SYDNEY: Australia’s left-leaning Prime Minister Anthony Albanese basked Sunday in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil.

Residents clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee Jodie Haydon visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and TV journalists.

Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt.

“We will be a disciplined, orderly government in our second term,” Albanese said, after scooping ice cream for journalists in a cafe he used to visit with his late mother. “We’ll work hard each and every day,” he promised, but took a quick break first for a Sunday afternoon visit to a craft brewery, Willie the Boatman, that serves “Albo Pale Ale”. Dutton, a hard-nosed former policeman—who critics tagged “Trump-lite” for policies that included slashing the civil service—endured the rare humiliation of losing his own seat.

US President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, and the chaos they unleashed, may not have been the biggest factor in the Labor Party victory—but analysts said they helped. “If we want to understand why a good chunk of the electorate has changed across the election campaign over the last couple of months, I think that’s the biggest thing,” said Henry Maher, a politics lecturer at the University of Sydney. “In times of instability, we expect people to go back to a kind of steady incumbent.”

The scale of Albanese’s win took his own party by surprise.

“It’s still sinking in,” Treasurer Jim Chalmers said. “This was beyond even our most optimistic expectations. It was a history-making night. It was one for the ages,” Chalmers told national broadcaster ABC.

But the win came with “healthy helpings of humility”, he said, because under-pressure Australians want “stability in uncertain times”. Albanese has promised to embrace renewable energy, cut taxes, tackle a worsening housing crisis, and pour money into a creaking healthcare system.

“The cost of living—it’s extremely high at the moment... Petrol prices, all the basic stuff,” human resources manager Robyn Knox told AFP in Brisbane. The 36-day campaign was a largely staid affair but there were moments of unscripted levity.

Tariffs impact

Donald Trump's stinging trade tariffs may have helped Australia's left-leaning prime minister snatch a resounding election victory Saturday, analysts say. Unlike Canada's Trump-swayed vote three days earlier, the US president was far from the biggest concern for voters who backed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, academics said.

But some said Trump nevertheless appeared to have a significant impact on the governing Labor Party's late turnaround in the opinion polls, and the emphatic election result. After trailing three months ago, Labor overtook opposition leader Peter Dutton's conservative coalition and led a string of polls up to election day.

Dutton's perceived "Trump-lite" policies -- such as axing public service jobs in a drive for government efficiency -- had turned some voters off, said Henry Maher, politics lecturer at the University of Sydney.

"Of course, there are other concerns -- cost of living, defense, health and everything else," he told AFP. "But if we want to understand why a good chunk of the electorate has changed across the election campaign over the last couple of months, I think that's the biggest thing."

Trump's unpopular 10-percent tariff on goods from longtime ally Australia, and the financial market disruption caused by his global trade policy, may have unnerved voters, Maher said.

"In times of instability, we expect people to go back to a kind of steady incumbent," he said.

The Australian public's confidence in its strongest ally, the United States, appears to have evaporated under Trump.

Only 36 percent of Australians trust the United States, according to an annual poll by the Lowy Institute -- down 20 percentage points from 2024.

Dutton, who lost his own parliamentary seat in the election drubbing, earlier this year described Trump as a "big thinker" and ‘shrewd’. - AFP