I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land that we gather on today – the Ngunnawal people – and pay my respects to their elders.
I extend that respect to all First Nations people here today.
Thank you to the National Press Club – Maurice, the Board, the members and sponsors – for the invitation to discuss the 2025 federal election.
The choice on 3 May 2025
Three years ago today, the Australian people voted for a change of direction and elected a Labor Government led by Anthony Albanese.
Labor won the 2022 election because the Prime Minister talked about the future and offered the country an alternative to more of the same.
On 3 May 2025 Australians confronted a starker choice.
Unlike the decision in 2022 between renewal and stasis, this year’s election was, as the Prime Minister said here in January:
“A choice between two completely different visions for our nation, for our economy, for our people and our place in the world.”
Labor sought the opportunity to keep building Australia’s future.
Our policy offering focused on making households better off over the next three years – building on the foundations laid during the first term.
Growing the economy, delivering lasting cost-of-living relief, strengthening Medicare, building more homes, and increasing renewables.
Those policies gave expression to a positive vision of who we are and invited the electorate to choose a uniquely Australian way of dealing with global uncertainty.
And that vision was underscored by Anthony Albanese’s steady, authentic and measured leadership.
In contrast, Peter Dutton promised to drag the country backwards.
Back to the cuts of the Coalition’s decade in power, with a promise to slash billions that would put the Abbott-Hockey budget in the shade.
Back to the relentless, confected division of culture wars and punching down.
And back to the evidence-free, politics-first approach to energy that held the country back the last time the Coalition were in power.
Our campaign succeeded because Australians accepted two simple arguments we put forward.
Anthony Albanese was the only leader with a plan to make Australians better off over the next three years.
And in uncertain times Peter Dutton was not a risk worth taking.
Expectations and the conventional wisdom
At the beginning of 2025, the conventional wisdom was that Labor faced an uphill battle to stay in power, let alone secure a majority.
The Coalition held a modest lead in the published polls, and Labor was being written off by many.
This groupthink was informed by international events.
During 2024 more people voted in national elections than any year in history, and incumbents were punished everywhere.
The Opposition embraced this consensus – they were more focused on claiming front-runner status than explaining what they would do if they won.
This built on their mis-read of the 2023 referendum, convincing themselves that a century-old reluctance to change the Constitution represented a re-alignment of Australian politics and an endorsement of their narrow worldview.
In fact, a defining condition of public opinion coming into 2025 was how open to hearing from both sides many voters were.
It had been a very tough few years, and after three years of cost of living pressure many voters were prepared to consider the alternative.
Equally – there was an appreciation that Labor had seen the country through a very tough period, and it would take more than three years to clean up some of the messes we inherited.
In retrospect, it is easy to be critical of the Coalition for assuming the anti-incumbent wave would keep rolling into 2025 and they didn’t need to do anything other than ride it.
But they were not alone.
The conventional wisdom undervalued Labor’s capacity to use our record as the foundation for our second term policy offer.
And it underestimated the capacity of the Australian electorate to assess how their leaders were responding to changing circumstances.
Labor's first term
To understand why, four features of the 47th Parliament are worth recalling.
First – for three years one issue – the cost of living – was dominant to an extent that doesn’t normally happen outside of wartime and pandemic.
It is impossible for any government to completely satisfy the demand for cost-of-living relief during an inflation surge.
Governments as ideologically diverse as the Biden-Harris administration, the UK Conservatives, the Japanese LDP, the Indian BJP and the Portuguese Socialists went backwards at elections during 2024.
But in the face of the cost of living challenge Labor did everything we could.
Over three years we delivered a comprehensive agenda of responsible cost-of-living relief that made a difference.
Tax cuts for every taxpayer. Energy bill relief. Cheaper Medicines. Free TAFE. Medicare urgent care clinics. Cheaper child care. Reduced HECS debts. And pay rises for millions of workers.
These measures had another thing in common: Peter Dutton and the Coalition opposed every single one.
Over three years, Labor’s record and Peter Dutton’s opposition built up an advantage for Labor as the best party to provide cost-of-living relief.
Second – the government’s economic strategy got inflation down without paying for it with a recession or higher unemployment.
There is no more important achievement for a Labor government.
Today, unemployment remains low and real wages have grown for 18 months straight.
If the Coalition had their way, this wouldn’t have been the case.
They opposed our cost-of-living relief and wanted to slash and burn the budget with $350 billion of cuts when the economy was weak.
They argued for higher interest rates and would have been happy with the carnage in the labour market that could have brought on.
At every point, they wanted things to be harder for Australians because they thought it would make politics easier for them.
Instead, Labor’s economy will deliver lower inflation, higher wages, continued employment growth, and further tax cuts.
Third – under Labor Australia has put an end to the denial and delay, and is embracing renewable energy to power our economy.
In the decade before 2022, Australia’s policy settings barely acknowledged climate change and there was no plan for keeping the lights on.
Now, we are taking advantage of the opportunities created by the global shift to renewables.
As the Prime Minister said at our launch, Labor has one energy policy and we’re delivering it – driving private sector investment in renewables, backed by gas, hydro and batteries.
This policy is working. Australia is producing record renewable energy, our emissions are lower than when Labor was elected, and we’re on track to achieve our emissions reduction goals.
After a chaotic decade pushing 23 different energy policies without landing one, Peter Dutton, David Littleproud and Ted O’Brien spent the last three years plugging nuclear energy and then running away from any detail, as exemplified by Mr Dutton’s failure to visit any of his proposed sites during the campaign.
Fourth – Labor used our first term to lay the foundations for the long-term reforms Australia needs.
Bulk billing is on the way back, and more than 1.2 million Australians have already been treated at a Medicare urgent care clinic.
To address a housing crisis that has been decades in the making, Labor has started the largest housing build in Australian history.
And TAFE has been restored to its rightful place at the centre of vocational education.
In response to this agenda, the Coalition wanted to have it both ways – to claim they would have done a better job, but to hide the detail of their alternative plans.
They opposed Labor’s Medicare urgent care clinics, calling them “wasteful spending.”
They joined with the Greens to block Labor’s housing agenda and promised to cut funding for new homes.
They tried to block free TAFE and promised to axe it because, according to the new Liberal leader, “if you don’t pay for something, you don’t value it.”
But when it came to the campaign, Peter Dutton said that Australians would have to wait until after the election to find out where a Dutton government would cut.
Instead of campaigning on the details of his plan, he left a vacuum.
Dutton's strategy
To sum up, Labor’s strategy over the three years was to provide cost-of-living relief, weather the storm of the global inflation surge, kickstart the shift to renewables and lay the groundwork for long-term reform.
The Coalition’s strategy under Peter Dutton had three prongs:
With everything wrapped in the rhetoric of fear and myopia.
The Coalition echo chamber
Having recognised their strategy, we reached some conclusions which I set out at the end of 2023 at the WA Labor Conference and the ALP National Executive.
First – the Coalition wouldn’t even try to cast themselves as a positive alternative because they were only held together by their hostility to Labor.
Second – the Coalition’s blocking strategy meant Labor had to grapple with the challenge of a Greens political party that was equally committed to frustrating progress.
Third – in the contest between Labor initiative and Coalition reaction, we needed to draw the battle lines over cost of living.
The Dutton strategy also tells us a lot about decision-making within the Liberal Party.
They operate in an echo chamber.
They are more concerned with the prejudices of their hard-core supporters than the experiences of working people.
They have imbibed a mistaken analysis of how Tony Abbott won in 2013, overlooking the role played by division within Labor in the demise of the last Labor Government.
And on the transition to renewables, they remain fatally committed to denial and delay.
The relevant precedent for the Liberal Party’s refusal to come to terms with reality on climate and energy is their attitude to Medicare during the Hawke-Keating government.
It took five election defeats before the Liberals conceded the obvious – the Howard-Peacock policy of destroying Medicare and replacing it with cost-neutral arrangements that left no one worse off was nonsense.
That doesn’t mean they’ve accepted the principle of universal health care.
They still undermine Medicare whenever they get into power – but they no longer campaign on abolishing it and they’ve stopped pretending they have an alternative plan.
Whether it takes them another decade to adjust to reality on energy is a matter for them.
Labor's plan to build - or Dutton's promise to cut?
This brings me to the five critical factors that delivered the result.
First: Building Australia’s Future.
The campaign theme launched on 3 November 2024 in the South Australian electorate of Sturt.
The Prime Minister outlined a campaign where both the progress delivered and the changes to come were at stake.
We wouldn’t shy away from arguing that with another term Labor could get big things done, and we had a plan that would make a real difference.
In every electorate, in every portfolio, our campaign would point to first term delivery and outline second term ambition.
And we would ensure that by May the choice was about which party would make you better off over the next three years.
This strategy worked because it was enlivened by the policy ideas that we campaigned on over six months.
Lasting cost of living relief with further tax cuts and the $1000 instant tax deduction for all workers – building on the 2024 tax cuts for every taxpayer.
Cutting HECS debts by 20% – building on the $3 billion already wiped from student debt when Labor fixed indexation.
Making free TAFE permanent to boost Australia’s workforce – building on the free TAFE program launched in January 2023.
The Five Per Cent Deposit Plan and 100,000 new homes for first home buyers announced at the launch – building on our efforts to expand supply.
The second factor was Medicare, and the decision to put it at the heart of our campaign three months out from polling day.
Labor’s plans for Medicare were the pinnacle of our argument that with another three years we could build on those strong foundations.
There was no debate about our promise to restore bulk billing so that nine in ten GP visits are bulk billed by 2030.
But in past campaigns, a major party might have held back its centrepiece policy commitment until the final five weeks to maximise cut through.
Peter Dutton’s campaign took this approach to absurd extremes.
With less than two weeks to go Michael Sukkar said the Coalition were saving up their policies so they could “connect with Australians when they're going to switch on.”
The third factor was the economy and Labor’s ascendancy in the economic debate that was front and centre in the campaign.
I observed earlier that Labor’s economic strategy got inflation down without paying for it with a recession and higher unemployment.
In the campaign we were able to point to that record and highlight the contrast with a decade of Coalition failure.
When Labor came to power, inflation was going up and real wages were going down.
By election day inflation was 2.4 per cent and real wages had grown five quarters in a row.
February’s rate cut crystallised confidence that the economy had turned the corner.
And yesterday’s rate cut confirmed the progress Australia is making.
And further, permanent cost of living announced in the budget and the campaign was at the core of our plan for the next three years.
The fourth factor was the Prime Minister’s performance.
From the first Monday of January through to election day, the Prime Minister was in the form of a lifetime.
Originally, I wrote here that the PM didn’t put a foot wrong.
But this would have summoned the Coalition’s media cheer squad to interview the stage from the Mining and Energy Union conference as part of a feature on Labor lies.
At a presentational level, the Prime Minister’s campaigning was exemplary.
The rallies, the speeches and the launch.
The street walks, the school visits and the shifts on pre-poll.
The debates, which every sensible observer scored four-nil.
Albo was in his element, connecting with everyday people and enjoying it.
And while the Prime Minister was telling a positive story about who we are and where we’re going…
…Peter Dutton was gloomy about the country, downcast about the future, and most animated when magnifying the problems facing Australia.
Which connects to the more substantive dimension to the leadership contrast.
The Prime Minister and the Opposition Leader were confronted by some critical leadership tests.
The imposition of tariffs on Australian aluminium and steel.
Tropical Cyclone Alfred.
Liberation Day.
The disruption of ANZAC day commemorations by a neo-Nazi.
The contrast was as clear as night and day.
The Prime Minister offered authentic, measured and firm leadership.
And Peter Dutton never missed an opportunity to miss an opportunity.
Peter Dutton: not a risk worth taking
My view that Peter Dutton was the fifth major factor in Labor’s win won’t surprise anyone today.
We identified early that Mr Dutton represented an unacceptable risk on two levels.
First, the material risk.
When Peter Dutton was Tony Abbott’s Health Minister, he cut $50 billion from hospitals, tried to end bulk billing, wanted to charge for emergency room visits, and made medicines more expensive.
As Opposition Leader, he opposed Labor’s tax cuts, Medicare Urgent Care Clinics, cheaper medicines, cheaper child care, and energy bill relief.
During the term he said he would have cut at least $350 billion from the services Australians rely on.
And the money for his $600 billion nuclear power scheme had to come from somewhere.
This gave us a lot to work with, but even before our campaign amplified these facts our research identified some deeper reservations about Peter Dutton.
One year ago, our target voters already believed they would be worse off under a Dutton government because of the risk posed by Peter Dutton’s character.
His recklessness concerned them and made them worry about what kind of Prime Minister he would be.
His aggression and intolerance unsettled people.
And above all his hard-headedness, his lack of empathy and his lack of understanding of ordinary people’s lives kept coming to the fore.
Mr Dutton's strange campaign
Mr Dutton inability to make up his mind who his campaign was aimed at made these risks ever more present.
Was he focused on Australians who were looking for the party with the best plan to make them better off over the next three years?
Or was his priority winning over voters who were looking for an Australian variation on MAGA?
Elections are about choices, and the choices leaders make send a message about their priorities.
Whilst the Prime Minister was focused on the economy, cost of living and Medicare, Mr Dutton:
Each of these features of the Liberal Party campaign were of their own initiative – not ours.
Research and polling
In the closing week of the campaign, our tracking poll found that voters believed that:
These results are the ultimate indictment of the Coalition’s closing focus on culture wars instead of the cost of living.
They also – and we acknowledge this – represented a significant turnaround compared to expectations at the beginning of the year.
But this turnaround was not an accident, nor did it arise from luck or external events.
The Coalition’s lead in the polls over the summer was an expression of many things, but it was not born of a comparison between the Labor government and the Coalition opposition.
Instead of horse race polling, our research program was dedicated to building out our campaign by identifying strengths and weaknesses.
Whilst Peter Dutton was seen by some voters as doing his job well during the term by opposing the Government at every turn, these same voters had reservations about what kind of Prime Minister he would make.
The Coalition believed that they could win the election by asking people whether they were better off than they were three years ago.
But looking back reminded voters of the Morrison Government and Peter Dutton’s track record, which was very weak territory for them.
In November 2024, Peter Dutton’s performance in the last Coalition government was rated as poor by 37% of voters. Only 27% rated it as good.
And the performance of the Morrison Government was rated as poor by 41% of voters. Only 25% rated it as good.
Most voters – particularly young people who had felt the pressure of inflation more than most – were more concerned about who would make them better off over the next three years.
This was much stronger ground for Labor, and our research program was dedicated to unlocking that potential.
Finally, we did our best to ignore the running commentary about the inevitably of a hung parliament because of this state factor or that industry-commissioned poll or this bit of Coalition backgrounding.
Labor refused to be distracted media narrative that talked up the prospects of a Dutton victory, dismissed the possibility of a Labor majority government and obsessed about minority government – and stayed on strategy.
Instead – in partnership with our State Branches, our candidates and our creative agencies – we built the strongest possible local campaigns where we knew we needed them.
As a result, we are confident that when counting concludes this will be the first election since 1966 where the incumbent party didn’t lose a seat.
Labor is indebted to our research operation.
At Pyxis Polling & Insights; Campbell White and his team.
At Talbot Mills; David Talbot, Rosa Sottile, Lachlan Poulter and their team.
At Essential Research; Peter Lewis, Alissa Henderson and their team.
And in the Secretariat, our Research and Data Manager Matilda Stevenson.
Advertising
The research program was only as good as its principal output: the most sophisticated advertising campaign Labor has ever executed.
At the beginning of the year there was cautious optimism the economy was turning the corner, and that 2025 would be better than the last few years.
However, global news was driving uncertainty and holding back any broader shift in the mood.
Cost of living – still the dominant issue – wasn’t in the rear-view mirror yet.
Our two opening ads – ‘Labor’s cost of living measures’ and ‘Building Australia’s Future’ – spoke to that sentiment.
They reminded voters of the relief Labor had delivered and outlined Anthony Albanese’s plan to make Australians better off.
They kicked off a campaign that our lead creative, Dee Madigan, and her colleagues at Campaign Edge led by Stuart Gillies, deserve unconditional praise for.
Dee’s creativity brought clarity, emotion and a narrative edge to each of her ads, not least the “He Cuts, You Pay” campaign.
Likewise, Darren Moss, Donna McInerney and the Moss Group took on some of the toughest assignments going and delivered some of the most lethal ads of the campaign.
A huge effort was led by our Assistant National Secretary Jen Light and Johanna Kerin in the Secretariat to produce tailored local ads for dozens of electorates in collaboration with our state branches and local campaigns.
And I want to thank Charlie Tannous and Diverse Communications for helping us engage strategically with communities across the country.
Lastly with respect to advertising, none of this would have been possible without Louise Magee’s leadership of the Advertising & Research team.
In an operation with an inbuilt risk of overcomplication, Louise skilfully ensured discipline and clarity.
And the collaboration with our media strategists, Mindshare and Sparro, to execute the advertising placement was a highpoint.
The Greens
One of our sorer points after 2022 was the recognition that we underestimated the threat from the Greens, particularly in south east Queensland.
Our 2022 Campaign Review, led by Greg Combet and Lenda Oshalem, called on the Party to more directly contest the political positions advocated by the Greens, and dedicate resources to this task.
The subsequent behaviour of the Greens made this recommendation more prescient than any of us realised at the end of 2022.
The Coalition’s blocking strategy meant we had to grapple with the challenge of a Greens political party that was equally committed to frustrating progress.
Whether it was ideological fervour or their weird internals is beyond me, but their own actions meant that perceptions of the Greens were defined by their blocking tactics and aggressive attacks on Labor.
Until late in the piece they seemed confident of a dividend from this behaviour.
In August 2024 Adam Bandt came here and declared the Greens were a strong chance to gain at least five more seats – with briefings nominating Moreton, Richmond, Wills, Macnamara, Perth and Sturt.
Two years ago, we resourced a dedicated effort in the Secretariat to confront this challenge, and worked with our candidates and members in three-cornered contests across the country
Ben Coates in the Secretariat and the Shannon Company led by Michael Daddo, Elisa Horan and Tenneille Stone took on this unenviable task.
Rather than evaluate their work I will quote Mr. Bandt:
“I spent a fair bit of time on polling booths in Melbourne and had quite a few conversations where people told me that they usually vote Green, but this time they didn't because of Peter Dutton … And on this I just want to say hats off to the Prime Minister and to the Labor campaign machine on this point for making this such a central feature of the campaign. I think we have to acknowledge that they did run a very good campaign.”
Some words of thanks
Before moving to questions I need to call out some other contributions.
I mentioned Jen Light earlier.
Jen never seeks the limelight. She just gets on with the job.
We wouldn’t have won a majority in 2022 without the brilliant work of Jen and the target seats unit she led. In 2025 they delivered again.
I want to thank
Every campaign is a collective effort, and I want to thank every single Labor supporter and union member who knocked on a door, handed out a how-to-vote card or donated to support the cause of Labor.
Lastly, on a personal note, I want to thank Dimity for our partnership over the last three years, and her patience over the last 10 months.
I’m told that I’ll be out of your debt in about 30 years.
We wouldn’t have been able to manage without support from our friends and families, particularly Fran, Sue and Belinda.
Conclusion
Since 2022 Melbourne University has been collating a four-volume survey of Robert Menzies’ life and career edited by Zachary Gorman.
In his introduction to the second volume Gorman remarks on Menzies’ good fortune in not being exposed to an echo chamber on the right of politics.
The absence of a populist noise machine in the post-war period insulated Menzies from overreaches to rival Chifley’s bank nationalisation, with the notable exception of the referendum to ban the Communist Party.
There is something instructive there for both major parties.
Labor won big in 1943 and 1946, enabling Curtin to lead Australia through the war and Chifley to create the post-war settlement.
But overreach in 1949 let the nascent Liberal Party back in.
For the Liberal Party, elections are won when you learn the lessons from your defeats and escape the echo chambers on your own side.
Whether they can do that is a question for them, but they should start by abandoning a nuclear energy scheme that will take too long, cost too much, do nothing to meet our energy needs, and was designed to kill off the transition to renewables.
In choosing Labor on 3 May, Australians chose progress over retreat, and a uniquely Australian way of dealing with global uncertainty.
They backed Labor’s plan to deliver for every community – growing the economy, delivering lasting cost-of-living relief, strengthening Medicare, building more homes, and increasing renewables.
Australians rejected cuts and division, and embraced a government committed to building Australia’s future.
Thank you again for the invitation to speak, and I look forward to your questions.
