Despite Labor’s “landslide”, Simon Copland warns that the ALP’s historically low primary vote reveals a growing anti-political sentiment. Progressives must reject Labor’s do-nothing electoralism, pushing for real system change — not for electoral aims, but because only a bold left alternative can prevent the far-right from capitalising on capitalism’s inevitable crises.
It’s been a very strange time since the election, particularly one with such mixed results. I am delighted that we are not facing three years of a Dutton Government, and even happier that the Coalition have been so decimated that it could take them years to be recover. It is nice to know that Australia has rejected Trumpism.
Yet, with this relief has come deep sadness, primarily at the loss of three Greens legends in Adam Bandt, Max Chandler-Mather and Stephen Bates, and also the failure of many other progressives to make important gains. While I am not a believer that electoral politics is the solution to the real problems facing our world, the success of Labor also leaves me certain that they will take the lesson that timidity and conservatism is the only way they can win, and therefore is the only strategy they will follow.
This past week has left me asking, is Trumpism gone forever in Australia? If it is, is the tepid electoralism of the ALP the trade off to ensure it remains vanquished? In this article I want to propose some thoughts to help answer these questions. None of these thoughts are fully formed. I, like everyone else, need to process further. But I hope to be able to convince myself, and hopefully you, that this isn’t the best we can hope for – because if we do try and settle, we risk ending up with Trumpism in the long run.
Despite a landslide victory for the ALP, anti-politics is alive and well in Australia
Labor’s win has been labelled a landslide. Based on seat numbers alone that is true – they’ll have significant majority in the House of Representatives, having more than double the seats of the Coalition. Their swings in the Senate will result in them picking up possibly four seats, pushing the right into minority in the upper house, likely for the next two terms.
Underneath this, however, lies a different story. Labor’s primary vote of 34.7% (at current writing) remains very low in historic terms, particularly for a winning party. While a swing towards them from 2022, it is still over 3% lower than their result in 2010 (37.99%), when Julia Gillard was plunged into minority. This vote is even lower than 2004, when Mark Latham (remember him?) was absolutely wiped out by John Howard, with a vote of 37.63%.
If we add this result to the terrible vote for the Liberals, the 2025 election represents the lowest ever vote for the two major parties. People are still turning away from the major parties on mass, seeking something different – whether the Greens, independents, far-right micro-parties, or even parties like Legalise Cannabis or the Victorian Socialists. This has been reflected by the long time it has taken for the count in many seats to be completed, with the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) saying they have dealt with an unprecedented number of complex and close races.
Anti-politics – a broad disdain and movement away from major parties – remains alive and well in Australia. This trend has thrown mainstream politics into turmoil around the world, giving rise to Trump in the US, and a range of far-right (and occasional far-left) parties across Europe and the UK.
In this election, Labor benefited heavily from our electoral system and the total collapse of the Liberal vote. As already noted by many commentators, it is this collapse that has handed them previously Greens-held seats (although the Greens need to examine why they lost votes in these seats as well) and ensure they could hold onto seats like Fremantle and Bean where they’ve been challenged by independents. Despite this, anti-political sentiment remained strong in this election and is not looking like it will go away any time soon.
Elections are no longer the same
I start with these statistics, because they show us that, no matter how much the mainstream media wants to tell us different, elections are no longer the same anymore in Australia, nor anywhere else in the world.
Globally, the crises of capitalism are hitting hard, and Australia is not immune. Our democracy is feeling this, as communities express their wrath against a failing political system. As Tim Hollo said:
“The world is on fire. We’re living in the midst of global crises, with political, economic and ecological systems crumbling. In that context, our electoral system is struggling to hold together, and the splintering of the vote is throwing up extraordinary and unexpected results”.
One of those, at this particular election, is a sizable Labor majority off the back of a historically low primary vote. Another is that a remarkable number of MPs who actually stand for something, who dare to be bold, whether we agree with them or not, have been ousted. Adam, Max and Stephen; Peter Dutton; quite possibly Jacqui Lambie.
Both of these outcomes are related to the fact that, at this moment of crumbling, the dominant forces of the status quo are clinging ever more tenaciously to their power. And they see the Greens (and to a lesser extent Independents), with our life-affirming vision of a more equal, more just, more ecological world, as the greatest threat to their power.
This trend is extremely important, for two reasons. First, while Labor has managed to get a huge majority this election, we cannot assume that this will hold, or even that it provides them a buffer for the next vote. With a more volatile electorate, huge swings can happen very quickly (remember Campbell Newman?), meaning that no majority of any size represents any form of long-term stability.
Second, as mainstream parties lose their old social bases, and as long as they continue to refuse to provide real solutions to our major social problems (which they wont do), they will continue to have diminishing authority while in Government. Even with a huge majority, the ALP enters this Government with the risk of losing its authority very quickly. This is particularly true as Albanese will no longer have Dutton as a foil to blame for not doing anything. Jonno Sriranganathan has put this possibly more succinctly than I can, arguing that:
“Labor’s big majority is nowhere near as solid as it might seem at first glance, and within this voter volatility, social movements can find opportunities to destabilise and transform oppressive and unsustainable systems from below”.
While we don’t know how it could go, the point is, that anything can happen. Albanese could pull something out of his hat and manage this next term extremely well. It is just, if not more, likely, however, that voters will soon start to ask why he isn’t doing anything, and his authority will diminish quickly, causing instability to reign.
This is something I feel that no one is really grappling with properly. While the world is changing, everyone – political parties, the media, social movements, all of us – are still clinging on desperately to how things used to work. Election results like this help us do that – despite the fragility of the result it is easy to talk about a Labor landslide, and a rejection of ‘extremist’ politics, whether from the left or right. But we cannot be lured into a false sense of security, because underlying these results certain patterns remain, and they will continue to manifest in our system for years to come.
We defeated Trumpism this time, but will that last?
This is where the risk lies. The most satisfying thing in this election was the feeling that the Australian population rejected Trumpism. Trump cast a large shadow over this election, with his tariffs announced only five days after the campaign started. The ALP ran a very strong campaign tying Dutton to Trump, and this worked. This vote was not a vote for Labor, but rather a vote away from Dutton, and specifically Trump.
Does this show that Australia is immune from such Trumpist politics?
It is worth really examining why Trump-style far-right politics has ballooned around large parts of the Western world, but not yet in Australia, despite the best attempts from Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer. I think there are lots of reasons for this. First is that Australia’s political culture and system is significantly different to the US. We are, at least now, a far-less individualistic society, and despite the serious problems we have here, our social schisms are not as deeply engrained as in America. The far-right in Australia are also extremely disorganised, with attention focused on Pauline Hanson, whose political heyday was just under thirty years ago, and Clive Palmer, who is a joke. Meanwhile, those who hate our political systems have had other places to go – from the Greens on the left, the independents in the centre, and a growing number of other parties. These well-organised and well-funded alternatives have done a decent job so far at sopping up people who would have otherwise gone to the far-right in other places.
The biggest reason, I think, however, is that the crises of capitalism and neoliberalism are yet to hit Australia in the same way as they have in the US and increasingly the UK, at least in the perception of the population.
Anyone who has visited the US, or even the UK, in recent years can attend to this. In a visit to the San Francisco in 2022 I was really taken aback by how starkly you could see the collapse of capitalism. In one of the US’ most ‘progressive’ cities, we watched on our first day as a homeless person was violently attacked by security guards at a supermarket for taking a bag of chips. Just down the road we witnessed people taking crack on the street. On other days, we walked through wealthy suburbs, where millionaire Silicon Valley types (and Nancy Pelosi) lived in mansions on top of the hill.
I’m not saying that such disparities don’t exist in Australia. Australia is facing a range of crises – from growing poverty rates, a fundamentally broken housing system, the real impacts of climate change, and a slow burn collapse of our health, education and welfare systems. But clearly, unlike the United States, and now the UK, such crises haven’t quite hit here as hard as overseas. Or at least our population is not perceiving those crises as strongly. We remain, at least at the moment, a seemingly relatively well-functioning society.
There are likely lots of reasons for this, ranging from our success in navigating the Global Financial Crisis (comparatively), the relative stability of our welfare system (despite consistent attacks) and the strength of parties such as the Greens that have been able to provide a left-wing alternative that hasn’t been truly available in the US or UK (the NDP plays a similar role in Canada).
But this is where we must be careful, because Australia will not be able to resist the collapse of capitalism forever, particularly if we do nothing about it. We are heading down the very same path of neoliberalism that the US, UK and Europe have all followed, a path driven by both major parties. And in doing so these crises will continue to hit us, and they will hit us just as hard. When they do our anti-political sentiment will get significantly more pronounced, stirring real turmoil in our democratic systems.
We can’t just hope that the ALP will now do amazing things
There is potential one way out of this future, and that would be for a Government, driven by social movements, to do real things to overcome these systemic issues. So, what prospect of the ALP in doing this? With a massive majority, many are now, rightfully, arguing that this finally gives the ALP the space to do some real, progressive, reform. Executive Director of The Australia Institute, Richard Dennis, for example has argued:
“For decades progressive voters have been told that Australians can’t have the nice things people in other developed countries take for granted because the Liberals and the Murdoch media would never accept such a progressive challenge”.
But the weekend’s results make clear that the hard right of Australian politics is a busted flush. It’s all hat, no cattle.
This is a good point to make. This is the time to be pushing the ALP to do more. With a vanquished Liberal Party and the public rejecting Trump-style politics, if we can’t take bold action now, when will we?
Yet, while I see this as a strong message to the send to the ALP, I do not think it will be heard. The ALP are not conservative because they’re scared, the ALP are conservative because they are conservative. The ALP does have roots as a social-democratic party. Yet, this changed in the 1980s. As Elizabeth Humphrys has clearly shown, during the Hawke and Keating era, the ALP were the main instigators of neoliberal policy in Australia. This was in large part as neoliberalism was the only global solution presented as being available to deal with the economic crisis of the time. Global politics was going through a hegemonic shift, and parties had to either jump on the neoliberal bandwagon or face oblivion.
However, this fundamentally changed the ALP. At their core, the ALP, like the Democrats in the US and Labour in the UK, have become a party of neoliberals, and a massive Parliamentary majority is not going to change that. While always less neoliberal in their approach than the Liberals, the ALP are no longer the party of Whitlam, and are not looking like they want to become that party any time in the future.
Just look at the housing debate. Many have, rightfully, claimed that this election result gives the ALP the opportunity to finally do the essential tax reform required to fix the housing crisis – i.e. reforming or ending negative gearing and capital gains tax. Yet, if you look at the comments from Anthony Albanese, you’ll find that he’s not avoiding these options because he’s worried of the political blowback, but rather because he doesn’t see it as the solution. Albanese, alongside the rest of the ALP, have put all their eggs in the basket of supply, which, while a part of the solution, cannot be relied upon to solve the crisis overall. Such an approach works well for them politically, as it allows the party to look like they’re doing something on housing, while at the same time running with a policy that will be a boon for developers and investors.
Whenever given an option to do something on a tough issue, the Federal ALP chooses looking like they are doing something, while never being willing to do the genuine bold thing. We cannot expect this to change in this term.
We cannot give up on pushing for real systemic change
I am not saying we should not keep pushing them to be better, we have to. However, we need to give up the belief that they’ll one day just magically get better. We need to treat the ALP as they are, otherwise we’re going to continue to let them get away with bad policy.
Herein lies another massive risk. Australia has avoided Trumpism, for the moment. However, there is no guarantee that we will avoid it forever. The death throes of capitalism are coming for all of us, even if we are feeling the impacts in Australia later than the United States, the UK or Europe.
In the US, UK and Europe, it has been the far-right that have successfully capitalised on the pain that capitalism has caused so many. They have conducted a classic bait-and-switch, pretending they care for the working class and will solve their problems, while turning people’s anger at the system toward a grab-bag of ‘others’ – immigrants, people of colour, women, LGBTIQ people, etc. When the pain of capitalism comes for us, we have to ensure we are prepared so the right can’t take similar advantage here in Australia.
The biggest mistake we could make would be to give up on pushing for real systemic change, under some false belief that it is an election loser. We’re seeing this already with debates over why the Greens lost seats, with mainstream media agencies and the ALP, predictably, claiming that it is because the party went too radical. I’ve sadly seen this from progressive activists as well, who have claimed that to win House of Representative seats you must run to the centre. This is why so many climate activists have turned to campaign for tree-tory teal independents, while at the same time talking about the desperate need for systemic change. I’m deeply fearful of the role that social movements will play in the next three years as well. Many of these movements are already far too close to the Labor Party, and such a thumping (although not-that-thumping) win, may result in even further unwillingness to criticise them publicly.
This approach is wrong, first and foremost, because leftism only works when we stand up for what we truly believe. I’ve been immensely frustrated, for example, at journalists (and the Labor Party) talking about how the Greens position on Gaza was wrong because it cost them votes. No one, however, has asked whether that matters, and maybe we should stand up for things not because of votes, but because they are right. I stand up for Gaza because I’m opposed to genocide, not because it will be electorally successful. The moment anyone – political parties or social movements – start talking about moderating positions because of how popular they are, is the same moment we start losing the soul of who we are.
More worryingly, such talk opens up the potential for a turn to the far-right. People are not idiots, and many, even Labor, Liberal and Teal voters, know that we need real systematic change to solve the problems facing our society. That understanding will continue to grow and will result in even more turning away from the major parties. If, when that does happen, the left is talking about and supporting half-measures and slow change, we will get absolutely consumed by far right parties who talk about change, even if that is not what they actually offer. It will be at this moment that a populist figure will be able to rise, just like they have in the US and are currently doing in the UK, and suddenly Trumpism will be here. We are lucky we are not at that stage yet, but it is a real risk if we’re not ready when it arises. This is the thing we must avoid at all costs, and fighting for real systemic change is the only way we’ll be able to do so.
A conclusion of some sort
I understand that people are relieved that Dutton (or Temu-Trump) lost. I am too. But we absolutely cannot accept that a mid-range Labor Government is the best we can get in Australia. Instead, progressives must continue to push for the real systemic change we know needs to happen in this country. Otherwise, we risk a Trumpist revolution on our own shores.
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Dr Simon Copland is the Executive Director of Pedal Power ACT, Canberra’s oldest and largest cycling organisation. In his role Copland is advocating for a mass increase in investment in cycling infrastructure in the ACT. Simon completed his PhD in Sociology at the Australian National University (ANU), studying online men’s rights groups and communities ‘manosphere’. He has research expertise in masculinity, the far-right, online hate, and digital media platforms. He has a Masters in Science Communication.
Image credit. Feature image: Tonal Decay by André (2010) CC BY-NC-SA 2.0.