s election could boost the party’s fortunes, but those hopes were never realised.

“We would never have thought we would have had the fallout with Trump on … tariffs,” Wood told ABC Radio.

The Liberal-National coalition was strongly criticized for policy flip-flops, which were condemned as “laughable”, “shambolic” and grossly inferior to the Labor Party’s “family-friendly” offerings.