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April 19, 2025
Saturday 19 April 2025
Dennis Shanahan
The Australian
The 2025 federal election has the potential to deliver a patchwork of surprise results electorate by electorate that confounds the national polls and ushers in a fundamental, long-term shift towards minority federal governments.
There is no doubt at the mid-point in the campaign that the likeliest outcome is a minority Labor government – exactly what it was at the start of the campaign.
The ALP and Coalition are on the same low primary support they had at the end of the 2022 campaign when Anthony Albanese fell over the line of majority government by only two seats and with a record low primary vote.
According to the latest Newspoll the only party that has improved its position on the 2022 poll is One Nation, which has almost doubled its primary vote – from 5 per cent to 8 per cent – as it appears to attract disillusioned Coalition voters. It is clear Labor is not picking up lost Liberal votes.
All the public polling has Labor just far enough in front on a two-party-preferred basis after a notional distribution of preferences to claim favouritism to win.
But what has been a historical trend of falling support for the main parties and a loss of the rusted-on voters is being accelerated at this election.
The two-year debilitating effect of the Covid pandemic and three years of inflation have fuelled a cost-of-living crisis.
When this is added to the popular repudiation of the Prime Minister’s Indigenous voice to parliament referendum, what you have is a simmering resentment with the main parties that threatens to consolidate smaller parties and to create a new class of independents. It’s not just the Greens and teal Climate 200 independents eating away at the Labor and Liberal vote, respectively, but also a threat from new players and a revival of some old ones.
In western Sydney where true independent Dai Le captured Labor’s safe seat of Fowler at the 2022 election and looks likely to hold it, other conservative independents are running hard and seeking to benefit from the anger in traditional Labor seats.
Independent Matt Camenzuli, a former Liberal who is standing against Energy Minister Chris Bowen in the western Sydney seat of McMahon, says people feel they have not been listened to for too long and are thinking about changing from “voting Labor by autopilot”.
Camenzuli, who has been campaigning in McMahon since January, tells Inquirer: “People are feeling exactly the same way as they did with the voice referendum, not being heard or their views being represented. National polls are not reflecting the voters’ mood. I don’t think there’s a safe seat in the whole country.”
Labor faces anger in its old constituency among blue-collar workers in outer urban areas who feel crushed by years of inflation that forced a rise in the cost of unavoidable household needs such as fuel, energy, housing and food.
There is such cost-of-living pressure on so many people that neither Albanese nor Peter Dutton can move beyond offering cost-of-living relief in every shape and form, matching each other’s offers on tax cuts and help for homebuyers and renters.
Albanese says “no one will be left behind” and the Opposition Leader says people are in such significant financial pain that relief is prioritised over all else.
There is also a seed of revolt in traditional Labor strongholds sown by the heavy defeat of the voice, which was supported by all Labor MPs, corporate leaders, the media and academic elites. The outer suburbs and regions, which voted strongly against the voice, are the same areas feeling the full brunt of the inflation crunch.
Economists and commentators criticising the vast handouts and uncontrolled spending of billions of dollars from both sides are seen as part of the same elite that didn’t listen or care for the great unwashed who were worried about the impact of the voice and who are even more worried about making ends meet.
While Dutton targets these outer suburban Labor electorates in Sydney and Melbourne, the Coalition faces its own challenges – not only from teals in the affluent seats but also from Liberals who look to the Coalition to provide leadership on its traditional strengths of economic management and national security.
Talking to different constituencies that want different things is a difficult task at any time.
Dutton told Inquirer in an exclusive interview for The Australian on Wednesday that his aspiration, if elected, was to introduce real tax reform in the manner of John Howard and Peter Costello and slay the dragon of bracket creep, which destroyed incentive, in the personal income tax system.
“Having moved around the country for the past three years I can see that people are in a very significantly difficult spot,” Dutton says. “There are families who are pulling kids out of low fee-paying schools, people who aren’t insuring their homes, or decide to run the risk of not insuring their car because they just haven’t got the money in their budget. So there is a need to provide support to people now to help them through this cost-of-living crisis that the government’s created.”
Coalition campaign spokesman James Paterson and Nationals leader David Littleproud point to what they say are “under the radar” reactions from voters in suburbs and regions that belie Labor’s lead in the polls and back the view the election could be decided on a seat-by-seat basis. Of course the Coalition, after a drop in its primary vote in the polls since the start of the campaign and the fall in support for Dutton relative to Albanese, will argue there is a quiet part of the electorate that will make itself known on polling day, but where the leaders are travelling suggests concern about the marginal seats.
Paterson says in one day Dutton campaigned in three Melbourne seats – McEwen, Hawke, and Gorton – which are all Labor. On the same day Albanese campaigned in the Labor seats of Franklin in Tasmania and Cooper in Victoria.
“Now your most scarce resource in the campaign is your leader, and it’s a very strange thing to send your Prime Minister to safe Labor-held seats if you’ve got no concerns at all. So perhaps the Greens are surging in Cooper and they are in danger of losing it there,” he tells Inquirer.
“Perhaps the independent in Franklin is in grave danger of taking the seat off Julie Collins there, and that could be a very big upset.”
Littleproud says the national polls are not reflecting “the hyper-local campaigns that are taking place” outside the more affluent inner-city suburbs and internal polling taken in the outer areas is picking up support for the Coalition’s cost-of-living relief, especially on petrol excise.
In western Sydney, Camenzuli, whom independent polling has put at 41 per cent support in McMahon, double that of Bowen on 19, says: “I think people have got to the point where they have stopped listening to Team Blue and Team Red offering them bribes. People are not silly, and energy bills are the basic problem and they don’t want energy rebates, they want lower energy costs.”
In the neighbouring electorate of Watson, held by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke, popular independent candidate Ziad Basyouny, a Muslim but not a candidate for the Muslim Vote, has put Labor and the Liberals at the bottom half of his how-to-vote card.
Basyouny, an Egyptian-born GP trying to unseat one of Labor’s most senior figures, says the biggest issues are undoubtedly the cost of living and access to healthcare. But he says the Gaza-Israel conflict will have a big role in western Sydney seats.
Because of the large margins of the Labor-held seats it is not expected the sitting MPs will be ousted, but preference flows will be disrupted and unpredictable.
Albanese is confident of victory and Dutton says there is a pathway for a Coalition win, but the leaders’ campaigning strategy suggests both camps believe there will be upsets and unpredictable results in a campaign Jim Chalmers has declared will “tighten”.
In 2010 Julia Gillard’s Labor government lost its majority; in 2016 Malcolm Turnbull’s Coalition government won by just one seat; after the 2019 election Scott Morrison’s Coalition government slipped into a minority after resignations; in 2022 Albanese’s Labor government won a majority of just two and in 2025 the expectation is that if the Albanese government returns it will be as a minority.
During this time the number of independents and crossbenchers has grown to record numbers and, with the major parties, including the Greens, facing low support and seat losses it is clear minority government is likelier to become the norm.