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Notes -
Dutton was certainly kneecapped, like most right-wing leaders in 2025, by the extreme unpopularity of Trump, but I would emphasise also that Dutton's personal brand was always awful. He just puts people off, and while some of that is not his fault (it's unfair to point out the alopecia, but I think it was a factor), some of it was to do with the way he'd spent a long time building a reputation as this hardline police officer.
Albanese is quite good at projecting an image of himself as a boring moderate, and this is a time for boring moderates. Trump created a vision of chaos overseas, while Albanese looks like stability. As a rule, when Albanese tries to gesture towards big, large-scale or symbolic reforms he fails (most famously with the Voice), but I think he has learned from that. He beat Scott Morrison with a small target strategy, and even with Dutton, it was mostly a matter of projecting competence, not walking into any landmines, and trusting that the political winds were blowing his way. Albanese is not an ambitious politician by any means, and is obviously a party man at his core, but that was what the Australian people wanted. No chaos, please, no big reforms, just keep working on trying to fix cost-of-living.
The Coalition is absolutely in crisis at the moment. Both partners are having troubles with leadership, they've threatened splitting up twice and got back together at the last minute, and as you say, One Nation are crushing them. As of last month, on their signature issue, immigration, One Nation poll better than both major parties combined:
Does this mean the One Nation will replace the Coalition as the Opposition in Australian politics? I doubt that myself. Much of the reported polling surge for One Nation is disaffected Coalition voters. I expect the Coalition to eventually pivot in enough of an anti-immigration direction to win most of that back. But it will probably be a long and difficult path back to power for them, because the older, Howard-style Liberal fusion is not going to work any more.
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