Latest / Inside Politics / Best of 2025: A Labor 'landslide' and disaster for Dutton

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Best of 2025: A Labor 'landslide' and disaster for Dutton · Inside Politics

0:01
S1: Hello and merry Christmas. It's Jacqueline Maley here. Your Inside
0:05
S1: Politics team is on a little hiatus over summer before
0:07
S1: we return at the end of January. And in the meantime,
0:10
S1: we hope you enjoy some of our favorite episodes of
0:12
S1: the year, starting with a trip down memory lane to
0:15
S1: election night with our former chief political correspondent, David Crowe,
0:19
S1: before he passed the baton to BFF of the podcast,
0:22
S1: Paul Circle. David, you are not one to overuse an adjective,
0:30
S1: but you wrote in your piece for Saturday night that
0:33
S1: Anthony Albanese's victory was historic, stunning and extraordinary. Why do
0:38
S1: you use those words?
0:40
S2: Because it's so unusual to get a first term government
0:44
S2: increasing its majority in this way. It doesn't happen very often.
0:49
S2: I was talking to Shane Wright, our colleague earlier, and
0:52
S2: he's told me when it last happened, and now I
0:54
S2: can't remember just because it's a blizzard of information on
0:58
S2: election night, but it's incredibly rare. The other thing, of course,
1:03
S2: is that Anthony Albanese has become the first prime minister
1:06
S2: since John Howard in 2004 to get another term as
1:11
S2: an incumbent, and that's also been too rare in the
1:14
S2: last 20 years or so. Since Kevin Rudd in 2007,
1:18
S2: we've had one term prime ministers finally getting a prime
1:22
S2: minister who serves a second term with a bit of
1:25
S2: continuity in the job with an agenda for a second term.
1:29
S2: He's even talking about a third term to our colleague
1:31
S2: James Massola. All of these things make it a really
1:36
S2: incredible night. And bear in mind, there had been talk
1:41
S2: only months ago about or weeks ago about labor going
1:43
S2: into minority government. And here they are with this increased
1:46
S2: majority and with this mandate, when households are doing it
1:51
S2: very tough and, you know, on other grounds they might
1:54
S2: want to boot out a government when when the cost
1:56
S2: of living is so bad. So on all those fronts,
1:58
S2: it's it's really quite an incredible outcome.
2:01
S1: Yeah. I've just come back from the Canterbury Hurlstone Park RSL,
2:06
S1: which is where the the Labor Party faithful gathered tonight.
2:09
S1: And Albanese just gave his speech, his victory speech. It
2:13
S1: was exactly the same stage, exactly the same venue where
2:15
S1: he gave his victory speech in 2022, where he talked
2:19
S1: a lot about the voice, which obviously didn't get a
2:21
S1: mention tonight. What did you think of of the speech, David?
2:26
S2: I thought it was, um, one of the best speeches
2:28
S2: that he has delivered in his political life.
2:33
S3: Serving as your prime minister is the greatest honour of
2:38
S3: my life.
2:41
S2: I think it was very inclusive. He did have, I guess,
2:46
S2: that pointed reference to acknowledging Indigenous Australians, which, given Peter
2:51
S2: Dutton started this or fuelled this, this debate about the
2:55
S2: welcome to country was a very pointed reference.
2:58
S3: And I pay my respects to elders past, present and
3:02
S3: emerging today and every day.
3:06
S2: But in every other way he was gracious towards Peter Dutton.
3:09
S2: He made it so important at the start of the
3:13
S2: speech to simply thank Australians for their vote. He talked
3:16
S2: about kindness. He talked about unity, about confidence. It was
3:21
S2: a message trying to sort of lift up Australia at
3:25
S2: a time where global conditions are so hostile, really, to
3:29
S2: liberal democracies. Now, I'm not saying that he's got the
3:33
S2: answer and that there is this incredible second term agenda
3:37
S2: that's going to fix everything, because I think there are
3:39
S2: a lot of questions about that. But it was a
3:42
S2: very good speech in that way.
3:43
S1: It was very optimistic. He talked about how his mother
3:46
S1: had raised him to be an optimist and to see
3:48
S1: the best in people, and there was every reason for
3:51
S1: Australians to feel optimistic, which, as you say, is sort
3:54
S1: of against the global zeitgeist. Paul, you were in the
3:57
S1: room with the Dutton camp up in Brisbane, and you
4:00
S1: watched the opposition leader's concession speech, which I think we
4:04
S1: have to say was very gracious and refreshing, really, from him.
4:09
S1: Talk us through the night there. What was the vibe
4:11
S1: like in that room?
4:13
S4: Yeah. Well, for all the talk about comparing Dutton to Trump,
4:15
S4: some of it fair, some of it probably exaggerated, it's
4:19
S4: a great sign of our democracy that there was no,
4:21
S4: no suggestion that Dutton would ever do what Trump did
4:24
S4: and question anything about how the political process plays out.
4:26
S4: So it was gracious. He was he was, uh, he
4:30
S4: he was relatively upbeat for a guy who'd just been
4:33
S4: defeated so thoroughly. The room was quite warm when he
4:36
S4: emerged at about 930 in the W Hotel in Brisbane.
4:40
S4: He was watching upstairs with his family about 10 or
4:43
S4: 15 minutes earlier. Some of his key supporters, including his
4:46
S4: ministerial ally Steve Ciobo, Christian Porter, Michael Keenan, the campaign
4:50
S4: spokesman James Paterson entered the room with Tony Abbott as well.
4:53
S4: It well was actually pretty light on for politicians. There
4:55
S4: weren't many current or former MPs there, except the ones
4:58
S4: I've named. He received a big applause when he rocked up.
5:00
S4: Dutton and then was really warmly allowed to exit the
5:03
S4: room with a long standing ovation.
5:05
S5: Well, tonight's not the night that we wanted for the
5:08
S5: Liberal Party or for our coalition, or indeed for our country.
5:11
S4: He's built up a lot of goodwill in the party.
5:13
S4: There are not many people on the moderate side, and
5:15
S4: certainly not on the right where he sits, who have
5:18
S4: much disdain for him. I think there was a there
5:21
S4: was a significant rump of people who just felt really
5:23
S4: sorry for a guy who they thought had given it
5:26
S4: his all, but also deep acknowledgement from even his staff and, uh,
5:30
S4: some of his close MPs who I spoke to in
5:32
S4: text and calls after, who just saw the result and
5:36
S4: realised that what they offered was totally, uh, not up
5:40
S4: to it.
5:40
S5: Now, we didn't do well enough during this campaign. That
5:43
S5: much is obvious tonight and I accept full responsibility for that.
5:47
S4: The campaign was poor. The policy offering was meek. Dutton
5:51
S4: proved to be someone who was by the end, the
5:53
S4: last Newspoll had him at the lowest popularity rating since
5:57
S4: Andrew Peacock in the early 90s. So he's shown himself
6:00
S4: to be one of the most deeply unpopular political party
6:03
S4: leaders in a long time. And that showed tonight.
6:05
S1: Yeah. Okay. So the recriminations on the liberal side are
6:08
S1: going to be, um, going to be swift and interesting.
6:10
S1: What does this sort of I mean, I don't know,
6:13
S1: are we calling it a landslide? It's a sort of
6:15
S1: huge increased majority. We don't know of what magnitude yet,
6:18
S1: but a pretty interesting and big result. Is it all
6:22
S1: about Albanese's personal popularity? Is it about the labor policy offering,
6:26
S1: or is it more disillusionment with Peter Dutton and the coalition? David,
6:31
S1: what do you think?
6:31
S2: I think the Peter Dutton factor was real, and it
6:35
S2: was something that the coalition underestimated, because clearly they didn't
6:38
S2: position him better going into this. If they wanted to
6:44
S2: get Australians to get to know Peter Dutton as a
6:48
S2: as a family man and so forth, They should have
6:50
S2: been doing more on that front last year. But really
6:54
S2: it was about, I think, the core offer from Labour.
6:58
S2: And I think this goes back to something that I
7:00
S2: know Paul's been talking to Labour people about for ages
7:03
S2: and so have I. We all knew that Labour felt
7:08
S2: they couldn't win if it was going to be about
7:09
S2: the last three years, it had to be about the
7:12
S2: forward offer. And I heard that phrase repeatedly, the forward offer,
7:16
S2: and that was about telling people, we're going to do
7:18
S2: the following things for the next three years. And that's
7:21
S2: where the liberals were, I think, complacent because Labour knew
7:25
S2: exactly what they were going to do, and they figured
7:28
S2: it out late last year, and then they started doing
7:31
S2: doing it in January with more money for Medicare, which
7:34
S2: of course, Peter Dutton matched. But it was Labour on
7:38
S2: the front foot saying, we are hearing you on the
7:41
S2: cost of living and we are doing the following things.
7:45
S2: Whether it was road funding or Medicare funding, the urgent
7:48
S2: care clinics and so forth. Um, they were delivering something
7:53
S2: that helped households with their finances. And that just kept
7:57
S2: going all the way through to the budget. All of
8:00
S2: those things worked. Mind you can't forget that Donald Trump
8:04
S2: was a factor because he brought this global turmoil to
8:08
S2: the Australian election. But labor knew that it had to
8:11
S2: offer something to Australians, and it started doing that in
8:16
S2: a really disciplined way.
8:17
S4: I'd add further to that. I agree you can't understate
8:19
S4: the Trump factor, but domestic factors are also huge, and
8:24
S4: some of this will be written in our long feature
8:26
S4: story that we're writing with Matthew Knott and Natasha Chrysanthos
8:29
S4: in coming days. So I'm giving a bit away. But
8:31
S4: I think in hindsight, people will look at what Albanese
8:34
S4: developed in terms of his election strategy and Paul Erickson,
8:37
S4: the campaign boss, and realised that labor staked out the
8:41
S4: centre ground at this election. They own the centre ground.
8:44
S4: They pushed the Liberal Party on cost of living and
8:48
S4: a number of other just core issues on health and
8:50
S4: education and various other policy areas out to the side.
8:53
S4: And Albanese commanded the centre in late October. Labor people
8:57
S4: were looking at what Trump was doing to Kamala Harris.
9:00
S4: Paul Erickson had his election strategy laid out by late
9:03
S4: October and early November. And the core of it was
9:07
S4: a cost of living argument centred on Medicare, turned into
9:10
S4: a cost of living issue to talk about healthcare every day,
9:13
S4: as a mechanism to say we are tangibly making your
9:16
S4: life easier and cheaper in a cost of living crisis.
9:20
S4: They hammered that home for months. They put economics at
9:24
S4: the core of their agenda, which labor people, particularly in
9:27
S4: kind of think tank land and on the right of
9:29
S4: the Labor Party, have been calling for for years. They've said,
9:32
S4: forget talking about social justice as the core of your
9:35
S4: offering and progressivism as the core of your offering, and
9:38
S4: make economics and living standards the core of Labor's brand.
9:41
S4: Albanese and Paul Erickson did that. And incredibly, in the
9:45
S4: polls in recent weeks, even after a huge spike in
9:49
S4: interest rates and people having been worse off over the
9:52
S4: last three years in terms of real incomes. Labour is
9:55
S4: ahead on cost of living and economic management in most polls.
9:59
S4: That's an extraordinary result, a vindication of their strategy and
10:03
S4: a massive indictment on the party that's meant to be
10:05
S4: known as the better economic manager.
10:07
S6: Do you think it was also.
10:08
S1: A rejection of Trumpism? Because we can't I mean, you know,
10:11
S1: lots of people wrote during the campaign that Donald Trump
10:13
S1: was sort of like the third person in the campaign. Obviously,
10:17
S1: he was incredibly influential in terms of the global atmosphere,
10:21
S1: but also in terms of all of the allegations that
10:26
S1: Dutton or members of Dutton's party were aping Trump or
10:30
S1: stealing from him, or wanted to bring that kind of
10:32
S1: politics to Australia. He did have a go on woke issues,
10:36
S1: so-called woke issues, particularly towards the end of the campaign.
10:39
S1: How much of this can we see as a rejection
10:41
S1: of that kind of politics? David.
10:44
S2: I think we can see the election result as a
10:46
S2: rejection of Trumpist ploys in in Australian politics, because there
10:52
S2: have been some of those and I guess Jacinta Nampijinpa
10:55
S2: price as the coalition's spokesperson for government efficiency, picking up
11:01
S2: that kind of Doge theme from the US when she
11:05
S2: said Make Australia great again. It clearly had the overtones
11:08
S2: of a Trumpist line. If that was working for the coalition,
11:14
S2: they would have had a, you know, side by side
11:16
S2: with Peter Dutton for days afterwards. They didn't. She was
11:20
S2: hidden after that. So that tells you how they saw
11:23
S2: that playing out. But also, we know from our own
11:26
S2: polling that almost two thirds of Australians see the election
11:29
S2: of Trump as a bad thing for Australia. They don't
11:32
S2: like him. And over the course of the campaign that
11:36
S2: worked in Anthony Albanese's favor, I think of Anthony Albanese. Now,
11:41
S2: given this dynamic as an anti-Trump. I mean, Albanese is
11:45
S2: always talking about orderly government. He presented a safe, friendly
11:50
S2: kind of face, even though he has been on the
11:53
S2: nose for so long on the cost of living. So
11:55
S2: he was an anti-Trump.
11:57
S1: He even talked about kindness and respect very pointedly in
11:59
S1: his victory speech tonight. Paul, do you see this result
12:04
S1: as partly a rejection of that sort of anti-woke stuff
12:07
S1: that is very much associated with the Trump agenda?
12:11
S4: Partly. I'd also just say that as the Canadian election
12:14
S4: result proved Trump's erratic nature, his trashing of conservatism around
12:20
S4: the world has flipped the script in other Western countries
12:22
S4: and allowed centre left progressive leaders to become the Patriots,
12:29
S4: the ones talking about kind of nationalistic Australia first Canada
12:34
S4: first policies, which is something they've never been able to
12:38
S4: do with as much authority as the conservatives in their country,
12:41
S4: because those conservatives are now portrayed as buddies with the
12:46
S4: US president who's having a crack at all these allies.
12:49
S4: So it's it's we're in uncharted territory.
13:03
S7: Hello to crime nuts and nuts. Just generally we're back
13:06
S7: with series seven of Naked City. I'd like to say
13:10
S7: the delay was technical, but it's basically I'm bone lazy
13:13
S7: forced now to do it. It's pretty good. We talk
13:16
S7: about cold cases, hot cases and cases that were never solved.
13:21
S7: Notorious crooks. Brilliant detectives and baghouse reporters. Naked city out
13:28
S7: after the summer break. Enjoy your plum pudding.
13:42
S6: What were some of the.
13:43
S1: More surprising results of the night I want to talk about?
13:46
S1: You know, David, I don't know if you've had much
13:48
S1: of a look at the Greens vote. I want to
13:50
S1: talk about Tasmania, where labor was incredibly successful. Victoria and
13:55
S1: of course, Dutton's seat of Dickson. Let's just go first
13:58
S1: to the Greens vote. Have you had much of a
14:00
S1: look at that?
14:01
S2: Yes. And it hasn't been great for the Greens. Some
14:04
S2: of the results are very close. I haven't talked to
14:08
S2: anybody about what's what they're seeing in Brisbane, for instance
14:11
S2: in the Brisbane seats that is. But of course these
14:15
S2: are sort of must haves for the Greens. They did
14:17
S2: so well at the last election. Max Chandler-mather was their
14:20
S2: spokesperson on housing in Griffith, Stephen Bates in Brisbane, Elizabeth
14:25
S2: Watson Brown in Ryan. They want to hold those seats,
14:29
S2: but they haven't done that. Great labor is is within
14:34
S2: sight of turning things against them. I think it's different
14:37
S2: in Melbourne, where there's concern about the labor seat of wills,
14:41
S2: but you cannot see across the board that this is
14:44
S2: a big victory for the Greens. It's been much more
14:47
S2: interesting in terms of the teal contests and in that
14:52
S2: previously safe Liberal seat of Bradfield in Sydney. Nicolette Buller
14:57
S2: has won that seat. It's a, you know, shocking defeat
15:00
S2: for the liberals and it just highlights this teal trend.
15:04
S2: So I can't say I was surprised by that because
15:07
S2: I'd been watching that seat really with a lot of interest,
15:10
S2: and I thought there was a chance that Nicolette Buller
15:12
S2: could do it. But to see it actually happen and
15:15
S2: continue that trend is really something.
15:17
S1: What about Dickson? Paul? What happened for Peter Dutton? I mean,
15:22
S1: it's been several elections now when labor has sort of
15:24
S1: said that Dickson's in contention and that Dutton might lose
15:27
S1: his seat. There was a lot of talk of that
15:29
S1: sort of two elections ago, but this time it actually happened.
15:31
S1: It's quite stunning.
15:32
S4: Yeah, labor had been talking about this for weeks now.
15:35
S4: They've been doing big fundraising drives, saying to people around
15:38
S4: the country, donate because we think we can beat Peter Dutton.
15:41
S4: Albanese spent the first day of the campaign on, I
15:43
S4: think it's March 29th, in Dickson, and then he swung
15:46
S4: through in one of the final days. There was a
15:48
S4: lot of talk at the start of the campaign about
15:50
S4: this being an Albanese mind game. He does like political
15:54
S4: games and getting in the heads of his opponents. He
15:56
S4: at the time said he really believed it was on
15:59
S4: the on the brink of falling. Even his colleagues didn't
16:02
S4: really believe him. But there's been a huge swing against
16:05
S4: the Liberal Party across or the LNP in Queensland. In
16:09
S4: seats like Bonner, there were huge swings. Various other suburban
16:12
S4: seats where labor had been putting in a lot of
16:14
S4: resources into in the last year or two, particularly led
16:17
S4: by Murray Watt and Jim Chalmers, to build the brand
16:19
S4: back there and in the city of Brisbane as well.
16:21
S4: There were big swings, as we just mentioned, to the
16:23
S4: to labor from the Greens. But in terms of Dickson itself,
16:27
S4: it's hard to know about local factors. There was a
16:29
S4: new teal independent, Ali Smith, who was really heavily backed
16:33
S4: by climate. 201 13.1% of the primary vote at this
16:37
S4: stage of counting. Dutton has lost 8% of his primary.
16:41
S4: At this stage, Labor's only up two and a half,
16:43
S4: so the Independent clearly caused Dutton problems. Huge amounts of
16:47
S4: money spent by labor and the climate, 200 independent and
16:50
S4: lots and lots of labor ministers and MPs and party
16:55
S4: heavyweights swung through Dixon to get to gain momentum there.
16:58
S4: So perhaps the voters of Dixon when the when the
17:01
S4: when the heat. Really. Well I don't want to go
17:04
S4: too far there but when, when they maybe really thought
17:07
S4: thought about Dutton as their candidate in a really high
17:11
S4: profile race where it actually looked like there was a
17:14
S4: chance of flipping it, maybe they saw something, something they
17:17
S4: didn't like.
17:17
S1: Yeah, I'm not sure how much people were tuned into this,
17:20
S1: but certainly he was asked, I think in the last
17:22
S1: debate if he or he was asked recently if he
17:25
S1: would be happy to have a nuclear reactor in his
17:27
S1: own electorate, and he said yes. So I don't know
17:30
S1: if that was that was something that people were tuned into.
17:33
S1: Let's just talk quickly about the coalition. Paul. Peter Dutton
17:37
S1: took total responsibility for the loss. But I mean, what's
17:41
S1: your sense of what happened? Was it was it his fault?
17:43
S1: Was it. Was it miscommunication with the with campaign HQ?
17:47
S1: Was it the fact that he just went off piste
17:50
S1: and did his own thing and didn't listen to the party? Um,
17:53
S1: the party elders. What was it?
17:56
S4: It's it's there's so many factors that make it complex.
17:59
S4: And so it's clearly deep and structural. The problem in
18:02
S4: the party to blame any one breakdown in communication or
18:05
S4: relationship or attitude in a certain, um, cohort of his
18:10
S4: staffing unit just seems simplistic. I mean, the party, the
18:13
S4: party's broken. Um, they've had three years in a cost
18:17
S4: of living crisis to develop an economic narrative, have totally
18:21
S4: failed to do so and have gone backwards on an
18:24
S4: already record low primary vote with a deeply unpopular prime
18:28
S4: minister in Scott Morrison. So it's the recriminations will be
18:33
S4: really severe. There'll be huge questions directed towards the pollster
18:37
S4: Mike Turner at Freshwater, because there's been a sense in
18:40
S4: the party, a real sense. I don't think a fake
18:43
S4: false spin sense that their internal polling was better than
18:47
S4: the national polling and that this result would not play out.
18:50
S4: So there'll be huge questions about why that didn't play out.
18:52
S4: The strategy of not dealing in the same way as
18:57
S4: most political leaders in the past, with mainstream press throughout
19:00
S4: the term, and focusing the strategy towards two GB and
19:03
S4: Sky news, as David has written about extensively, will also
19:06
S4: come under severe question after just a quick point to
19:10
S4: finish off after the 22 result. They were in the
19:13
S4: mid 50s in terms of seats. Their primary vote was
19:16
S4: really low under Dutton for a period, but the party
19:19
S4: was galvanised by the voice referendum. It lifted them off
19:22
S4: the floor. It instilled discipline over a year or even more,
19:25
S4: which was like a long campaign within the term. And
19:28
S4: I think that in part meant that there was no
19:31
S4: period of soul searching and real examination of what the
19:33
S4: party stood for, its policy agenda, its recruitment of talent,
19:37
S4: all those things that make a healthy, vibrant political party.
19:39
S4: This result has to force that if it doesn't, it
19:43
S4: never will. I mean, labor went through similar periods in
19:46
S4: the mid 2000 when Howard kept beating them. They had
19:49
S4: another period of reckoning after Bill shorten lost. So this
19:53
S4: happens to both sides of politics. But there needs to
19:55
S4: be serious, serious examination of the party and what it
19:58
S4: what it is. And there has to be over the
20:01
S4: next few months or maybe even year, a period where
20:04
S4: there's no focus on opinion polling and just focus on
20:07
S4: how do we get ourselves to be a governing party again.
20:11
S2: The liberals have always done well when they're genuinely a
20:16
S2: broad church, to use that old phrase, the phrase is
20:19
S2: used so much because it's such a good phrase. They
20:22
S2: know that that's how they succeed, and that's not really
20:25
S2: the best description of them right now. Well, after this result,
20:29
S2: they're like a rump. But I think Peter Dutton has
20:34
S2: been given a lot of credit for uniting the team
20:37
S2: and keeping them all together after the 2022 election outcome,
20:41
S2: that defeat, and he did keep them united, but he
20:45
S2: kept them united by not making them too much of
20:47
S2: a broad church. He had a, you know, deliberately conservative, um, approach,
20:53
S2: very conservative, I think, uh, Liberal Party over the last
20:57
S2: couple of years, picking fights on culture wars and woke
21:00
S2: agendas and so forth. And maybe that wasn't the way
21:03
S2: to succeed. We now see what Australians think about it.
21:06
S2: So unity came at an incredible cost because they didn't
21:10
S2: actually have a deep think about their philosophy and their
21:14
S2: direction in the last couple of years. And really we
21:17
S2: could see that with their policy agenda because it was
21:20
S2: relatively thin and it didn't, you know, they complained about
21:23
S2: the catastrophe facing Australia, and then they came up with
21:27
S2: a bit of a damp squib on the policy front
21:29
S2: as a solution to that catastrophe. They didn't seem to
21:32
S2: have the courage of their convictions on what they were
21:35
S2: really fighting for, because I think they hadn't really worked
21:37
S2: out what those convictions were.
21:39
S1: Yeah. I mean, you've got to conclude that they just
21:41
S1: they didn't do any work, really any proper work on policy.
21:44
S1: They just they had a lot of time and, and
21:47
S1: they didn't use that time. David, you wrote in your
21:50
S1: piece tonight that everything at this election has approved the
21:54
S1: path ahead will not be easy. So you're not sort
21:57
S1: of letting Albanese off the hook? What do you mean
21:59
S1: by that, exactly?
22:01
S2: Well, I was remembering an interview that we did with
22:05
S2: Jim Chalmers last year. Remember this jacket where he asked,
22:09
S2: you know, is there going to be an election spendathon.
22:11
S2: And he said, no. Well, guess what, there was an election. Spendathon. Right.
22:15
S2: They spent a lot. Now they say they're improving government services.
22:19
S2: And I think Australians respond to that because they want
22:21
S2: a caring government in this global turmoil that looks after
22:24
S2: them and delivers services like Medicare. But there's been a
22:28
S2: lot of spending going on. There are no budget surpluses
22:33
S2: in the foreseeable future. The economy has low productivity, right?
22:38
S2: We used to worry about that. We used to be
22:40
S2: a nation that actually paid attention to that, paid attention
22:44
S2: to economic reform, to tax reform. Are we going to
22:48
S2: rediscover that? It could take a majority government that's safe,
22:54
S2: that's got a mandate to try and look at some
22:57
S2: of these things. It's not an easy job, but somebody's
23:00
S2: got to do it. And the time to do it
23:02
S2: is when you've got a mandate and a majority. So
23:06
S2: I think it's going to be challenging for Anthony Albanese
23:09
S2: and for Jim Chalmers, because there's so much that needs doing.
23:12
S4: If the big question for the coalition side now is
23:15
S4: how do they regenerate if they can regenerate? The big
23:18
S4: question for Albanese now is can he be bigger? Can
23:21
S4: he be bolder? Can the nature of his government change.
23:25
S4: One of his long time close friends said to me
23:28
S4: the other day that if he wins with a majority,
23:31
S4: he'll be extremely vindicated and proud of what he's just achieved.
23:35
S4: And he showed that with his emotion tonight. But he'll also,
23:38
S4: according to this person, go into what he described as
23:40
S4: legacy mode, where he'll be thinking not just about how
23:44
S4: to get another win. Although another win would be fantastic.
23:46
S4: He'll be thinking about how does he go out having
23:49
S4: achieved big reforms now, and he'll want to do a
23:52
S4: couple of things that mark him out, not just as
23:54
S4: someone who's won two successive elections to be the first
23:58
S4: person after John Howard, but how he's done that and
24:01
S4: done big things. And he even though he's done some
24:04
S4: creditable things and he calls himself a reformer, even his
24:07
S4: colleagues think the last term was far from ideal, far
24:11
S4: from big enough, far from long term, enough in its thinking.
24:15
S4: So can he reach to change the GST deal and
24:18
S4: do proper tax reform, a big new social program? Who
24:22
S4: knows what that might be, but can he change the
24:23
S4: nature of the government and be bigger and bolder, or
24:26
S4: be the big question and the big pressure point on him?
24:28
S1: I'm sure we'll gather again to talk about that in
24:30
S1: the not too distant future. It's very late. You guys
24:32
S1: have been up all day. You've done an amazing job.
24:34
S1: Thank you for coming and talking and what a fascinating result.
24:38
S1: Long live democracy.
24:40
S4: Thanks to you guys. All turn. Bye.
24:42
S2: Thanks, Paul.
24:45
S1: Today's episode was produced by Julia Katzel. Our executive producer
24:49
S1: is Tammy Mills, and Tom McKendrick is our head of audio.
24:53
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25:17
S1: Thank you for listening.