RUBY:

So, Karen, welcome back to 7am. It’s great to have you on the show.

KAREN:

Thanks, Ruby. It’s great to be back.

RUBY:

Karen Middleton has known Anthony Albanese for more than 30 years – since before he entered parliament.

She’s watched his rise and documented the moments that have shaped the leader he is today.

And Karen says this election is going to change Anthony Albanese in ways that will change the country too.

KAREN:

It's different winning the second time. And when you win a second time, with a majority as massive as this, a landslide, really, is what we're talking about… I think that has an impact on a leader, how they think and what they might be prepared to do.

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RUBY:

From Schwartz Media, I’m Ruby Jones. This is 7am.

Today, author of Albanese: Telling it Straight Karen Middleton, on why Anthony Albanese won and what the next three years of Labor government will look like.

It’s Monday, May 5.

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RUBY:

So, this election is obviously a huge and historic moment for Anthony Albanese. He's been returned to government in a landslide, one of the best results that a Labor leader has ever achieved. You have followed Albanese's career for a very long time. You wrote his biography. So tell me, are you surprised by the strength of his victory over the weekend?

KAREN:

I haven't talked to anyone who isn't surprised about just how emphatic that victory has been.

Audio excerpt – Today:

“Wow, what about this? This morning he is waking up to a healthy, very healthy 88 seat majority government.”

Audio excerpt – BBC:

“Just talk us through, how expected was this result? I mean, slightly expected but not by this massive margin.”

Audio excerpt – Insiders:

“How do you reflect on what happened last night?”

Audio excerpt – Jim Chalmers:

“It's still sinking in, David. I mean, this was beyond even our most optimistic expectations.”

KAREN:

It's much bigger than I expected it to be. I was quite surprised at just how many seats they've won and just what a state the Liberal Party has been left in.

RUBY:

And three years ago, so in 2022, we were actually both at the Labor headquarters when he won that first election. But to get returned to government with this kind of majority is unusual, isn't it?

KAREN:

Yes it is. If you think back to, say, the John Howard victory in 1996 and then the one in 1998, he almost lost that second election. It was very close and this time, Anthony Albanese has dramatically increased his majority. So that is quite a different circumstance to the one we saw in 2022. And I think it does something to a leader winning a second time. Again, if you think back to John Howard, you got the sense from him, and I've got the since a little bit from Anthony Albanese as well, that there's a little tiny niggling thing in the back of their minds that when they win that first victory, that says that maybe it wasn't just them. Maybe it was because the other side had been in for a long time. The electorate was sick of the other guy, as it was in both cases. And so it isn't really until they win that second victory that they feel like that is an endorsement of them and their leadership and their policies, their strategy. And so, I think that's what you see now with Anthony Albanese.

RUBY:

And his re-election chances looked very different at the beginning of this year. There were several news polls that had the Coalition in the lead, 51 to 49, back in January. So do you think that those polls, they were an accurate representation of how people felt about Anthony Albanese at the beginning of the year? And, if so, what changed for him?

KAREN:

Yes, I think they were an accurate reflection insofar as people were really fatigued with the cost of living crisis, they felt like the government had been a little bit adrift and that things weren't changing, they weren't getting the attention and the support that they felt that they needed. And you'd seen the Opposition really being able to capitalise on that through last year and put the government on the defensive so that, you know, really, we came into the new year with the opinion polls suggesting that a Coalition upset victory was a real possibility. I think the Prime Minister had had some trouble communicating clearly last year. And what happened early this year is that he and his office really focused very, very strongly on the messages that they wanted to send in the lead up to this election. And they worked on that very intensely and I think what you have seen in the campaign period is the results of that work. He has managed to turn those polls around by being very, very disciplined with the messaging, making sure that what they had was a programme to offer the Australian people that was forward-looking, that was optimistic, that were centred around things that Australians cared about. And health, really, was the main anchor to their policy platform offering for this election and to connect all of that up to easing the cost of living burdens on Australians. And I think there were a number of things that happened, even as recently as throughout the campaign, not least Donald Trump and the way the opposition ran their campaign, that contributed. But there was a change in the way Labor and the Prime Minister and his team approached things that meant that they started turning those polls around right as they came into the campaign period.

RUBY:

So Labor clearly has a mandate now for the next three years and as many people are speculating with a majority like this for the term after that as well, potentially. So what do you think that Anthony Albanese is going to do with that?

KAREN:

Well, it's an interesting question, isn't it? Because he has a huge mandate and he has a huge backbench and he has the security of a huge backbench. And that means that he's got a lot of political capital, he can afford to do things, be perhaps a bit more bold. That was one of the criticisms that his own traditional constituents made of their Prime Minister and his government, that it was too cautious and wasn't willing to do enough in the old traditional Labor style. But I think one of the things Anthony Albanese will be very mindful of is that there's certainly a message from the electorate that you have to take people with you. So I don’t think he'll want to start floating policy ideas that haven't been properly ventilated with the public. Having said that, there are things that he has talked about as desirable objectives and achievements for Labor. And I think when he was asked during one of the debates in campaign period what his great legacy ur priority might be, he talked about universal childcare.

Audio excerpt – ABC:

Mr Albanese, what's the one big change you'd like to be remembered for?

Audio excerpt – Anthony Albanese:

Affordable childcare is one of the things that we're doing. We've already put measures in place.

KAREN:

So there'll be things like that, that he has spoken about as an ambition that you might see him pursue more vigorously in the second term.

RUBY:

And you mentioned earlier, you talked about how winning a second time changes politicians. You know Anthony Albanese well, how do you think that this will change him?

KAREN:

You know the Prime Minister's speech was a fascinating demonstration of the difference in three years. And the word that really stuck with me was confident. You know, he mentioned that in his speech, and I think that is what you will see from this Prime Minister now. Less defensiveness, more confidence. More of a sense that his strategy was rewarded and endorsed and that his personal approach, his role in the campaign, his public presentation, which we in the media have criticised so much and some of his own colleagues have as well, has improved. And I think the confidence you will see in Anthony Albanese is what's going to be very interesting to watch because that will dictate how much courage he has and what kinds of things he might be prepared to do with this huge mandate.

And he'll be thinking, I don't know necessarily about legacy in terms of his own personal impact, but he'll be thinking about what he can do to change Australia in a permanent way to make it a better place for everyone who lives there and he's particularly focused on the people who do it the hardest. I'm sure he'll be thinking of his late mentor, Tom Uren, from whom he learnt all of his political skills and I think he will want to be thinking that when he leaves politics, however far away that is, that he has made a change to Australia and he's been given the opportunity with this huge victory to really start to re-craft some things in Australia and maybe to make it a fairer and better place and I think that's going to be a fascinating thing to watch.

RUBY:

Coming up after the break - the risks of success.

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RUBY:

Karen, there has been a lot of talk about how bad Peter Dutton's campaign was, but there really was only five weeks in it. So how much of an influence do you think that campaign, and the mistakes that were made, had on the way that people voted? Or do you get the sense that perhaps people had already made up their minds about Dutton when he took over the leadership three years ago?

KAREN:

I think there's a cumulative effect of these things. So we know that Peter Dutton wasn't a popular figure in Australian politics. People had seen him as a fairly hardline guy and he has talked about himself, trying to soften out his image and get people to see the other side to him, so he's conscious of that. So I think there was that entrenched in the minds of Australians. And then they're, you know, they're wanting to be convinced that there are other reasons. If they have some doubts about him, they want to have other reasons to vote for him. And the problem he had was that he made some mistakes, he had to change his policy, he seemed to be inconsistent and that then fed into this sense that perhaps the Opposition wasn't ready for government and that was certainly the line that Anthony Albanese and his Labor team were pushing. So I think all of those things came together and it was some of the things in the campaign and the mistakes and the, sort of, sense of chaotic unpreparedness for the campaign, let alone for government, that reinforced some of those other concerns about about Peter Dutton that had been lingering around for people over the past three years.

RUBY:

And obviously it wasn't the election that the Greens were hoping for either. Adam Bandt, I don't know whether his seat has been called yet, but it was getting extremely close on election night. Max Chandler-Mather has lost his seat. How do you think the Greens will be thinking about this?

KAREN:

I think this was not a good result for the Greens. They'll be trying to put a positive spin on it in that they may end up having a little more influence in the Senate, but they would be shocked, I think, that Adam Bandt has gone so close to losing his own seat, that they've lost two of those seats that they won so well at the 2022 election in Queensland. They are still in the hunt for one or two seats in Victoria and one or two elsewhere but, on the whole, you can't say that this is an emphatic endorsement of the Greens. And I think what this says is that they made a mistake in the way they approached their politics over the past year. They went very hard, like the Coalition, frankly, on what's been called grievance politics and attacking the government. They raised and went very hard on Gaza and some people saw that as divisive in the community. Others thought they were champions of the Palestinian cause. But I think they've realised from the public feedback that it wasn't going well for them and they had to pivot to a different kind of campaign. They've been emphasising keeping Peter Dutton out of office and they will claim some credit now for him having lost his own seat. And they switched more to focusing on economic issues and talking about holding the government to account but not being seen as being obstructionist and that was another problem they had. They didn't support some of the government's measures on housing, for example. So they've had a change late in the piece and that's probably helped their campaign but I think it says that you know there's a warning from the public that they weren't entirely happy and they certainly, the Greens certainly haven't done as well as they did last time.

RUBY:

Karen, as you've outlined, it was a bad result for the Greens, a terrible result for the Coalition. So, how do you think Labor are thinking about their own success and how they'll measure it in the next three years?

KAREN:

Well, the first thing they have to make sure of in achieving success is that they don't fall victim to hubris and arrogance and winning a victory as big as this one, that's a huge risk. So, for a start, they need to guard against that and I know that they're very conscious of that and, with an Opposition in disarray, it's easy to fall into that. So I think they have be super careful and I think they will think that if they can maintain public support in the opinion polls, achieve some change and do that in a way that doesn't see the public turn against them, then they will consider that as a success. And we know the Prime Minister likes to think ahead, you know, before the last election he said he had a strategy for two terms. He said that again in an interview during this campaign that he was thinking about the next term.

So he's always trying to lay the groundwork for the one after this one. He'll be trying to do that in a way that entrenches Labor as a party of long-term government as it was back in the days of Bob Hawke and Paul Keating because we really haven't seen long-term, sustainable Labor governments since then and, you know, we'll see how well they go in three years time when we're awaiting the next federal election.

RUBY:

Well, Karen, thank you so much for your time. It's been great having you back on the show.

KAREN:

Thanks Ruby. Thanks for having me.

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RUBY:

Also in the news…

Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots has failed to secure any seats in the House of Representatives or the Senate.

More than three quarters of votes have been counted in the house with only 1.9 per cent going to the fringe minor party.

Clive Palmer has claimed that he spent $60 million on the campaign.

And,

Former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has been diagnosed with prostate cancer.

The Nationals MP made the announcement today following his re-election to the seat of New England on Saturday night.

Joyce is due to have surgery today, saying he didn’t announce it earlier because he didn’t want to distract from his campaigning and urged all men to get tested.

I’m Ruby Jones, this is 7am. Thanks for listening.

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