Australia’s right wing government falls: Scott Morrison concedes to ALP’s Anthony Albanese

The Aus­tralian Labor Par­ty is set to form the next gov­ern­ment in the world’s sixth largest coun­try after vot­ers oust­ed Prime Min­is­ter Scott Mor­ri­son and his right wing gov­ern­ment from pow­er, end­ing almost a decade of con­ser­v­a­tive rule.

Labor leader Antho­ny Albanese is expect­ed to be the coun­try’s next Prime Min­is­ter, but because votes are still being count­ed, it’s not yet clear whether he will have a Labor major­i­ty to gov­ern with, or whether he will need the sup­port of oth­er par­ties to have a work­ing major­i­ty in Parliament.

“It was an his­toric night in Aus­tralian pol­i­tics, with the Lib­er­al par­ty los­ing not only gov­ern­ment, but those tout­ed as its future,” The Guardian’s Aussie team said in its sum­ma­ry of what looks like a seis­mic event in the coun­try’s polit­i­cal his­to­ry. “Antho­ny Albanese cap­tained the Labor par­ty back into pow­er after nine years in the wilder­ness of oppo­si­tion; Greens leader Adam Bandt hailed a ‘greenslide’ as the par­ty record­ed its best-ever elec­tion result; and a slew of inde­pen­dents were swept into pow­er, deliv­er­ing the largest cross­bench in Aus­tralian history.”

“There may have been lots of swirling cur­rents but the results of the fed­er­al elec­tion were over­whelm­ing­ly that 2022 was, final­ly, the cli­mate elec­tion,” said ABC’s Lau­ra Tin­gle in an analy­sis of the ini­tial results.

“I always believed in Aus­tralians and their judge­ment and I’ve always been pre­pared to accept their ver­dicts… Tonight, they have deliv­ered their ver­dict, and I con­grat­u­late Antho­ny Albanese and the Labor Par­ty and I wish him and his gov­ern­ment all the very best,” said Mor­ri­son, who acknowl­edged that he’d been beat­en fair and square. Mor­ri­son fur­ther stat­ed that he believes elec­tions are an oppor­tu­ni­ty for both the win­ners and the losers to show humility.

“I say to my fel­low Aus­tralians: Thank you for this extra­or­di­nary hon­or. Tonight, the Aus­tralian peo­ple have vot­ed for change. I am hum­bled by this vic­to­ry. And I am hon­ored to be giv­en the oppor­tu­ni­ty to serve as the thir­ty-first Prime Min­is­ter of Aus­tralia,” said Albanese in a vic­to­ry speech.

“My Labor team will work every day to bring Aus­tralians togeth­er. And I will lead a gov­ern­ment wor­thy of the peo­ple of Aus­tralia. A gov­ern­ment as coura­geous and hard­work­ing and car­ing as the Aus­tralian peo­ple are themselves.”

Albane­se’s win was pow­ered in part by a swing in Labor’s favor in West­ern Aus­tralia (WA), which shares an abbre­vi­a­tion with the State of Wash­ing­ton in the Unit­ed States, where NPI’s phys­i­cal head­quar­ters is located.

Polling has long sug­gest­ed that Mor­ri­son and his Lib­er­al-Nation­al coali­tion were vul­ner­a­ble, but Mor­ri­son was able to ride to vic­to­ry three years ago when polling indi­cat­ed that the ALP might win, and Mor­ri­son was hop­ing to repeat that feat.

But vot­ers said no. Now Mor­ri­son is out. He has con­ced­ed the elec­tion and will step down as Lib­er­al-Nation­al leader. Inter­est­ing­ly, he plans to remain in Par­lia­ment, at least for the time being. Labor, mean­while, is out of the polit­i­cal wilder­ness after spend­ing most of the 2010s as Her Majesty’s Opposition.

ALP’s win, and the ascen­dan­cy of the Greens, will hope­ful­ly result in Aus­tralia tak­ing a more pro­gres­sive path in the next few years. Mor­ri­son and his team, includ­ing Barn­a­by Joyce, sim­ply weren’t inter­est­ed in imple­ment­ing pol­i­cy direc­tions to aggres­sive­ly tack­le the ever-wors­en­ing cli­mate crisis.

“An Albanese Labor Gov­ern­ment will work to pro­tect the Great Bar­ri­er Reef from the threats of cli­mate change and poor water qual­i­ty,” reads a plat­form plank / man­i­festo seg­ment on ALP’s cam­paign web­site. “We will work with local com­mu­ni­ties to restore the creeks and rivers that run through our com­mu­ni­ties and we will dou­ble the num­ber of Indige­nous Rangers work­ing to pro­tect some of our most pre­cious places, like the Daintree.”

“Sad­ly, Australia’s envi­ron­ment is in cri­sis, but the Mor­ri­son Gov­ern­ment don’t have a plan to fix it, in fact the Lib­er­als and Nation­als have cut envi­ron­men­tal pro­tec­tion resources and have aban­doned threat­ened species, leav­ing the koala with­out a plan to pro­tect them from extinc­tion, for years.”

Cli­mate advo­cates are cheer­ing Mor­rison’s down­fall, say­ing it’s about time.

“Right around the coun­try, we’re see­ing those that have strong cli­mate poli­cies being reward­ed. Aus­tralians have giv­en the new gov­ern­ment a man­date for strong action on cli­mate change. It’s time for a rad­i­cal reset a time to change course,” said Cli­mate Coun­cil CEO Aman­da McKenzie.

“For a long time, Aus­tralia has been a cli­mate lag­gard. Frankly, it has been embar­rass­ing,” said Andrew For­rest, the exec­u­tive chair­man of Fortes­cue Met­als. “Our chil­dren deserve our lead­er­ship, our under­stand­ing of sci­ence, and they haven’t had it. Aus­tralia has the high­est per capi­ta coal emis­sions in the G20 – and in the world – at 5.34 tonnes of CO2 [car­bon diox­ide] per year. The aver­age Aus­tralian emits five times more CO2 from coal pow­er than the aver­age per­son glob­al­ly, and almost two times as much as the aver­age per­son in China.”

Reac­tion from out­side Aus­tralia to the elec­tion results has been lim­it­ed so far because votes are still being counted.

How­ev­er, British Prime Min­is­ter Boris John­son was quick to con­grat­u­late Albanese, even though Mor­rison’s defeat leaves him as “the only AUKUS leader from the con­ser­v­a­tive side of pol­i­tics,” as AFR’s Hans van Leeuwen put it.

In Paris, French offi­cials were cel­e­brat­ing Mor­rison’s down­fall open­ly. French Pres­i­dent Eman­nuel Macron and his lead­er­ship team remain very upset about Mor­rison’s tear­ing up of the sub­ma­rine deal between France and Australia.

“I can’t stop myself from say­ing that the defeat of Mor­ri­son suits me very well,” said depart­ing French For­eign Min­is­ter Jean-Yves Le Dri­an, who is hand­ing pow­er over to Cather­ine Colonna.

New Zealand’s Labor gov­ern­ment says that Prime Min­is­ter Jacin­da Ardern has spo­ken to Albanese and is very much look­ing for­ward to col­lab­o­rat­ing.

The White House has­n’t yet com­ment­ed on Albane­se’s vic­to­ry, but it prob­a­bly will with­in hours. As it so hap­pens, Pres­i­dent Biden is in Asia for a series of events that includes the Quad Lead­ers’ Sum­mit at the Kan­tei Palace in Tokyo, Japan.

The Quad con­sists of the Unit­ed States, Japan, India, and Australia.

“In the after­math of the Earth­quake off the Coast of Suma­tra and Tsuna­mi Dis­as­ter in the Indi­an Ocean, Japan, Aus­tralia, India and the U.S. formed a Core Group to lead the inter­na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty’s sup­port,” says a web­site cre­at­ed by Japan­ese Prime Min­is­ter Kishi­da Fumio’s government.

“The four coun­tries have been pro­mot­ing prac­ti­cal coop­er­a­tion in var­i­ous areas, includ­ing qual­i­ty infra­struc­ture, mar­itime secu­ri­ty, counter-ter­ror­ism, cyber secu­ri­ty, and human­i­tar­i­an assis­tance and dis­as­ter relief, with the aim of real­iz­ing a ‘Free and Open Indo-Pacif­ic (FOIP).’ ”

The first in-per­son Quad Lead­ers Sum­mit was held last year in Wash­ing­ton, D.C., host­ed by the Unit­ed States. It is now Japan’s turn to host, and con­se­quent­ly, Biden is in Asia to rep­re­sent the Unit­ed States and con­tin­ue the tra­di­tion that was begun last year. As a con­se­quence of this week­end’s vote, Albanese will be going to the sum­mit to meet with Biden, Modi, and Fumio instead of Mor­ri­son. (In Aus­tralia, pow­er is hand­ed over much more quick­ly than it is here in the Unit­ed States, where months go by in between Elec­tion Day and Inau­gu­ra­tion Day.)

Biden and Albanese ought to hit it off and get along quite well, as they have many shared val­ues and chal­lenges. Albanese was very com­pli­men­ta­ry to Biden after the Pres­i­dent was pro­ject­ed to have won the 2020 pres­i­den­tial elec­tion in the U.S., offer­ing warm con­grat­u­la­tions and good wishes.

Biden’s rela­tion­ship with Mor­ri­son was not strained and the admin­is­tra­tion stood ready to work with who­ev­er won the Aus­tralian elec­tion. But on many issues — like cli­mate — Albane­se’s pro­gres­sive agen­da is more aligned with Biden’s.

“There was sig­nif­i­cant frus­tra­tion with the Aus­tralian government’s posi­tion on cli­mate in the runup to COP 26 in Glas­gow last year and in advanc­ing the 2030 tar­gets. Australia’s com­mit­ments did not pass muster with John Ker­ry, the US cli­mate envoy, and fell short of the aspi­ra­tions of Pres­i­dent Biden for res­olute action by devel­oped coun­tries, espe­cial­ly those clos­est to the Unit­ed States,” not­ed Bruce Wolpe in a pre­elec­tion analy­sis for Pearls and Irri­ta­tions.

Aus­trali­a’s last set of Labor gov­ern­ments (which served from 2007 until 2013) were marred by infight­ing and lead­er­ship spills, which result­ed in Prime Min­is­ter Kevin Rudd get­ting dumped and then brought back a few years later.

Albanese is hop­ing to avoid that kind of dis­uni­ty, and is striv­ing to build a team that can hang togeth­er even in the face of dif­fi­cult circumstances.