Australian voters went to the polls on May 3, in a general election where foreign policy – particularly the instability wrought by the Trump administration in the United States – played a larger than normal role in the campaign. In the end, Australians voted to return the Labor Party and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to office – with a strengthened majority, no less.
While the Trump factor did influence Australia’s election, that wasn’t the whole story, says Mark Chou, an associate professor at Australian National University’s Crawford School of Public Policy. In a written interview with The Diplomat, Chou broke down the main factors in the voting, which was more about fear of Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s governing style than support for Albanese – a dynamic that may influence the second term of Albanese’s government.
Chou also addresses what we can infer from the 2025 general election about the state of Australia’s democracy. “Australia is one the world’s oldest and most stable democracies and remains in comparatively good shape,” he concluded. “…That said, we’re not immune to the pressures facing democracies globally.”
Much of the post-election media coverage focused on Australia’s repudiation of Trump-style politics. Do you think that’s an accurate narrative? If so, what factors made Australian voters reject the Trump-esque populism that the United States embraced?
Yes, I think that’s broadly right, and to that extent it’s comparable to what happened recently in Canada’s election. Like their Canadian counterparts, Australian voters have watched the polarization and dysfunction of U.S. politics play out in 2025 and they’ve made a conscious decision to not follow that same path. As Julianne Schultz put it [in an op-ed for The Guardian], Australians made it clear they’re “not angry little Americans” keen on fighting culture wars or embracing libertarian individualism. More broadly, recent polling from the Lowy Institute showed that Australians’ trust in the U.S. to act responsibly has plummeted since Trump took office, falling by 20 points to a two-decade low of 36 percent. This broad sensibility ran counter to the kind of politics [then-Opposition Leader] Peter Dutton came to be associated with.
Unfortunately for Dutton and the Coalition, that memo came too late. His campaign leaned into Trump-style tactics – picking fights over Welcome to Country ceremonies, framing schools as ideological battlegrounds, and amplifying culture war talking points. But these issues didn’t cut through with a public far more concerned about rising cost of living and housing affordability. The fact that Dutton lost his own seat – one he’s held since 2001 – speaks volumes about how out of step he was with the electorate.
But that’s only part of the story. It’s all too easy to forget in the election’s afterglow that less than six months ago, Labor and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese were looking very vulnerable. A hung parliament seemed likely and Dutton was gaining momentum. But once the campaign began in earnest, Dutton faltered time and again – bad policies, lack of policy details, and a raft of policy backflips on EV tax breaks, public service cuts, and the working-from-home crackdown all painted a picture of a party not ready to govern. In contrast, Albanese’s steadiness, and Labor’s focus on practical reforms, won over the public looking for stability and pragmatism.