Labor Anthony Albanese to be Australia’s next PM as ruling coalition loses to independents

Australia’s opposition Labor Party will form the next government after nearly a decade out of power, with voters from across the spectrum rejecting Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s conservative Liberal-National coalition.

Speaking in Sydney just before 11pm local time, Mr Morrison described the results as “humiliating” and said the Australians “have delivered their verdict”.

Labor leader Anthony Albanese, who grew up as the son of a single mother on a Sydney council estate, will be the country’s 31st prime minister. However, it is unclear whether Mr Albanese heads a majority or minority government, due to a national trend towards climate-focused independent candidates and smaller parties.

In one of the night’s most dramatic results, Liberal Deputy Leader and Treasurer Josh Frydenberg appeared on track to lose his seat to independent Monique Ryan, one of the “teal wave” candidates who have drawn voters from more conservative trend. frustrated with government scandals and lack of action on the environment.

Although it often bears the brunt of climate change, suffering some of the worst bushfires and flooding in recent years, Australia can be seen as remarkably aloof from environmental politics, with neither major party making a point of climate. key in this campaign.

The “teal wave” candidates, named after the color of their campaign, are betting that voters were in fact involved in this issue and have been proven right, winning several previous Liberal seats. The Greens also benefited from a move away from the main national parties, who doubled their number of seats in the lower house and also made gains in the Senate.

Morrison also appears to have suffered due to his unpopularity with women, with Liberal Senator Simon Birmingham telling ABC that gender was “clearly a factor” in the election outcome.

Last year, former Liberal Party employee Brittany Higgins came out as raped at Parliament House, setting off a wave of revelations. An independent investigation later found that sexual harassment was widespread in parliament and other government officials, with many women saying lawmakers were the worst offenders.

As the results were released on Saturday, Janine Hendry, who organized marches attended by tens of thousands in the wake of the scandal, said “the women of Australia have come together.”

“We have voted for integrity, equality and our climate,” he wrote on Twitter. “It is time to move towards greater inclusion and equality.”

Australian voters rank candidates according to a preference system which, unlike the Canadian simple majority model, allows people to choose independent and smaller party candidates without fear of wasting their vote.

While polls consistently showed Labor marginally ahead of the Coalition throughout the campaign, Morrison defied predictions in 2019 to pull off a “miraculous” victory, leaving few confident in counting until all were aired. the votes.

He will now bear the brunt of an angry Liberal Party, which has been in government since 2013. Morrison said he would step down as leader after conceding defeat on Saturday night, adding he took responsibility for the Coalition’s poor performance. .

“That is the burden and that is the responsibility of leadership,” he said.

With rising star Mr Frydenberg likely to leave parliament, the most likely next Liberal leader is arch-conservative Peter Dutton, who retained his Queensland seat. Speaking at his own muted victory event, Dutton said the match had “had a terrible day today”.

“We live in a wonderful country and we have many challenges ahead as a country,” he added.

China was the dominant foreign policy issue in the campaign, though there is little difference between the two major parties in how they would approach Beijing.

Mr. Morrison had assumed that a so-called “khaki election”, one focused on national security issues, would benefit him, only to be caught off guard by a security pact signed by China and Australia’s neighbor the Solomon Islands. Albanese accused the prime minister of allowing Beijing to gain ground in Canberra’s backyard and said the deal was a “major foreign policy flop” for Morrison.

One of Mr. Albanese’s first duties as prime minister will be to join the leaders of the United States, India and Japan in Tokyo on Tuesday for a meeting of the Quad, the increasingly important alliance that some say has the potential to becoming an “Asian NATO” and an important counterweight to China’s growing influence in the Indo-Pacific.

Voting is compulsory in Australia, and some 17 million people are expected to have turned out for Saturday’s election, queuing at polling stations where volunteers cooked “democratic sausages”, served on a slice of bread and topped with onions.

In the Lower House of Representatives, all 151 seats were up for grabs, while voters also chose 40 seats in the 76-member Senate.

More than half of the votes had already been cast by Friday night, with a record 8 million early votes in person and by mail, the Australian Electoral Commission said.

With reports by Salmaan Farooqui and Reuters.