Australia Election 2025: Why did opposition leader Peter Dutton lose?

After Anthony Albanese’s re-election as prime minister, Australia’s opposition leader, Peter Dutton, said to a crowd of supporters in Brisbane,” It’s no our day.”

Dutton, a 54-year-old social veteran who even lost his 24th-century parliamentary seats to a member from Albanese’s Labor Party, in fact had a raunchy day.

The primary minister made a shocking return to get a pleasant lot for a second term, which is a big gain. However, Dutton and his Liberal National Coalition suffer an even greater lost.

Initial impressions of Dutton appeared to be advantageous over the current prime minister, who was dealing with a declining living standard and poor scores. However, that benefit vanished as the campaign progressed, leading to a degrading battle.

A odd and contradictory campaign that failed to do enough to convince voters was at fault. However, it is unmistakable that the” Trump impact” plays a significant role in the situation.

Dutton was viewed as Australia’s Trump, whether or not he liked it, but as it turns out, Australians don’t seem to want that.

Dutton’s steadfast pro-conservatism, support for contentious immigration laws, such as sending asylum applicants to offshore detention centers, and his harsh criticism of China all sparked analogies with US President Donald Trump.

It’s a resemblance he has rejected, but the Coalition continued to pursue policies that appeared to have been taken from the Trump presidency.

Dutton claimed that if elected, he would reduce more than 40, 000 work in the public sector, according to some estimates. This brought up Elon Musk’s Doge, or Department of Government Effectiveness, which has reduced US bureaucracy, and brought it to mind. Afterwards, button reversed the strategy.

Jacinta Nampijinpa Price was actually chosen as the Coalition’s deputy secretary for performance. And it’s been a hot topic ever since pictures of her wearing a helmet with the words Maga, small for the well-known Trump tagline, Make America Great Once, have emerged.

None of this, and he was aware of it, was beneficial to Dutton. He unsuccessfully attempted to remove Trump’s darkness toward the end of the campaign, and he frequently told the audience that he didn’t recognize him during the last leaders ‘ debate before trying to answer questions about him.

According to Frank Mols, a professor in political science at the University of Queensland,” The Coalition will definitely regret issuing information that came across as supporting Trump and opposing the US Democrats.”

It became more difficult for the Coalition to portray itself as a safer pair of hands for the market once the investment industry started to decline in response to the confusion brought on by Trump’s taxes.

Voters ‘ concerns increased as a result of the chat of trade war and taxes. In the last week of fighting, it was evident that international politics had only grown more significant as a result of speaking to people across Australia. The BBC traveled to Perth in Western Australia and Melbourne in Perth.

Australia’s strategic ally with the US and its financial ties to China, its main trading partner, have long been in balance.

Any nation, including a US alliance like Australia, is in difficult position because of a US-China trade war, an unexpected White House, and other factors.

Could Dutton help with balance in these strange circumstances?

Dutton had much tried to persuade voters that he would be the one who would work best with Trump. He frequently cited his time as a government minister during Trump’s first term’s price conversations.

But ultimately, citizens weren’t convinced.

Dutton’s individual contradictory policies and Trump-like language and decisions appear to have alienated a populist base who is seriously uneasy about a new, turbulent world order.

After a disappointing result, LNP supporter Jitendra Prasad called the BBC’s” confusion” and said,” Labor had a strong and very organized campaign.”

The nation’s swings toward Labor were evidence of this, which produced a very swift and decisive outcome.

At the conclusion of the battle, Dutton also embraced the right-wing One Nation Party, which some Coalition people had criticized as the wrong course of action. And it sounded like it wasn’t helping. He might have been hurt instead.

According to Ben Wellings, interact professor of politics and international relations at Monash University,” they only read the rooms incorrectly.”

It was one of the things we’ve always said about Australia’s electorate:” It’s a little C conventional, and maybe the extreme right message was just too radical and ostensibly disruptive.”

Dutton’s was not a soft campaign, which also didn’t help.

There were errors, such as when he accidentally hit a cameraman with a football, and costly errors, such as when he incorrectly estimated the cost of an egg during an election debate ( his guess ( A$ 4.20 ) was actually half the price.

It wasn’t a good appearance in a primary election with a strong cost-of-living design.

Jacob Broom, a professor in politics and policy at Murdoch University in Perth, says that” Dutton has seemed more pleasant attacking Labor than offering a compelling alternative.”

” I believe Labor’s use of the term to suggest that the Democrats have opposed cost-of-living initiatives like the tax breaks that they proposed toward the end of the term has been successful.”

Dutton initially criticized Labour’s spending and tax relief, but he later said he would also implement tax rebates and large spending, including billion, to improve defense and repair a deteriorating people healthcare system.

But he also made promises of breaks. According to experts, this contradiction misled voters and made his campaign a flop.

He made plans for significant bureaucracy changes, including job cuts and the plans to stop work from home arrangements, and then rebuffed them. He claimed it was an error.

However,” the backflips on working from home and his confusion over public services cuts” complicated his information, according to John Warhurst, Emeritus Professor, Australian National University.

Some people think the lack of a clear plan was the outcome.

A Dutton’s own party part in his Dickson district told the BBC previously on Saturday,” I think individuals don’t realize Dutton’s policies.”

He wondered if Dutton’s assistance for atomic energy offered people, which analysts like Dr. Mols said might have turned things against him because American voters had never “warmed up” against the idea of nuclear energy.

In the end, the cost-of-living concern that dominated this election may have helped Labor concrete its claim that their was the more stable hand.

Another Dutton vote in the Dickson chair, Evanthia Smith, claimed she voted for Labor because she believed their candidate may improve access to healthcare and schooling.

Our Democratic family is suffering all over the country, including in my voter of Dickson, and I pledged to recover from below.

The group needs to go back to the drawing board and examine their laws, according to a follower in Brisbane to this effect. We must concentrate on the most common problems: housing and living costs; they are the biggest.