The dust is still settling from last Saturday’s historic election, and it will take some weeks to do so completely. But enough of it has already done so that we can start to take a look at our new landscape and what it might mean going forward.
State of play
As I write, on Wednesday 7th May, the ABC has called 89 seats for Labor, 40 for the Coalition, and 10 for independents (including single-member parties), with 11 seats in doubt. So far, the Greens have not won any lower house seats.
Labor is on track to win at least 90 seats, their biggest win since John Curtin in 1943. It’s bigger than Tony Abbott’s win in 2013, and approaching John Howard’s win in 1996. The loss for the Coalition is even larger. Unlike previous landslides, they have to share the few seats that remain with either the largest or second-largest cross bench in Australian federal history.
It looks likely that the Coalition will have less than half the number of house seats as Labor in the new parliament; the last time that happened was 1943. This is matched by Labor’s highest two-party preferred vote since this time, which is currently sitting at 54.9%.
This election is a historic moment. But what does it mean?
Trumpism
Let’s start with the most important takeaway. Last Saturday, Australians rejected Trumpism at the ballot box, just as Canada did in their recent election. Donald Trump dominated both campaigns. Both opposition leaders were often compared to him, and both were unseated from their own constituencies.
At the start of this year, opinion polling had the Coalition ahead on the 2PP vote at 52-48. This turned sharply after the inauguration of Donald Trump. Even as Labor’s polling continued to climb through the campaign, their result still beat the most optimistic expectations.
Trumpism is difficult to define. It covers a range of policy areas, from increased fossil fuel usage and public service cuts, to anti-woke activism and anti-immigration, and many more besides. Like the voice referendum, the reasons to reject an idea are far more varied than to support it. But make no mistake, Trumpism was on the ballot paper last Saturday, and Australia voted no.
The future of centre-right politics in Australia
This election was the second chapter in a story that is reshaping centre-right politics in Australia. The first was written in 2022 with the rise of the teals, taking six seats from Liberal heartland, the seed of which was planted in 2019 when Zali Steggall unseated Tony Abbott.
Chapter two is the routing of the Liberal party, especially in the cities. Of the 40 seats that the Coalition has won so far, the Liberal party has 16 seats, the Nationals 9, and the Queensland LNP 15. Of the 16 seats won by the Liberals, 7 are rural electorates, because the Nationals don’t usually run candidates in WA or SA. Another four combine the outer suburbs of a capital city with surrounding regional towns. This means that outside of Queensland, there are now more independents in urban seats than Liberals.
As much as community independents like to stress their independent credentials, I suspect that they will form some sort of bloc if it becomes advantageous to do so. Perhaps the electoral funding laws, which come into effect for the 2028 election, will force the issue. And maybe a new political party that allows its parliamentarians to act in the interests of their constituents over a party line would be healthy for our democracy.
The Liberal party needs to find a way to rebuild its broad church. The teal movement has essentially gutted the moderate wing of the Liberal party, both by recruiting their branch members as volunteers and by unseating their parliamentarians. It has been clear since the last election that the Coalition does not have a path back to power without their support, and this is even more obvious now.
How this will play out is anyone’s guess. Will the Nationals tear up the coalition agreement and start taking the remaining rural and regional electorates the Liberals still hold? Could the Liberal party as we know it dissolve to reabsorb small-l liberals in a new party?
The right-wing minor party vote
Last election, One Nation and Clive Palmer’s UAP split the right-wing minor party vote roughly evenly between them. This time, we are starting to see it consolidate in One Nation. They are currently sitting on 6.2% of the national vote. They seem to have done particularly well in areas where the Coalition was promising nuclear power plants, at the expense of the Nationals. But the most important implications for the rise of One Nation are in the Senate.
The 2022 senate race produced 2 Labor, 2 Coalition, 1 Green senator in each state, with a race for the final seat. What is hidden by the result is that One Nation finished second in all four states where they or the UAP didn’t win. If you combine the One Nation and UAP vote and run a recount, the hypothetical amalgamated party wins 4 senate seats.
The 2025 Senate count won’t be completed for another month or so, but we have a good idea of how it will go from first preferences alone. We have the same 2/2/1 split, but the collapse of the Coalition vote means that they may be reduced to one seat in Tasmania, and it’s up to Labor to fight One Nation for the final seat in most states. It seems likely that One Nation won’t win outside their Queensland base, but it will be close.
With Clive Palmer saying he is bowing out of Australian politics (we’ll see), One Nation are likely to improve their vote next time. Next time there is a close race between Labor and the Coalition, watch out for One Nation sweeping the mainland to pick up 5 senate seats.
Stagnation of the Greens
Last election, the Greens shocked the nation by winning 3 extra seats in Brisbane, taking them to a total of 4. This was the first time since WWII that a minor party held multiple lower house seats. In 2025, while the Greens had hoped to expand further, at time of writing it looks as if the Greens may be reduced to one seat (Ryan, though even this is still in doubt), even losing the seat held by their leader Adam Bandt (Melbourne). What did the Greens do wrong?
It may surprise you that the short answer is… nothing really, except that they failed to realise Melbourne was at risk. The Greens’ primary vote is steady; on current counts it is 11.8% nationally, down 0.5%. For the third election in a row, they will win a senate seat in every state. The better question to ask is, what went so right for the Greens in 2022? In all three seats that they picked up, Labor fell to third place, and their preferences elected the Greens. The Greens would’ve lost these seats to Labor on a 2PP basis, but this count never happened in 2022.
The reality for the Greens is that this way of winning seats is inherently unstable. It relies on how the Labor and Liberal parties perform relative to each other, and the order of exclusion when distributing preferences. The only way for the Greens to hold seats with any reliability is to beat Labor on the 2PP count. I suspect that they will have a better chance of doing this when Labor is not bringing home a landslide win.
A word of warning for Labor
With such a massive win, you could interpret this result as a mandate for Labor to keep doing what they’re doing. But this would be a mistake. Labor did not create this win. This election was decided by an electorate that rejected an opposition too closely resembling a Trumpian style of politics.
In speaking to centre-left friends, the common reaction has three stages. Surprise at the magnitude of the result, relief at rejecting Trumpism, and finally disappointment. Many would’ve preferred a minority government, where Labor has external pressure to be more ambitious. I hope that we might see some more ambitious policy this term than last. This would be a great opportunity to take some major reforms to the next election, with the confidence that the buffer of seats won last week will push it over the line.
Labor could also do with a healthy dose of introspection, and I say this as a Labor member. The rise of community independents has shown that Australians have an appetite for politicians who speak their mind, not just a party line. Encouraging the individual voices of members is one thing the Liberal party often does better than Labor.
As I have mentioned, the last time Labor won an election this decisively was 1943 when Curtin came to power. This was also the last election contested by the United Australia Party. Six years and two elections later, Robert Menzies had reformed the centre-right of Australian politics behind his new Liberal party, defeating Labor and beginning the longest continuous government in Australia’s history.
The centre-right of Australian politics will reform itself. If Labor squanders their golden opportunity for more decisive change, then they will be swept from office when it does. The community independent movement has toppled the seats of Liberal prime ministers like Menzies, Abbott and Turnbull. So too for Labor, it is not the traditional swing seats that are most at risk but their heartland.
Much fanfare has been made about the movement of the outer suburbs. It may not be obvious, but this is already happening. Inner city seats swung hard to Labor on Saturday, while many outer suburban seats swung less than their state averages, or even back towards the Liberal party. This might not matter on a night when Labor is winning 90+ seats, but when the pendulum swings back the other way, it will knock over seats that have never before elected a non-Labor member, in places like western Sydney.
Closing thoughts for the church
For several decades now, the Liberal party has increasingly been perceived as the political home for Christian voters. Is this election result a threat to Christian faith? Obviously, the answer is no. The gospel is political, but it is not partisan. The fate of the church is not dependent on the fate of the government, or even of the nation state.
Nevertheless, Christians can engage constructively in politics. Political parties are like church denominations. None of them are perfect, but you can make more headway by joining the one that most closely aligns with your values and driving change from within, than by trying to start your own. Labor, Liberal, minor party or independent, Christians can do good in support of any of these movements.
One last thought on what the church can learn from this result. Christian nationalism, while not the primary aspect of Trumpism, is one of the constituent parts that Australia has rejected. For years now, conservative Christian politicians and lobbyists have advocated for policies that poll after poll shows are opposed by a majority of the Australian population. This has created the public perception that the church primarily stands against socially progressive change, not for the love of Christ.
Change imposed top-down will be resented and rejected by the public. Our political advocacy, just like our gospel mission, should be directed at the hearts and minds of average people. And this must be done with respect and grace. If we are persuasive, our politicians will be compelled to act. Whatever happens, we continue to put our hope in a God who is trustworthy and good.
Chris Shaw is a mathematician and data analyst with an MPhil in statistical research. He is currently writing a book on truth and politics. He attends an Anglican church in Sydney.
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