Australian PM basks in win, vows ‘orderly’ government

SYDNEY: Australia´s left-leaning Prime Minister Anthony Albanese basked on 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.