First of all: Thank you to all of our supporters and subscribers throughout the year, we cannot produce New Politics without your support. We wish everyone all the best for 2026 and beyond – even to our most ardent detractors and fiercest critics. We always have to channel the spirit of the 1914 Christmas Truce to remind ourselves that despite the differences that do exist in the world, we always need to find ways to resolve issues collectively. It can be done.

After its emphatic victory at the 2025 federal election, the Labor government finished the year in a position of overwhelming political dominance. Numerically and psychologically, it held all the advantages that any government could reasonably wish for. The parliamentary numbers clearly show this: there were so many Labor MPs – 94 – filling the chamber in the House of Representatives that members were forced to spill over onto the opposition benches, just to be able to sit down. It’s a reminder to the Liberal Party every time Parliament sits – it’s the Labor Party that has all the power, the authority and the electoral momentum – and, on paper at least or visually in Parliament, it’s a government that should be governing with a high level of confidence, and it’s not unreasonable to assume that it’s very well placed to secure another term, whenever the next election is held.

But despite its massive numerical advantage in Parliament, the central problem that defined Labor’s year was not the lack of authority, but a failure to translate that authority into decisive action. The government continued to govern as though it was in a fragile position, avoiding political risk and perpetually being anxious about a backlash, irrespective of where it might come from. There must be a confidence that exists within the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, on a personal level – how could there not be after winning the most comprehensive second-term election victory ever – but it’s just not evident in the performance and actions of this government. This is a government that is in a confident position, but not displaying much of that confidence.

What we can see instead is that familiar pattern of Albanese’s caution and compromise, highlighted by an ongoing and unhealthy attachment to bipartisanship with a rabble of a Coalition that now holds just 42 seats in parliament and is hopelessly divided. Throughout the year, Labor continued to behave as though a consensus with the Coalition was both necessary and a political virtue – and far more preferable to making deals with the Australian Greens – even when it’s been repeatedly demonstrated that this kind of goodwill is rarely reciprocated.

Whenever the Coalition holds office, it shows little interest in accommodating the wishes of Labor, treating it with open hostility and using the power of government to further its ideological objectives. In opposition, the Coalition has offered little in the way of constructive policy engagement, instead defaulting to the culture wars and division for its own sake, especially in the earlier parts of the year when Peter Dutton was the leader. Despite this, Labor remained deeply averse to being portrayed as reckless or radical, even as the political fortunes have shifted in its favour so decisively. And it’s this fear of negative framing that seems to be holding back the Labor government from using the massive opportunity that’s been provided to it by the Australian electorate.

There is a widely-held assumption in politics that the second year of a government’s term is when the more substantial change begins to materialise, when long-promised reforms begin to appear, and the type of policy changes demanded by the base of a party finally start to arrive. It’s certainly what the Howard government did in 1997, 2002 and 2005, and, in a system that has a three-year political cycle, it’s usually the middle year where these changes are bedded down, allowing the final year of a term to see these changes bear electoral fruit, just in time for the next election.

But it doesn’t happen by default – policies don’t just automatically appear out of thin air – they need to be actively created, argued for and forced through. Throughout 2025, Labor often appeared to be waiting rather than leading, happy to assume that the Coalition’s ongoing disarray would continue indefinitely, and that no credible alternative would emerge to challenge its dominance. For sure, this is what eventuated at the May election, and it’s fair to say that perhaps even Labor was surprised at the size of its comprehensive victory.

But political vacuums rarely remain empty for too long, and political parties that appear broken – such as the Liberal Party – can recover, sometimes it happens quickly under the right leadership and the right circumstances. New political alliances can also arise, reshaping the electoral landscape in ways that we can’t predict. While the prospect of teal independents consolidating into a formal party remains unlikely, such a development would instantly alter the political landscape, and create challenges not only for the Liberal Party, but for the Labor government as well. A demoralised and fragmented opposition is one thing; but an organised, well-funded and strategically competent alternative is something completely different. We’re not suggesting that this will happen, but there’s always a potential for it to happen.

Complacency has undone governments before, perhaps the best recent examples of this are the final terms of the Labor government after 1993, and the Coalition after 2004, when both of these long-term governments were expected to govern indefinitely, only to be turfed out in the subsequent elections. Labor itself was once written off as electorally irrelevant in the mid-1960s – similar to the way the Liberal Party is being written off at the moment – until a single figure by the name of Gough Whitlam emerged from the backbench and transformed the party’s fortunes.

This is an ongoing lesson of political history: the dominance that exists today can never be guaranteed tomorrow, and it’s always best to go for the maximum that can be achieved, while the power to do so is held. Political confidence that isn’t matched with a conviction, a grand ambition and bold action, can quickly fade into vulnerability, and this is something that the Labor government was veering towards during 2024. As we now know, this vulnerability didn’t cost Albanese at all, and the results are there for everyone to see – a massive 94 seat-victory out of the 150 seats on offer – but the big question will be whether the Labor government can now use the power that it has been granted by the electorate in a far better manner than it has displayed so far.

Waiting for the big bang that might not arrive

This end of year period always has to provide us with some optimism for the future – it’s the festive season for most people throughout Australia, it’s a time of goodwill and many of us wish each other all the best for the upcoming year, irrespective of which field we might come from, and who we might be offering those wishes to.

So, it is a bit harsh to be grumbling at this time of the year, but as this year comes to an end, it’s not clear what the Labor government is planning to do in 2026 – the famed “second-year” of the parliamentary term – and there isn’t a sense of the direction that we’re all going in. Nothing concrete has been outlined about what the government intends to do next year and that long-held belief that the second year of a term is when a government unleashes its boldest reforms is increasingly looking less like a plan and more like a comfortable political myth that will become true, only if we can all believe in it.

Of course, the role of government is to provide stability and competence, but simply continuing with the failed neoliberalist policies of the Coalition and stabilising those isn’t enough. Otherwise, what is the point of a Labor government if all it’s going to be is a placeholder that continues with the same, provides ministerial positions and employment for staffers, and not implement a true Labor agenda?

Recent history should temper expectations of the second-year big bang in policy reform. In 2023, the second year of Labor’s first term, significant things did happen, but few could be described as unqualified successes. The Voice to Parliament referendum failed decisively, exposing not only political miscalculation but a lack of preparation for the defeat. The National Anti-Corruption Commission was delivered after great anticipation and fanfare, only to be deeply disappointing in practice, led by a severely compromised Commissioner in Paul Brereton, who was unwilling to confront the very power the Commission was meant to scrutinise.

The Robodebt Royal Commission was an excellent one and laid bare possibly the most egregious abuses of executive authority in modern Australian history, yet there haven’t been any prosecutions arising from this scandal, reinforcing the sense that accountability remains a choice to be avoided for those who sit at the top of the political tree. Adding insult to the injury, Labor itself has adopted policies that are similar to the punitive mechanism of Robodebt – sure, they might not be as severe – but it has thrown away most of the moral advantage that the government held on this issue.

If 2026 is to be the “big, bold” year that supporters are expecting – and the electorate – there is a real risk it will be repeat of 2023: a year in which there was a lot of political activity but it was mistaken for achievement, and just instigating these processes was considered to be a sign of progress when there wasn’t much at all. Across climate policy, housing affordability, integrity and social policy, the movement has been slow, incremental and cautious, the same attributes that Albanese has carefully curated for his own political personality. While it’s always possible that this will change, past behaviour offers little reason for confidence. Governments always reveal who they really are early – Hawke, Howard, Rudd, Abbott, Morrison – and don’t suddenly reinvent themselves midway through a term.

While it might not be so obvious to the electorate, some of this inertia is highlighted through Labor’s uneasy relationship with the Australian Greens. In his recent Quarterly Essay, ‘The Good Fight: What Does Labor Stand For?’, the former Labor staffer Sean Kelly suggested that Labor sees a reflection of itself through the Greens, as though there has been a de facto split within the party, and can see what they could be, if only they could be less constrained and less fearful – even if we do take into account that there are far more responsibilities of government, compared to that of a minor party that can make much as much noise at possible from the sidelines, without ever having to worry about implementing their own policies directly into legislation.

There seems to be an implicit recognition that many of the Greens’ positions sit neatly within Labor’s own historical background, certainly on the left of the party, particularly on climate, social justice and economic equity. Yet rather than embrace this confluence and accommodate the areas where there are the shared ideas, Labor appears to be very keen to distance itself from the Greens, fearing that becoming too close ideologically would result in electoral punishment at the next election. Perhaps this might be performative, such as when many within the Labor Party, including the Prime Minister, frequently disparage “the Greens political party”, as if to suggest that Labor itself is somehow not a political party at all, and never gets itself involved in the game of politics.

On issues that affect the entire community, there is a strong case for deeper co-operation – as there was on the long-stalled environmental legislation that was passed towards the end of the year – rather than constant differentiation between the two parties, which often results in the Labor government preferring to negotiate legislation with the Coalition. Whether such co-operation with the Greens will materialise in 2026 is doubtful, but it remains one of the few pathways through which Labor could meaningfully push forward reform without soiling its political identity, because it’s certainly not going to get approval for policies that the Coalition considers are antithetical to its own ideology.

Again, to be fair – after all, we have just started off on the holiday period – there is a broader sense of fatigue hanging over the year just gone. But, despite 2025 feeling like it has been unusually long – and we did check, it had the same amount of days as every other year that has preceded it – there are still two more full years to go before the next election. Of course, politics can move far quicker than governments expect – there’s always the events that interfere with the rhythms of the political cycle, circumstances change, and assumptions also have to change when new facts arrive on the scene.

We also have to see how the disturbing politicisation of the Bondi massacre in December plays out, and it’s evident that the Liberal Party – egged on by the conservative and extremist elements of Zionist groups in Australia – will prise this issue open as much as possible, just at a time when more sensible heads need to prevail. It is unfortunate, but we have to remember that the Liberal Party is a party of right-wing opportunists and, in the absence of policies and in electoral dire straits, it will grab any issue for political leverage, even if it’s a national tragedy and using people’s grief to gain that leverage, or if it needs to act at the behest of a foreign government, in this case, the state of Israel.

It’s a cliché, but a week is a long time in politics. Power can sometimes be a façade, egos in politics are fragile, and what appears to be certainty can sometimes just be an illusion. And the political fortunes can change very quickly and when we least expect them to change. The Labor government enters 2026 in a position of strength, but history is littered with governments that misunderstood what that strength meant, and either misused that power, or fell into a heap of complacency. What happens next will depend less on what Labor hopes will happen, and more on whether it decides to act in a far more coherent and assertive manner that its parliamentary dominance suggests.

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Other articles from The Year in Review series

Throughout the year, political journalism in Australia’s mainstream media continued to move away from its role of holding power to account, and closer to the role of public relations for conservative interests. That relationship between politics and the media has always been problematic, shaped by “mateship” and relationships, who gets the access and who is left behind and given the cone of silence. Sure, we can argue that it’s always been like this, but it’s a situation that’s getting worse with each year that goes by.

Far too often, stories from media outlets are created to accommodate the narratives politicians want to tell, not a test of whether those narratives are true or not. This kind of journalism is stenography: just repeating of the official lines from government – and more often than not, the opposition – and it’s a narrative that’s rarely challenged.

And it’s a stenography that exists as a form of censorship, where repeating what the government has said – rather than interrogating and interpreting what they’ve said – means that the access for that journalist to ministers continues, and the dissenting media voices that are considered to be too inconvenient or too controversial, are quietly excluded and managed away. And this exclusion means the public is left with a narrow version of reality, one that provides cover for those in power, and marginalises those who interrogate this power.

A clear example of this occurred in October, when the National Press Club cancelled a speech by the US Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Chris Hedges, who was scheduled to speak about the conduct of the mainstream media in relation to the killing of Palestinian journalists by the state of Israel – an issue which has enormous significance, not only for journalists but for anyone who is concerned with press freedom and how Israel is silencing the truth.

While it seemed like a strange decision to initially schedule Hedges, and then quickly retract the invitation, the decision was made even worse – and more obvious – when it was revealed that the National Press Club is sponsored by major global military corporations who are also providing military hardware and software directly to Israel. And while the National Press Club didn’t say much more about this, and even lied about Hedges being scheduled to speak in the first place, the message was clear: certain topics – especially when it comes to Israel – and certain critics, threaten the relationships that the mainstream media is just not willing to jeopardise.

The implications of this cancellation are immense. When the media refuses to host or seriously engage with criticism of power – particularly in those matters that involve war, state violence and the deliberate targeting of journalists – it needs to forfeit its claim to be independent. Always.

This issue was then further exposed in an on-air exchange between the ABC journalist David Marr and Hedges – invited to speak on Late Night Live – which epitomised a deeper philosophical divide within journalism itself. In this exchange, Marr – obviously on the side of the mainstream media – defended the routine practice of reporting official explanations from the state of Israel, arguing that journalists are obliged to relay what institutions such as the Israeli Defense Forces claim, even when those claims are self-serving and, in many cases, an outrageous lie. Hedges countered by saying that the obligation of journalism is not to report on the excuses provided by either side of a conflict, but to report the truth, especially when official narratives obscure or attempt to sanitise the violence that they are committing.

At the heart of this disagreement is not an arbitrary argument about positioning of headlines or incorrect attributions, but a more fundamental question: is journalism satisfied with simply recording power’s version of events, or is it responsible for interrogating it and holding that power to account? It’s what professional journalists are taught to do when they do their high-falutin courses at universities, so why do they keep failing to perform this basic duty?

This is the core failure of the mainstream media. By preferring access to politicians over independence, and choosing official voices instead of the more critical ones, journalism narrows the field of debate and dulls down its own moral duty to report the truth. The result is not neutrality and independence, but complicity: a media culture that silences dissent, protects those who disseminate dubious or misleading narratives, and provides cover for powerful interests – whether this is in foreign policy, gambling reform, or big business – and one that is not worthy of our support.

The quiet erosion of trust

Alongside the many failures of political journalism sits another closely related problem: that casual and informal link between power, money and media that has become normalised in Canberra. It was revealed during the year that the Australian Parliament Sports Club hosts MPs, lobbyists, staffers and journalists to socialise and come together under the guise of sport and recreation. On the surface, this might all sound very harmless, and even healthy – despite how much the public likes to complain about it, politics is a stressful business, and there is nothing inherently wrong with politicians exercising together, playing sport and finding ways to de-stress. But this is a front: the club itself was formally registered as a lobby group, with the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, listed as its president!

Albanese quickly mumbled something about the presidency of the club being a formality, and he wasn’t even aware of it – if that’s the case, what else is he unaware of – but a sitting Prime Minister presiding over a registered lobbying club is not a technical oversight or a quirk of the bureaucracy; it’s a complete distortion of the democratic process.

Lobbying is supposed to be a regulated activity because the practice itself involves overt attempts to influence government decision-making. When the head of government is formally a part of that structure – the prime minister being lobbied by a group that he is actually the president of – the distinction between governing in the public interest and managing private access to important figures within government is totally compromised. Yet the reaction when caught out was indifference: Albanese started claiming that it really wasn’t such a big deal, and it was treated as a normal activity in politics, something that we should all be unconcerned about.

The obvious question is why such a club like this would need to exist at all. If the purpose was genuinely social or recreational, there would be no reason for lobbyists to be included, let alone for the organisation to be registered as a lobbying group. Politicians and their staff exercising together is one thing but the inclusion of professional lobbyists – whose sole purpose is to influence policy outcomes on behalf of their big business clients – fundamentally changes the nature of this club.

Politics is as much about perceptions as it is about intentions. Even the most honest politician can’t escape the corrosive effect of socialising with vested interests behind closed doors, and the appearance of impropriety – whether it’s real or not – poisons the public trust. And once that trust is lost, the damage has already been done and it’s hard to get that trust back.

Democracy itself depends on the confidence that the system is fair, and not just relying on the MPs who are at the heart of that democracy to wave us all along and tell us that everything will be alright, when it’s clearly not. The same logic needs to be applied to political fundraising dinners – and events such as the annual Midwinter Ball in Canberra – where access to ministers is effectively sold to those who can afford it. These events are routinely defended as inoffensive and benign, and we are constantly told that ministers don’t change their views simply because someone paid for a meal.

Again, this totally misses the point, even if it was true (and by the way, it’s not). Influence doesn’t need to be crude or overt to be real – paying for the access itself is the influence, where it creates a hierarchy in which corporations and wealthy individuals can speak directly to power, and influence that power, while everyone else is held back through the many layers of bureaucracy.

In theory, ministers’ offices exist to manage this imbalance. Staffers can manage requests, resolve mundane matters, and ensure that the minister’s time is reserved for issues that genuinely require their input, and it’s a system that works when access is based on need and the merits of those requests. But it’s a system that fails when money becomes a small shortcut to power, and it’s a process that undermines our democracy and the principle of equal representation.

This is why donations and lobbying needs to be carefully regulated and reformed, if not removed altogether. Banning private political donations – this has been enforced in South Australia and shows that it can be done – reduces dependence on wealthy backers and weakens the hold that entrenched interests have over political parties. We’re not that naïve to think that it will completely remove corruption from politics – the political system always seems to find a way to behave corruptly, despite the rules that might be in place – but anything that reduces the possibility of corruption is something that surely has to be welcomed.

This is an area where the Labor Party could lead federally – as it has done in South Australia – restoring credibility by drawing a clear line between government and paid access by vested interests. Yet there is a lingering sense that the incentives to maintain the current system are far too strong – Albanese has been in parliament since 1996 and knows the system only too well – and that the benefits of these donations and informal influence are too difficult to give up on.

Fabricating the news to achieve an agenda

Another year, and another deeply disappointing performance by the Australia’s mainstream media, which surely must rank among the world’s most captured and compromised news and reporting outlets. The combination of access journalism, caution, and built-in censorship has seen a quick erosion of their credibility, and this applies to commercial and public broadcasters. And why wouldn’t this be the case? They’re all pretty much from the same pool, and with the easy transition of journalists from entities such as News Corporation over to the ABC and SBS, it’s a situation that’s only going to get worse. But what is unclear is whether some journalists are just being careless and sloppy, or whether they’ve crossed that dangerous line of manufacturing claims in the knowledge that there won’t be any consequences.

A clear example of this was a story published by Matthew Knott, which appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age in Melbourne, where the article revealed supposed insights attributed to Hassan Youssef, a senior Hamas figure, and then these claims were used to politically attack Prime Minister Albanese over Australia’s recognition of the state of Palestine. The clear implication was that the journalist had communicated with a key figure inside Hamas, giving the story the imprimatur of authority and importance.

The only problem was – and quickly identified by many observers through a simple search on Google – was that Hassan Youssef has been imprisoned in Israel for many years and he has no means of communicating with any journalists, let alone an irrelevant journalist from faraway Sydney. Rather than confronting the implications of publishing such a false claim, the institutional response was predictable. Journalists at the Sydney Morning Herald closed ranks, suggesting that the episode as a simple mistake; a “cock-up,” not a conspiracy, just a simple oversight, rather than a breach of journalistic standards and outrageously lying to the public. And then, the issue disappeared, stories were modified online, and the journalist in question kept a low profile over the next few months. There was no examination of this “oversight”, there was no correction, and no accountability.

It’s a pattern that now infects all mainstream media: a sensationalist claim is made, amplified across many platforms, thrown into the public debate, and then used to attack a Labor Prime Minister. When the claims are challenged and found to be a complete fabrication, the wagons are circled, the story is either reframed or quietly abandoned, as though the lie had never happened. The initial release of the story did its job – the correction, if it exists at all, arrives too late as if to suggest that the truth of the matter isn’t that important. It was a “cock-up” after all.

The consequence is that mainstream media has become infotainment rather than journalism, where relying on the truth just doesn’t matter anymore. It’s about getting the “eyeballs” and page views, chasing the lucrative A–B demographic, and a case of maximising the metrics of engagement, rather than maximising the factual content of the information that they put out. Who’s got time for the truth when we’re just too busy manufacturing the bullshit and shovelling it out into the public arena?

People are walking away from mainstream media not because they reject journalism, but because they are no longer satisfied with what is being presented too them. Without wanting to blow our own trumpet too hard, it’s the reason why more people are seeking independent voices within political journalism and media reporting – it might be a flawed process that lacks the same resources of their counterparts in the mainstream, but at least they’re not captured by the vested interests that positions the news in a way that favours their financial and ideological persuasions.

When deliberate “mistakes” are quickly forgotten about, and powerful interests are protected, the media loses its credibility and relinquishes that right to claim that it is the authority of reporting matters in the public interest. What remains is a media landscape that continues to sow the seeds of its own demise by accepting and ignoring its own failures – it’s less trusted, less influential and increasingly irrelevant to those it claims to inform. Unless there is a serious understanding of what’s going on within the mainstream media, that exodus is likely to continue, and the damage that it’s doing do public life and the body politic will only get worse.

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What the government keeps presenting as a steady and supposedly natural evolution of AUKUS – a project inherited from the Morrison government – increasingly looks like one of deals that governments need to keep propping up financially and politically, even when they themselves know that there’s not much substance to it.

Defence Minister Richard Marles has described each stage of AUKUS as the latest agreement in a “natural evolution” of commitments already made, formalised through bilateral and trilateral treaties with the United States and the United Kingdom, and that it is a “treaty that sits under a trilateral treaty” using gobbledygook and language that even he seems to have difficulty understanding.

Throughout the year, AUKUS was framed not as a policy that was open to any form of scrutiny, but as something that’s inevitable – according to Marles – an unstoppable process whose legitimacy rests on repeating this polly-speak ad nauseum, rather than providing any form of rational clarity. Each new payment or announcement is offered as a “demonstration that AUKUS is happening” – whatever that means – as though just making these kinds of statements is evidence of a purposeful progress.

By 2025, Marles’ “evidence of purpose” had resulted in a series of extraordinary financial payments, where Australia transferred $500 million to the United States in February, followed by a further $800 million in July, bringing the total to $1.3 billion in a single year. Yet the public is still unsure about what exactly this money is supposed to be securing. The promise of nuclear-powered submarines is something that may arrive well into the future, and is dependent on technologies, industrial capacities and strategic conditions that might be totally different to the way they exist today. The prospect that Australia will eventually receive ageing or out-of-date boats long after the strategic environment has shifted raises a basic question that still remains unanswered: it is a deal that arrived out of nowhere in 2021, but what problem is AUKUS actually meant to solve?

Official explanations always return to the same abstractions: it’s all about security, deterrence, and support for the “rules-based order” – even though that order fell apart some time ago – and to solidify the alliance with the United States. These clichés are brought up so often that they’ve become substitutes for actual policy. At the same time, the details are shrouded in secrecy, brushed aside during parliamentary scrutiny in the Senate, and removed from public debate altogether. The effect is a defence policy that relies on the trust-me-I-am-the-politician type of thinking, refusing to offer any transparency, and expending public finances without offering accountability. In fact, the more questions that are asked of this Labor government on AUKUS, the less information seems to be coming out, and this game is something the minister seems to revel in.

And whenever questions are asked, the responses are either not given, or deflected with a narrative of fear. Towards the end of the year in Senate Estimates, Australian Greens Senator David Shoebridge asked a wide range of detailed questions about the costings and structure of AUKUS, only to be stonewalled by both Australian Defence Force personnel and the government. Soon after, as if to suggest that Shoebridge was flying too close to the sun by bringing up these questions, Marles began to flood the zone with fear. Chinese naval vessels were operating thousands of kilometres away in the Philippine Sea at the time, yet the minister framed this as a clear threat to Australia’s security, with the underlying message: we’re not going to tell you anything about AUKUS, but we are going to tell you about the threat of China – even though China is Australia’s largest trading partner.

It’s a tired and familiar pattern, always used by the conservatives when they’re in office, but it’s the same message now being used by the Labor government, albeit painted with different colours: a vague or distant action by China is amplified through alarmist headlines; politicians and security agencies then go on to speak of a new and heightened risk.

And then, the funding flows more freely to the department of defence – no questions asked – and the cycle moves on without any serious debate about how much of this is really necessary, and in whose interests this is all in. In this kind of environment, fear becomes not so much a response to the facts on the ground, but a de facto policy in its own right.

The issue here is that much of this thinking is a worldview that belongs to another era, where Australia continues to conduct its foreign affairs as though the Cold War has never ended. For sure, the creators of the post-World War II order are still calling all the shots in 2025 – the US, China, Russia, Britain and France – but the power bases of the world are slowing shifting towards Asia and the Global South, and Australia seems to be unprepared for these shifts.

Instead, Australia’s default position is to seek reassurance from the United States – and to a lesser extent from Britain – even though many international analysts suggest that American power is waning, and being fast-tracked by the incompetence of the Trump administration. By most measures, the United States is displaying many of the indicators historically associated with a decline of empire: chronic overspending, internal social and political divisions, overstretched military commitments and a reduced capacity to sustain the global dominance that it so desires. Of course, decline doesn’t happen overnight, and the United States remains the world’s most powerful military and a leading economic force. But its own trajectory, and compared with that of China, suggests that it won’t be too long before it loses this status.

China, after a period of economic slowdown during the first few years of COVID, is starting to accelerate again. Within five to ten years, it is widely expected to match or surpass the United States across key economic indicators, with a growing military capability to follow. And within this context, the AUKUS deal risks locking Australia into a rigid alliance with the United States, just at a time when flexibility, diplomacy and regional engagement is needed the most.

A look at the broader geopolitical landscape only reinforces this uncertainty. A weakened or destabilised India, changes in international leadership – Narendra Modi and Xi Jinping, and certainly not Donald Trump, are going to be in office for ever – and the persistence of authoritarian leaders in other parts of the world all add to the complexity of these issues. Yet in Australia, this complexity isn’t being met with the nuance and deftness that’s needed at the moment, but with an over-simplification: more weapons, deeper alliances with old imperial friends, and more fear mongering.

The result is a foreign policy that’s shaped by a permanent state of paranoia, rather than a rational analysis – one that treats fear as reason, and equates spending with strength, while leaving the Australian electorate increasingly unsure about what is being defended, from whom, and at what cost.

The cost of small thinking

The fear of China that resides at the heart of Australia’s defence and foreign policy didn’t emerge at the time when AUKUS was announced; it’s embedded far deeper within our political psyche. From the nineteenth century onward, Australia has always depicted Asia as an existential threat – first of all through the “yellow peril” narratives, later on through Cold War paranoia, and now through a modern version of both, with slight variations. Two centuries after it all started, it’s a national paranoia that stubbornly refuses to shift. Instead of trying to recalibrate the reality of Australia’s geography – belonging in the Indo–Pacific region – into a more mature regional understanding, the general political discourse always reduces itself into a narrow circle of fear and, if it’s not China, it’s Indonesia that we need to be fearful of, or any other near neighbour in the South-East Asian region.

What this mindset overlooks is the basic shift that has been developing in global power. China today is not just a rising state; it’s a central part of the world economy and, politically, makes Australia look like a minnow that’s lost at sea. Despite all the theatrics, it’s likely that Beijing pays little attention to Australia’s domestic agenda and the way it uses fear, paranoia and the exaggerated rhetoric, and this dramatic over-effect on security is more likely to be viewed as superfluous white noise, rather than a serious menace or a threat to China.

Yet within Australia, figures such as Marles continue to recycle the same red-scare tactics that have always been perfected by Coalition governments in the past. His performance as defence minister reflects a failure of imagination by the Labor government, and amplifying distant Chinese naval activities as an imminent danger is not just misleading, it’s a cynical exercise in manufacturing consent.

In this sense, the problem isn’t so much a strategic issue, but a political one. Marles is one of the weakest performers in Cabinet, yet sits in one of the most important roles in government. His public conduct – whether frantically warning us all about far-away fleets in Asia or enthusing about weapons systems with the excitement of an adolescent – as he did at the Indo Pacific International Maritime Exposition in November – has often seemed more like a defence fanboy than of a serious guardian of the national interest, using rhetorical tones that mimics the panic from the early twentieth century, when the imperial decline of Britain was met with old school-tie bluff, bluster and fear, rather than trying to adapt to the changing circumstances of the time.

This should be an issue of concern for this government, because Labor once prided itself on a serious intellectual rigour in foreign policy and defence matters. Figures such as Gough Whitlam, Jim Cairns, Bob Hawke, Gareth Evans, Paul Keating and Kevin Rudd – whatever their flaws – engaged the world with depth, a historical awareness and confidence in the strategies that needed to be pursued in Australia’s interests, and in the interests of the world. Marles pales into insignificance when compared with some of these thinkers, and is more of a factional operator rather than a geopolitical strategist, a numbers man without the political intelligence that graced many others within Labor history.

There’s nothing inherently wrong with being pro-American, but it really depends on how these positions are defined and, as always, the context of that relationship when compared to other world players, such as China. But blind allegiance without clear thinking and analysis is not really much of a strategy, and not holding and using some sort of leverage when dealing with the larger world players is not really diplomacy. Australia’s foreign policy can’t be reduced to jumping at the snap of American fingers, nor endlessly invoking threats of China that justify ever-expanding military commitments and reducing the democratic debate about the big issues that affect all of us.

AUKUS, as well as the look-over-there political tactic of fear that supports it, has become a substitute for good policy. Perhaps leaders such as Marles can’t explain what AUKUS means to Australia, because they can barely explain it to themselves or their Caucus colleagues. If that’s the case, politically, it’s better for the government to pretend that there is certainty when it doesn’t actually exist, offer empty reassurances, and deflect whenever the big questions are asked. How can AUKUS hurt us if we don’t even know what it is? That seems to be the thinking within this government.

It’s a big ask, but until Australia confronts the historical roots of its own geopolitical insecurity – and demands more from those leaders who are responsible for its defence – it will remain trapped between the paranoia of China and a dependency with the United States, and making that mistake of just hoping that all of these security issues will go away, if we pretend that they don’t exist.

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The optics in the Oval Office were carefully managed and staged; there were the big smiles, the warm handshakes, flattery and “mateship” exchanged in spades and, of course, a big cinema-style promotional video to go with it after it was all over. This was the first official meeting between US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, where he was welcomed as a “friend” and praised for the $13 billion deal on rare earths and critical minerals. The language was very comforting and saccharine to the point of boredom, but it was what not said that that mattered the most – the health of democracy in the United States – and all the other issues that are always the ones that are assumed to be beyond question.

At the same moment that this meeting in late October was being pushed forward as a diplomatic triumph, the United States was undergoing a major institutional crisis. Economically and militarily, it’s still the most powerful country in the world – for the time being – but institutionally and democratically, it’s showing all the visible signs of decay. Trump’s return to the White House has been accompanied by sweeping tariffs, erratic trade policy, mass deportations and arrests by ICE, travel bans and the steady erosion of civil and human rights. And they’ve happened very quickly too: these are the big existential issues that any country that claims to share values with the United States should be alarmed about, yet they barely rated a mention in Australia’s politic elite and mainstream media.

Instead, the big political and media obsession throughout most of the year was all about whether Albanese could secure a meeting with Trump at all, and when it would happen, playing out like a strange will-he-won’t-he celebrity dating game, with breathless speculation and over-the-top sighs of relief once the meeting finally went ahead.

It was then treated like a diplomatic coup in its own right, like the meeting with a majestic king, as if the simple act of being accorded an audience with unstable president was a massive strategic success. But this was all a sideshow: the substance of the relationship was barely questioned, and the terms of the deals, their long-term implications, and how they are in Australia’s national interest were barely analysed.

There’s no dispute that Australia benefits from having a good working relationship with the United States, as it would with any other major power in the world. But it’s equally undeniable that the relationship is very one-sided. Agreements on rare earths, critical minerals and defence co-operation overwhelmingly serve US strategic and economic interests, not ours. And it seems that Australia supplies everything – including political lap-dog loyalty – while it’s the United States that accumulates all the advantages.

At a time when the US presidency has become volatile and unpredictable, Australia should at least be asking how it protects itself from a partner whose leader changes decisions at whim, and then sometimes goes back to the choices that he previously rejected. It should be asking whether a deeper engagement with Asia, Europe and the Global South might provide a counterweight against the continuing instability in the United States. It should be debating how to develop a genuinely independent foreign policy rather than genuflecting at the altar of the United States: instead, Australia doubled down.

Of course, this isn’t a new development: the US–Australia relationship has always had an opacity that clouds the key issues and creates a smokescreen, rather than provide any clarity. Australians still can’t be told why Pine Gap, a massive security installation in the middle of the country, remains effectively off-limits to Australian scrutiny. There are many other moments in the history of the alliance where Australia could have negotiated harder and chose not to – this Trump era has just exposed this habit and shown it to be more of the same.

Trump himself is the one who makes any analysis more complicated: he’s widely regarded as a capricious and incompetent leader, yet he occupies the most powerful political position in the world. That contradiction is precisely where smaller allies might have some leverage but Australia, in this case, has not attempted to use it. This can’t be because its leaders are inexperienced: Albanese is neither stupid nor politically naïve, having risen through the hard-nosed factional politics of the Labor Party and has survived mainly because he is capable of clever political calculations and smart moves. That makes Australia’s passivity all the more puzzling.

Perhaps this compliance is act of performative politics: allowing Trump to believe he has secured a “great deal”, keeping relations smooth in the hope of something larger down the track. If that’s the strategy, there’s little evidence of what that “something larger” might be. What is more obvious instead is a government that’s happy to make the offer of gifts – or the appearance of gifts – to a volatile leader who needs to have his enormous ego massaged at all times.

The media’s fixation and obsession on whether Albanese was going to offend Trump, embarrass himself, or fail to flatter Trump enough also bordered on the absurd. Sure, he is the president of the world’s most powerful country, but he’s a leader who prefers unquestioning loyalty, particularly from men, and that he has little tolerance for dissent or independence. Being close to such a figure shouldn’t be a badge of honour yet in Australia’s political and media culture, it was sold as exactly that.

The US–Australia alliance does remains intact, but it increasingly exists as a theatrical performance, rather than a strategy benefit for Australia, and it’s rarely questioned, even though the costs and risks are quietly building up.

Sovereignty in name only

Australia loves the language of “sovereign choice” in foreign policy, and we always say it with a straight face: independent decisions, national interests, freedom to navigate our own course, and so on. But the moment you ask the questions about Pine Gap, or AUKUS, or this critical minerals deal, it’s a choice that doesn’t appear to be so free after all. How free are the choices we’re making when so much of the architecture underneath the alliance is largely insulated and turned away from public scrutiny?

Pine Gap is the clearest example of this. A highly secretive satellite surveillance and intelligence facility on the outskirts of Alice Springs, it’s deeply integrated into US military operations and intelligence gathering across the world. And yet, for everything that this implies, it exists in a political void: no debate, little transparency, and almost no mainstream willingness to ask the most basic democratic question – who ultimately controls what happens there, and to what end? Australians are expected to accept that it’s “necessary,” that it keeps us “safe”, that the details are “too sensitive”, and that the alliance depends on it.

And now we have the critical minerals agreement as a part of this arrangement. There’s billions in joint investment, Australia is supplying rare earths and critical minerals that feed directly into the industrial needs of the United States: weapons systems, batteries, advanced manufacturing, the strategic supply chain that Washington has decided it needs to control in an era of great-power rivalry with China. It’s being presented as a win–win situation but the strategic benefit is overwhelmingly in the favour of the United States. Australia’s role is to provide the inputs – resources, access, reliability – while the US converts that into capability, leverage, and the projection of power.

If Australia was to negotiate hard – really hard – Pine Gap and our mineral reserves would be the strong bargaining chips, not in a crude, Trumpian transactional way, but as part of a mature relationship between sovereign states: what do we get in exchange for hosting a facility so central to US operations? What guarantees do we have about how our resources are used – in war zones, for example – how to value add, where do the jobs sit in this supply chain, and what obligations will the US take on when its own politics becomes too unstable for Australian interests?

This is where the relationship begins to look less like strategy and more like stakeholder management and damage control. A country such as Australia has to keep one superpower satisfied – the US – so it can preserve a functional economic relationship with another, in this case, China. It’s a narrow window though: feed Washington enough to prevent retaliation, provide different signals to Beijing so that the lucrative supply of trad doesn’t collapse, and hope neither side forces a real choice. If that’s the logic, then the “deal” is not about Australia winning anything: it’s more about Australia managing risk in a world where it lacks the confidence – or the authority – to act in a truly independent way.

The real cost to Australia’s relationship isn’t only measured in money, or even in true independence: it’s measured in regional credibility. The more Australia is perceived as an extension of the United States – a de facto 51st state – the more it raises doubts in the countries whose trust we actually need on a day-to-day basis: Indonesia, South Korea, and smaller regional states that watch the behaviour of great powers with a close eye.

China, for all the real and imagined tension that’s pushed by the mainstream media and conservative politicians, is an intelligent strategic actor, as it has been for thousands of years. It can separate the chaff from the class, can play the waiting game and assumes that Australia will do what it always does – talks and asserts independence but, in reality, practises dependence. But in South-east Asia, where the historical memory of Western power and colonial influence still runs deep, the optics of this close Australian alignment with the United States can be corrosive. It feeds into that narrative – sometimes encouraged by domestic players within those countries – that Australia is a Western tool, a deputy sheriff of the US, and offers a platform for the agenda of other countries.

And that’s the ultimate contradiction of this relationship: a solid source of security with the United States can become a strategic millstone around the neck. The alliance might be absolutely necessary, and it might be delivering some advantages to Australia. But when it’s treated as something that we can never question or debate, we have to wonder what the real value to Australia actually is. And in this situation, Australia isn’t really choosing its own positions, but having decisions made for it, engaging in performative politics, and trying to live within those limitations that have been imposed upon it.

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During the year, Israel continued to maintain its grip over Gaza, severely restricting food aid, medicines and humanitarian assistance, breaking every ceasefire agreement and ignoring international law in its aggressive quest to erase Palestine. Israel also promoted their version of aid – the Gaza Humanitarian Foundation – widely condemned by humanitarian organisations as totally inadequate and, according to many reports, almost 3,000 Palestinians were killed, shot at or crushed in stampedes as the desperate crowds surged in their attempts to access food supplies. What Israel wanted the world to belief as a humanitarian solution was, in fact, its own version of the final solution: dangerous, demonic, insufficient and inhumane.

Yet during the federal election campaign, Gaza and Palestine barely registered as issues of interest: the government showed little appetite to engage publicly with the disaster unfolding in Gaza, while the Liberal Party consistently pushed the discussions toward claims of rising anti-Semitism in Australia and allegations that the government was failing the Jewish community. The result was a political environment in which any discussion at all about Palestinian casualties, or the collapse of ceasefire negotiations and Israel’s repeated violations of international law, was either mixed up in the noise of the campaign or avoided altogether. As the death toll continued to rise in Palestine, with women and children still making up a large proportion of those killed, Australia’s election campaign proceeded with the politics of avoidance: just don’t mention the war.

Throughout this period – not just the campaign, but since October 2023 – the Albanese government’s response has been marked by a lack of courage. The Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Penny Wong spoke regularly of “concern” or “deep concern”, urging restraint and expressing sympathy for the casualties, statements that were never matched by any meaningful pressure on the state of Israel. Australia continued to supply components for F-35 fighter jets to Israel, avoided imposing sanctions and resisted stronger diplomatic measures beyond some meaningless financial sanctions on the right-wing Zionist politicians, Itamar Ben-Gvir and Bezalel Smotrich – which obviously haven’t worked, because these two extremists are continuing with their violence actions and rhetoric in Gaza and the West Bank.

When Australia finally moved to recognise the State of Palestine, the decision came without any form of clarity – there was no clear explanation about what recognition would mean in practical terms, nor any indication that it would be used to force Israel to comply with international law or protect Palestinian lives. As usual, recognition became symbolic of impotence, rather than any form of actions of consequence.

This pattern of careful language matched up with inaction defined Australia’s position over Palestine across the year. While governments elsewhere explored legal avenues, trade restrictions or sanctions upon Israel, Australia’s response remained narrow and designed to avoid confrontation and not offend local Zionist groups. At any point where strong diplomacy could have – and should have been applied, it was held back and, as a result Australia positioned itself on the wrong side of history, ignoring its moral responsibilities as a member of the international community, and overlooking the many legal obligations that should be used to sanction the state of Israel.

This responsibility doesn’t just lie with the Labor Party alone: there was also an absence of organised resistance from Australia’s labour movement. Historically, Australian unions played a prominent role in opposing South African apartheid with actions such as boycotts and refusing to load ships. On the issue of Palestine, aside from a few low key media releases; silence. The secretary of the ACTU, Sally McManus, who has previously spoken forcefully on matters of justice and principle, said very little publicly.

While workers in countries such as Italy and Ireland refused to handle military goods destined for Israel, Australian unions continued operating as per usual, as though sending off military parts that will be used to kill the workers just like them in Gaza is quite a normal thing to do. There were no widespread blockades, no co-ordinated refusals, no boycotts declaring that Australia’s role in this supply chain of death and destruction was unacceptable.

A bubbling fracture below the surface

Compromise is an unavoidable feature of government, particularly when it comes to foreign affairs. But there are moments in politics when compromise stops being a pragmatic step to achieve the greater good, and becomes morally untenable. While Caucus maintained a strong discipline on Gaza and continued to offer its unflappable support for Israel, for many within Labor’s broader movement, the issue become a turning critical point.

The government’s paralysis was through political fear – fear of offending powerful pro-Israel and Zionist lobby groups in Australia, and a fear of turning Gaza into a powerful electoral issue in the lead-up to the federal campaign. This fear is in contrast to Australia’s willingness to issue forceful diplomatic statements on other matters: China is routinely condemned when it suits domestic politics – that’s a given – Russia is sanctioned in a complex war; Iran is denounced on spurious grounds. But when it comes to Israel, even when it implements a devastating genocide in Gaza, it remains beyond public reproach and its many international crimes are ignored.

Even if we can understand – if not accept – that the government simply did not want to engage on an issue that would problems and distractions during an election campaign, that justification has now gone: the campaign ended months ago, yet there hasn’t been any meaningful change.

While Senator Wong’s language might have become hardened ever so slightly – or less soft – it remains far short of what the scale of the crisis demands, and expressions of “concern” continue to be a substitute for the concrete action that’s needed. There has been no move towards a comprehensive boycott of exports to Israel, no suspension of imports, no serious attempt to use Australia’s economic or diplomatic leverage to force Israel to cease and desist. For those who identify with the left in Australian politics, this represents a massive step away from the principles of the Labor Party and, for many, it’s a bridge too far to step back from.

Governments will always argue that international relationships are not governed by the simple moral questions of what’s right and what’s wrong, but by balancing competing interests, alliances and geopolitical constraints. Of course, there is an element of truth to that, but when the actions of a state are so evident, Australia’s actions need to be clear and have coherent explanation behind them.

Why was Russia sanctioned over its invasion of Ukraine – almost immediately – while Israel was not, even though its behaviour are more extreme? Why was international law and protocol applied against Moscow, but not against Tel Aviv? Why is Hamas condemned, even though it essentially exists because no one else is coming to stop Israel’s genocide? The Israel Defence Forces have killed over 70,000 civilians in Gaza: why are they never condemned? Israel’s society of extreme racism and bigotry against the people of Palestine – why is this never condemned?

Aside from these unanswered questions, what remains is a growing sense of betrayal within Labor’s own ranks, within the union movement, and among those who once believed that the left in Australia had the courage to act when humanitarian principles are at stake. And we found out that there is no courage: it’s this silence that has come to define Australia’s response and it’s an absolutely pox on our political establishment.

Silencing the debate

One of the more disturbing trends to emerge over the past year – one of many – has not been the political silence in itself, but a concerted effort by a wide range of anonymous and secretive players to narrow, soften or remove debate about Gaza and Palestine altogether. While within the political establishment, there were some notable exceptions – particularly the Australian Greens and a few independents – the dominant pattern across Australia’s media landscape was one of exclusion and denial.

Discussion about Palestine was often suppressed, and even when the events were too egregious for the media to ignore, reporting was often framed through pro-Israel perspectives that delegitimised Palestinian voices in the process.

This pattern was most evident in the verdict in case of Lattouf v ABC – at the cost of $2.8 million to the ABC – which found that the journalist Antoinette Lattouf was unlawfully dismissed after reposting a factual statement from Human Rights Watch that Israel was using starvation as a weapon of war which, as it turned out, was correct according to international humanitarian law and the evidence that became available.

The ruling showed the extent to which external pressure – from pro-Israel and Zionist lobby groups – had influenced editorial decision-making and employment at the national broadcaster. And this isn’t a one-off case: it was just the one example of an environment where truthful reporting on Palestine has professional consequences for journalists – and where the goal of the Zionists isn’t just to win every battle, but to silence the debate altogether.

During his speech at the recent Walkley Awards, veteran journalist Kerry O’Brien made references to Palestine and the many journalists who have been killed by Israel. When that speech was later published by the Sydney Morning Herald, all of those references were removed. No explanation was provided – and probably no need to provide the explanation; we all know why – but it showed how normalised this practice is within the mainstream media.

This isn’t just about journalists such as Lattouf or O’Brien being unlawfully sacked or suppressed, or even about media outlets such as the ABC or Nine/Fairfax: it goes to the heart of whether Australia’s mainstream media can still fulfil it’s role within Australia’s democracy and providing accurate, contextual and honest reporting on issues of deep moral and political consequence.

If the mainstream media feels that its role is to censure the events in Gaza and Palestine at the behest of Israel and Zionist groups, then its role serves no purpose at all: if they provide a style of media reporting that’s constrained by their deference to powerful interests, aversion to risk and an unwillingness to confront the pressure from these interests, then it has failed miserably and it’s probably best to vacate the field and leave it to others to do the job.

Censorship beyond politics and the media

What emerged throughout the year is that the silencing of Palestine has not been confined just to parliament or the mainstream media. Over the past year, it has flowed into universities, arts organisations, cultural festivals, galleries and even through to hospitals. Across these institutions, there’s been a consistent pattern: Palestinian voices suppressed, events cancelled, exhibitions removed or censured, funding and grants withdrawn – often abruptly and without consultation. In many cases, the trigger was a single complaint from a member of a pro-Israel or Zionist lobby group. Once the complaint was made, decisions followed very quickly. There was no debate; no correspondence; no due process; not even any attempt to assess the principles, policies or legal obligations to see if the action was lawful or not – as we found out in the case of Lattouf v ABC. Action by gormless bureaucrats was taken immediately, and always in the one direction: pro-Israel; anti-Palestine.

What makes this even more bizarre is that every action backfired, or at the least the ones that we know about: once a cancellation was made, the public outrage followed. If one pro-Palestinian speaker was barred from speaking – which did occur at the Bendigo Writers Festival – other participants withdrew in solidarity, destroying the event in the process. Audiences boycotted art galleries, academics signed open letters of protest, sometimes in the thousands.

In many cases, organisations reversed their decisions under intense pressure – usually several months later – and all of them suffered reputational damage in their quest to suppress Palestinian voices, or anyone who would speak up against the state of Israel, yet they continued to publicly expose themselves and abandon their own values at the first sign of political discomfort. Despite the public relations disasters, the same decisions are made again and again by these people. And again, even when they damage themselves in the process.

Why can’t any of these people stand up to say: our activities and offering this platform aligns with our ethics, abides by human rights standards, and is defensible on legal grounds. No one had the courage to provide the same rights to Palestinians that they would offer to any other group in Australia. No one. Instead, acquiescence became the knee-jerk response, even when it caused obvious harm – to artists, to staff, to communities and to the credibility of the organisations themselves.

Much of this power from the Zionist lobby appears to be more perceived than real and, on a human psychological fight-versus-flight basis, it makes no sense at all. The individuals running many of these organisations are not shadowy figures under existential threat; they are generally capable, well-meaning people operating within conservative institutional cultures. The pressure they face is often pre-emptive – anxiety about controversy, fear of reputational damage, and the desire to avoid internal disruption – even though the damage they are trying to avoid, ends up arriving due to their acquiescence.

Perhaps it’s a behaviour is based around the fear of being labelled anti-Semitic which, based on all the evidence we have in Australia and much of the Western world, is a far greater accusation than being accused of supporting a genocide. Few institutions are prepared to spot the differences between criticism of Israel, support for Palestinian human rights, or the point that not all Jewish people are supportive of either Israel or the Zionist movement, essentially because they fear being falsely accused of anti-Semitism themselves.

But when everything is anti-Semitic, then nothing is anti-Semitic: to criticise Israel for committing genocide and destroying Gaza is not anti-Semitic. It’s an understanding that governments need to be punished for their actions, and not seek immunity from prosecution just because of their religion backgrounds.

What has made the past year so difficult to accept is the way that many of the core principles and values that we thought we might hold in the West, have just dissipated: if domestic and international law and protocols can be discarded so easily and quickly when it comes to an obvious genocide, which other issues can the political establishment feel they also ignore? If a genocide that we can see so clearly through social and independent media every single day of the week is not enough for the international community to stand up against, what are the principles that they will actually defend?

The public institutions that are supposed to be protecting culture and knowledge, chose silence over courage. Political leaders made the choice to look the other way, instead of choosing accountability for Israel. News outlets had an even easier choice to make between reporting the truth – that’s literally their job – and bending over to vested interests, and they chose cowardice. Collectively, these choices have created an environment where censorship has become normalised, any form of dissent has become suspicious, and genocide caused by Israel is not an issue to be called out, but managed, denied or erased.

This is not a failure through laziness or neglect: people in positions of power – and their feckless lackies – have gone out of their way to ensure that Palestinian voices are suppressed and not heard. And until this issue is confronted honestly – across politics, media and civil society – it will continue to erode the very democratic values Australia claims to uphold.

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The big political event of 2025 was the federal election in May, a result that provided stability at a time of global instability and Anthony Albanese ended up becoming the first prime minister in 21 years to win a second consecutive term – not only returning Labor to office but also consigning the Liberal Party to its worst electoral defeat in its 81-year history.

The first half of the year was consumed by the long, tedious pre-campaign stage, dominated by endless speculation over when the election would be called, even though the Prime Minister has said many times that the election would be held in May, a point that many commentators repeatedly refused to believe. By the time the campaign formally began in April, voter fatigue had already set in – not so much with the politics itself, but the constant chatter about an election date that in Albanese’s mind, had already been determined.

The campaign itself was uninspiring: voters were presented with the choice between a competent but overly-cautious first-term Labor government and an opposition led by Peter Dutton, one of the most deeply unpopular leaders the Liberal Party had ever put forward. Yet campaigns don’t exist in a vacuum, and a government can only engage with what’s put in front of them, and in strategic terms, Labor implemented an almost flawless campaign against a Liberal Party that appeared to be clueless, directionless and structurally falling apart.

The result was a clear reflection of this: Labor secured 94 seats – while the win itself was never really in doubt, the size of the victory was the shock result of the night. In hindsight, however, it shouldn’t have really been such a shock: Dutton was electorally toxic, ran a campaign that failed to connect at almost every level, and the scale of the Coalition’s defeat was the logical conclusion of years of political drift and wasting their time in opposition.

Central to the loss was Dutton himself. His unpopularity had long defied explanation – not so much the unpopularity itself – but how he rose to the Liberal leadership in the first place and how he managed to survive for so long. Many observers had predicted that he would never make it to election day, yet he did – becoming the first opposition leader in Australian history to lose his seat at a federal election, and by a decisive margin.

Dutton’s hard-right position on almost everything alienated voters and failed to resonate with a broadly pragmatic electorate already uneasy about global instability. By contrast, Labor’s flexibility – variously described as soft left, soft right, or just centrist – proved to be the stability that the electorate seemed to be after.

All of these factors explain why the election unfolded as it did. Labor didn’t overwhelm the electorate with ambition – although this is a time when it’s most needed – but it did put forward a convincing argument that stability was more important than change for the sake of it. In contrast, the Liberal Party entered the campaign weakened by years of ideological confusion and internal decay, with an opposition leader unable to persuade voters that he represented anything else except for risk.

A campaign that fell apart long before the election

Modern Australian elections are ultimately leader-centric contests. Of course, the quality of candidates does matter, policies matter and discipline matters – but increasingly, elections are decided on whether voters can imagine the leader of the Labor or Liberal parties as the prime minister. By that measure, the signs of a decisive Liberal defeat were evident well before the formal campaign began.

However, as early as October and November 2024, there was open speculation about Dutton as Australia’s next prime minister: internal confidence within Coalition circles was high, favourable polling was widely disseminated and discussed within the media, and the assumption was that the succession had already commenced. In hindsight, this is more like collective self-delusion within both the Liberal Party and the media, than any sensible assessment: they’d simply read too much into the debacle of the Voice To Parliament campaign in 2023, and assumed that a replay of that referendum was going to be enough to install Dutton as Australia’s 32nd prime minister.

This was just a passing fad: from January onwards, opinion polls suggested that a second term for Albanese was the more likely outcome, an outcome also supported by history. First-term governments are notoriously difficult to defeat, and the last time this occurred was during the Great Depression, in 1931.

And it wasn’t really a contest between two equal campaigns: competence and caution from Labor; chaos and fear from the Coalition. Voters were told by Dutton to fear everything: cultural decay, social division, anti-Semitism, wokeness, yet there was rarely any evidence provided of these bad things, or a positive message about how life would be better under a Coalition government.

Even the Coalition’s big flagship policy failed to cut through. Nuclear energy was a half-baked and hastily assembled plan which was poorly defended, convinced almost no one except for the nuclear zealots and captains of industry who were already on board. It lacked credibility and the electorate gave it the short shrift that it thoroughly deserved. Rather than appearing bold, it reinforced the sense that the opposition had a scatter-gun approach to policy, and would send out anything to try and make itself relevant.

Labor, by contrast, was disciplined and focused on stability, a “safe pair of hands” in uncertain times – in political terms, it wasn’t inspiring, but it was effective. And effectiveness is what wins elections, not some weird off-tangent portrayal of a dystopian world.

Perhaps the seeds for the Coalition’s failure were planted by a misplaced confidence gained from recent successes. In 2013, 2016 and 2019, the Liberal Party had won elections despite running poor campaigns – although it has to be said that a winning campaign is a good campaign. Those victories appear, in hindsight, to have entrenched complacency within the party.

While Dutton didn’t enjoy the same level of overt media indulgence that Tony Abbott once did – who can forget the front-page poster from the Daily Telegraph emblazoned with Australia Needs Tony – the media environment remained noticeably softer than what Labor faced. Yet even that advantage wasn’t enough: there’s only so much polishing of the façade that media can do before even they decide that it’s all too much and their efforts are to no avail.

The night of the defeat, and the question of survival

Dutton’s concession speech on election night was gracious enough, where he accepted responsibility, congratulated Albanese and spoke about the honour of leadership. Yet the civility in that moment – which was against the grain of Dutton’s public persona – could not gloss over what had just happened: a total and complete electoral obliteration.

By any objective measure, the entire campaign was a catastrophe: according to post-election research from the Australian National University, Dutton finished the campaign with the lowest approval ratings ever for a major-party leader, and the electoral outcome reflected this brutality very clearly. The Coalition was reduced to 43 seats, its worst result on record – and the sole entity of the Liberal Party itself was reduced to just 18 seats nationwide.

Since then, the Liberal Party has shown little evidence that it understands why it lost, let alone how to recover its electoral standing and, by the end of the year, according to final opinion polls, it stood to lose even more seats if an election was held now. The tone, language, and priorities of its post-election messaging are unchanged, with most of it still sounding as though it was written for a narrow, late-night partisan audience on “Sky After Dark”: relentless “anti-woke” rhetoric, fixation on culture war grievances, hostility toward universities, moral panics around gender and identity, and the outrage directed at the ABC. Sure, a different leader in Sussan Ley, but the same tired rhetoric: these positions energise a shrinking conservative base, but they have failed to persuade the broader electorate.

Nowhere is this more obvious than on climate and energy policy. Having tied itself in knots over net zero by 2050 and doubling down on nuclear power – an approach widely rejected by voters at the last election and the one before – the Coalition has forced itself into a right-wing corner and seems quite happy to stay there. Rather than reinvent itself, it’s going back to the same arguments that contributed so heavily to its defeat. And with this doubling down – and dumbing down – it continues to lose more support from younger and urban voters, the groups they need to win back if they want to become electorally viable again.

The Liberal Party ended the year not just in opposition, but the long-term wilderness: devoid of effective leadership; it’s irrelevant and it has no strategic direction. Of course, history suggests that we should never write off any political movement, and events can change the direction of politics when we least expect it, but a return for the Liberal Party requires deep thought, renewal and, above all, development of good policy that’s relevant to the electorate – none of which have been on display since the May catastrophe.

The Greens: Backward steps when they were expected to go forward

The Australian Greens also emerged from the 2025 federal election bruised and searching for answers as to what happened. On the surface, their result is an odd paradox: their national primary vote was relatively steady – more votes than 2022, although a small drop in percentage – yet they lost three of their four House of Representatives seats, including the seat of their leader, Adam Bandt.

The four seats were supposed to be a platform for the expansion of the Greens – perhaps to six, seven or even more – allowing the party to hold more leverage in the lower house. Instead of consolidating and growing, the Greens were pushed back to where they were between 2010–22 – holding just the one seat – and their parliamentary influence is now once again concentrated in the Senate.

Perhaps those expectations were unrealistic: Greens projections suggested that such gains were likely, and there was genuine belief that issues of the day – housing affordability, climate change, frustration with the overly cautious Albanese government – would result in a surge in new seats for the Greens in inner city areas. But it just didn’t happen.

Some of this came down to the dynamics and personalities of the candidates. Max Chandler-Mather became a polarising figure: highly admired by his supporters but just as strongly rejected by his critics. In a tight vote in the seat of Griffith, that polarisation made a difference. Bad luck also played its part, but politics has no time for luck, as both Chandler-Mather and Bandt found out.

Under the new leader, Senator Larissa Waters, the Greens face an even deeper challenge. Their support base ranges from affluent inner city conservative voters concerned with local amenity and environmental concerns, to radical anti-capitalists who want to dismantle the economic system entirely. It is an extraordinarily broad group of voters – even more so than the Labor and Liberal parties – and managing that diversity while presenting a coherent, electorally palatable program is a task that is difficult for any political organisation.

But unlike the Liberal Party, the Australian Greens are not decaying into an unviable political entity. Yes, they did lose lower house seats, but they have their strength in the Senate, and their primary vote is stable. However, 2025 was a reminder that this doesn’t automatically translate into seats, and it will get down to a stronger focus and discipline in the future – and choosing the right candidates – in inner city areas. This was a major setback, but not a terminal one: compared to the Liberal Party, which faces an existential crisis, the Greens remain alive politically.

Ultimately, the story of the year in politics wasn’t about transformation – that was made very clear – but more of a consolidation of what was already there. And this seems to be the Labor government’s modus operandi: consolidate that which exists, but change nothing at all. In a year dominated by global uncertainty, the electorate preferred stability over risk, rewarding a cautious Labor government in spades, but offering an even greater rebuke to the Liberal Party, to ensure that Peter Dutton never became prime minister.

The election created a different kind of political landscape: voters made clear that in troubled times – as they always do – competence and credibility matters more than mindless outrage, and that the parties that are unwilling to change will be left behind.

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The year in Australian politics began with the issue that has been floating around for many years: January 26; the day that conservatives somehow want to combine celebration, historical amnesia and, above all else, the start of the annual festival of culture wars.

Even before the formal election campaign had commenced, Australia Day/Invasion Day once again became a test case for how the politics of culture war would be used throughout 2025: the then opposition leader Peter Dutton was always going to make sure of that.

By placing local councils “on notice” and pledging that a Coalition government would reinstate mandatory citizenship ceremonies on January 26 within its first 100 days – surely the least important issue for an incoming government to be worried about – Dutton deliberately turned the day into an electoral wedge against the Labor government: this was all about drawing a line between tradition and what conservatives portray as creeping wokeness into everyday life.

In late 2022, the Albanese government gave councils the flexibility to allow citizenship ceremonies to be held within a three-day window either side of Australia Day, a policy change was modest, pragmatic, and no big deal. Yet Dutton framed it as evidence that Australia Day had been tarnished, recast as a “day of shame”, and drowned out by protesters and cancel culture.

Public sentiment, as always, is mixed on this day: some Australians expressed a genuine attachment to January 26 as an occasion to gather, socialise and celebrate. Others speak about discomfort, grief or the ongoing reminder that the date carries too much historical baggage of dispossession and genocide to act as a unifying national day.

A common suggestion is compromise: separate days, dual recognition, or a change of date altogether – if Australia had somehow managed to instigate a National Day of Fascism in the early parts of the twentieth century, how long would it have lasted after 1945? – so a change seems to be the most obvious path. There’s less resistance to making this change to Australia Day compared to previous years – and yes, there were still protests and debate about this issue this year, and there is a sizeable portion of the community that will resist change, but the mass anti-woke uprising that was anticipated by conservatives failed to materialise.

Of course, that didn’t stop the opposition leader from charging head-first into the culture wars: for Dutton, January 26 wasn’t just an issue about commemoration; it was an entry point into a broader strategy of a conservative divide and rule. Australia Day was presented as the first battlefield, followed by disputes over gender identity, transgender rights and, later, used to rail against the Treaty process in Victoria. It’s a consistent pattern: elevate issues that provoke emotional reactions, cast progressive positions as elite or totally disconnected from reality, and then insist that “ordinary Australians” are under attack by activists and Labor-led institutions.

While this tactic might have worked in the past, it’s a strategy that’s out of step with the public mood: opinions about Australia Day will always be divided – that’s a given – but there’s a growing understanding that January 26 is a problematic date for First Nations people, and for many other people in the community. The arrival of the First Fleet in 1788 marked the beginning of dispossession, violence and systemic repression that continues to shape Indigenous lives today. The symbolism of that moment – regardless of whether it’s considered to be an invasion or settlement – can’t be separated from the catastrophic consequences that have followed.

Changing Australia Day in itself, would not resolve these historical injustices instantly just at that point where the date is moved elsewhere. But it would accept our history more honestly and allow for a more inclusive national story. And it’s also understood that this acceptance also needs to take on practical measures: education, health, employment opportunities and the resources required for communities to proceed with genuine self-determination. The disparities are still there – shorter life expectancy, higher incarceration rates, persistent unemployment and intergenerational trauma, as shown by a stalled Closing The Gap process – and these aren’t accidents of history: it’s the legacy of colonisation.

With this in mind, the weaponisation of January 26 by conservatives is becoming increasingly shallow and futile. Rather than dealing with the structural realities of Indigenous disadvantage or proposing meaningful reform – and yes, they often talk about practical Reconciliation but never actually do much about it when they are in office – the opposition chooses outrage over solutions. In that sense, the culture wars that fired up at the start of the year revealed more about the diminishing appeal of those who continue to prosecute them.

Who benefits from these contests of history?

Australia Day this year showed that habit for the Coalition to push history as something that needs to be contested and left unresolved, especially if it’s a version of history that they’re not favourable to. The problem isn’t so much that Australia tells these stories about tradition, the barbecues, flags, public holidays and mateship: those rituals are important to many people, and there’s nothing inherently wrong with this. The problem is that these are the only stories conservative political leaders are prepared to accept. Anything beyond that – dispossession, violence, structural inequality, Reconciliation, or the dreaded Treaty – is regarded as an intrusion to our fun on the day, an inconvenience, or an ideological attack.

If Reconciliation is acknowledged at all by these leaders, it’s tightly constrained: symbolic, conditional and framed entirely on conservative terms, a form of anti-Reconciliation. It’s a version that insists Indigenous Australians should accept a version of history sanitised for the comfort of the majority, rather than one that explores honestly what happened after 1788 and what continues to flow from it. These issues, along with all the other culture war tropes that are usually bundled together on January 26 – are raised not because they represent pressing public policy challenges, but because they offer an opportunity to provoke, to distract and to divide.

But what has changed is the impact of this rhetoric. With conservatives no longer in government in most parts of Australia, these public scare campaigns increasingly lack institutional support: it barely worked when Scott Morrison was in office and tried to make the 2022 election all about wokeness and transgender issues, and it didn’t work from the position of opposition in 2025. Stripped of executive power, culture war messages begins to sound less like leadership and more like background noise and, instead of a culture war, a culture of complaint – a kind of annual ritualised outrage that fails to hit the mark and gains less traction as each year goes by.

Being in government is always difficult but at least there’s a platform to megaphone this type of mindless sloganeering; fewer people are interested in what the opposition has to say and that’s why the Coalition amplified the messages even harder on January 26, just to get a fraction of the traction. Blaming trans people for “ruining sport” or railing against wokeness takes up a lot of energy and becomes an easier substitute for serious policy development. In that sense, these bland culture wars are not about history, gender or identity at all. They are about power – who holds it (and in the case of the Coalition, who wants who hold power), who benefits from it, and how effectively anger can be redirected away from those at the top.

Treaty, symbolism and the fading power of fear

While these issues that festered after Australia Day became a battleground for conservatives in the lead-up to the May federal election, the most substantial development in Australia’s relationship with First Nations people unfolded later on in the year, and with relatively little drama – the same issue Dutton said would be “divisive”, and vowed to do everything in his power to oppose.

In November, the Victoria parliament passed the country’s first Treaty legislation, after decades of advocacy from Indigenous communities. For the first time in any Australian jurisdiction, a formal framework was established to recognise First Nations peoples with the creation of an independent and permanent representative body.

The dire warnings that had been issued for years from the likes of Dutton – that making a Treaty with First Nations people would somehow fracture the nation, that it would unleash legal chaos, or that it would somehow threaten Australia’s continued existence – failed to materialise. Victoria remained as Victoria. Australia remained as Australia. The sky, quite literally, did not fall in: it’s still up there. The Treaty was introduced, life went on, and the electorate largely absorbed the change without panic or upheaval, and without the presence of Dutton to oppose or rail against it, having lost both his seat and his parliamentary leadership position at the 2025 federal election.

This reality exposed the emptiness of the culture war rhetoric that had preceded it, not just in 2025, but for all the years before. Conservative voices had attempted to link any discussion about changing the date of Australia Day to the spectre of the Treaty, presenting both as part of a fearful and frightening agenda, a strategy that collapsed as soon at the Treaty was implemented in November. Once a policy like this exists in a more concrete form and becomes a reality – removed from all the exaggeration and hysteria – it became much harder to sustain the fear campaigns about it.

The Victorian experience with the Treaty also demonstrated how these processes can be handled: incrementally, consultatively and without the right-wing confrontation. It showed that the Makarrata of truth-telling and Treaty are not radical acts of national self-destruction, but mature attempts to normalise a relationship that has been left unresolved for far too long. In doing so, it provided a template not only for other states, but for the federal government as well – if there is a political will to follow it.

Perhaps most damaging part for these conservative culture warriors is the realisation that once these long-opposed reforms are implemented, they rapidly lose their potency as political scare tactics. How can the culture wars continue if there are no longer the battlefields to wage them on? What if there is no one there to listen to this macabre form of pseudo entertainment: does it still make noise?

It’s a familiar process: after years of alarmism, most issues are quietly accepted once the policy becomes legislation and a part of the normal political processes. Quite often – just like the marriage equality debate that ended in 2017 after the public voted “Yes” in the plebiscite – voters look back and wonder what all the fuss was about. Each successful reform on social issues further erodes the power of fear-based campaigning and leaves the culture war warriors increasingly disconnected from reality.

The Treaty debate, just like the Australia Day debate that preceded it, suggests a broader shift within the community. The electorate might be not uniformly progressive, nor universally persuaded on a wide range of social issues. But it is increasingly weary of endless symbolic battles that are designed to stall progress rather than resolve problems within society. As reality continues to smash many of the long-held conservative myths, the opportunities for providing the ammunition for the culture wars becomes more narrow – and the politics of fear looks more and more like a relic of a passing era.

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