The Labor Party has been returned in a historic, landslide win in Australia‘s federal election, with the opposition leader losing his own seat – as did the last remaining Irish-born MP in parliament.
While all recent polling said Labor, under prime minister Anthony Albanese, was likely to retain power, nobody predicted the extent of the victory, which could see it hold up to 93 of the parliament’s 150 seats.
The Liberal-National coalition – which is the conservative opposition alliance – could end up with just 43 seats and has to find a new leader after Peter Dutton lost his seat in an 8.41 per cent swing to Labor’s Ali France.
After preferences are distributed, the national result will be around 54.5 per cent for Labor versus 45.5 per for the coalition, a swing of 2.4 per cent to Labor since the 2022 election. No previous Labor leader has ever won such an emphatic victory.
One of Dutton’s most likely successors, Dublin-born Keith Wolohan, also lost his Melbourne seat, wiping out part of the next generation along with the dead wood.
Wolohan, who served three tours of duty in Afghanistan as a commando and also worked as a barrister, still has a slight Irish accent, despite having moved to Australia with his family when aged 11.
In recent decades, Irish-born Australian MPs and senators have almost all been in the Labor Party. Wolohan bucked that trend but, having lost his seat, there are now no Irish people left in the federal parliament.
Speaking on Sunday morning, Wolohan said that at 47 he still feels “relatively young”, so a comeback attempt in 2028 is likely.
At the start of ABC’s election coverage on Saturday night, treasurer Jim Chalmers said he was nervous and pessimistic about the result until the trends start to appear about 90 minutes into the count.
He was on the money as by 7.30pm (polls closed in every state and territory at 6pm) it was clear the swing was on. Less than an hour later, election guru Antony Green called it for Labor. But even then, the sheer size of the win wasn’t evident.
By Sunday morning, back on ABC, Chalmers said the victory “was beyond even our most optimistic expectations”.
Albanese started Saturday talking to the media at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, where he repeated a version of an Aussie rules football saying he has often used: that he was kicking with the wind behind him in the fourth quarter.
But even the man who previously said “I’ve been underestimated all my life” couldn’t have predicted just how much wind was in his sails.
He flew north, voted in Sydney’s inner west where he has lived all his life – having grown up in a council home with a single mother who was on a disability pension – and then watched the election count at Kirribilli House, the prime minister’s official Sydney mansion.
As soon as Dutton called to concede defeat, Albanese, with the media in tow, was driven back to his constituency in Marrickville to address the party faithful.
“Today, the Australian people have voted for Australian values. For fairness, aspiration and opportunity for all. For the strength to show courage in adversity and kindness to those in need,” he roared out to a crowd who had just been chanting “Albo, Albo, Albo.”
The reference to kindness was a pointed follow-up to what he said earlier in the week: “Peter Dutton seems to think that bluster and yelling and interrupting and being rude is strength. It’s not.
“One of the things that you have to do as a leader is show kindness and compassion to the vulnerable. That’s part of my character. That’s not weakness.”
If the shock of being reduced to a sclerotic right-wing rump should give the conservative side of Australian politics pause for thought, their indigenous affairs spokeswoman Jacinta Nampijinpa Price didn’t get the memo.
Speaking to a TV reporter, she was rude, dismissive, blamed the media for how it covered the election and acted like she believed her own hype.
A photo of Price wearing a “make America great again” (maga) hat was widely used during the campaign, and she didn’t help matters by saying “make Australia great again” during a press conference.
That didn’t stop her saying that “the media can go through your personal Facebook photos and find a picture that was taken, in jest, at Christmas time, and then smear you with it, that is the problem. That is the issue.”
But just as one swallow doesn’t make a summer, one maga hat doesn’t make a landslide election loss. This disaster has many fathers, and mothers.
Dutton tried to dismiss the polls during the campaign, saying “the quiet Australians” would see them over the line.
It turned out the “quiet Australians” were the ones making their rejection of him and his colleagues loud and clear.
Albanese, who has Irish heritage through his late mother Maryanne Ellery, visited Ireland for a wedding in 2005. He is long overdue a return visit if the Irish Government sees fit to invite him.
