Transcription
Thanks very much, Tom, for that introduction. Uh, and I begin by acknowledging the traditional owners of the land that we gather on here today, the Nanowal people. Uh, and pay my respects to their elders. And I extend that respect to all First Nations people here today. Uh, thank you to the National Press Club, uh, to Morris and the board, to the members and the sponsors for the invitation to join you today to discuss the 2025 federal election. Uh, and I acknowledge that we have the prime minister here. Thank you to the prime minister for coming, uh, and a number of colleagues from the ministry and the caucus in the federal parliament, as well as the Victorian parliament, um, and the members of the diplomatic corps that are here as well.
I acknowledge 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 the third day of 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 investment in 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 have put even 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 that we put forward. First, 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.
As Tom said, though, 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.
But it was more than that. The opposition embraced this consensus and they were more focused on claiming frontrunner status than explaining what they would do if they won. This built on their misread of the 2023 referendum, convincing themselves that a century-old reluctance to change the constitution represented a realignment 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. But equally, there was an appreciation that Labor had seen the country through a very tough period and that it would take more than three years to clean up the messes that we inherited.
In retrospect, it's easy to be critical of the coalition for assuming that the anti-incumbent wave would keep rolling into 2025, and they didn't need to do anything other than wait. But the coalition were not alone. There was a conventional wisdom that 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 here and across the globe.
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. And that's why we saw governments as ideologically diverse as the Biden-Harris administration, the UK Conservatives, the Japanese LDP, the Indian BJP, and the Portuguese Socialists go backwards at national elections during 2024.
But in the face of that cost of living challenge, Labor did everything that 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 childcare, 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. So, over the three years, Labor's record and Peter Dutton's opposition built an advantage for Labor as the best party to provide cost of living relief.
Secondly, 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 annual 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 labor market that that could have brought on. At every point, they wanted things to be harder for Australians because they thought it would make the politics easier for them. Instead, Labor's economy will deliver lower inflation, higher wages, continued employment growth, and further tax cuts.
Thirdly, under Labor's leadership, 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. And as the prime minister said at our launch, Labor has one energy policy, and we are delivering it—driving private sector investment in renewables backed by gas, hydro, and batteries. And 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. In contrast, 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 the detail, as exemplified by Mr. Dutton's failure to visit any of his proposed sites during the campaign.
And fourthly, 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 Australia's history, and public TAFE has been restored to its rightful place at the center 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. And 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.
So, to sum up those three years, Labor's strategy 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.