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The 2025 Australian Federal Election
21 Plays1 month ago
The Australian election is over and we're answering all your questions about the results - for instance, what really happened to the Greens? What went so wrong for the Liberals? Why is vote counting taking so long? And what does Labor's landslide victory mean for Australia's future?
Young people were the largest voting bloc in this election and we're breaking down what their vote suggests about what they want to see from politics and politicians over the next three years.
This week there's no guest, it's just us, chatting about what's in these results for you! And we'd love to know what you think too!
Join the conversation by sliding into our DMs @forourfuturecampaign and @foundationsfortomorrow, or by sending us an email at hello@foundationsfortomorrow.org.
You can take action by signing our petition, now on our website!
What's In It For You is a Foundations for Tomorrow podcast, produced as part of the 2025 For Our Future campaign. It is hosted by Clare Beaton-Wells and Anna Bezzu.
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Transcript
Acknowledgment of Country & Introduction
00:00:00
Speaker
This podcast is recorded on the traditional lands of the Gamma Rhaegal people of New South Wales, Australia. As co-hosts, we pay our respects to Indigenous Elders past and present and acknowledge that intergenerational leadership and long-term practices of stewardship have been cornerstones of Indigenous cultures for thousands of years.
Youth in Policy & Election Overview
00:00:25
Speaker
Hello and welcome back to the podcast where we two young passionate Aussie women are breaking down why young people say in policy matters and what's really in it for them when it comes to future generations policy, the Australian federal election, which we had just last weekend, and how you as a young person can have your say in the policy process.
00:00:43
Speaker
I'm Claire Beaton-Wells, a former political staffer, future generations champion and policy innovator. I'm passionate about inspiring young people to lead the charge when it comes to addressing some of our most complex challenges.
00:00:54
Speaker
And I'm Anna Bezu, a corporate galley bridging business and impact, helping young people connect everyday choices to long-term change in society. So coming up on the show today, first of all, we're back. I know it's been a while and today it's actually just us two.
Election Results & Labour's Victory
00:01:09
Speaker
We're going to do a post-mortem on the recent federal election that took place just last Saturday.
00:01:14
Speaker
The vote count is still ongoing with the AEC labelling this election as the largest and most complex vote count in history. And... As we're recording this today, there are still just nine seats in doubt and yet to be called.
00:01:28
Speaker
This election is one that went down in history as the shock election. It was a landslide victory for Labour so big that it seems no punter or pollster could have predicted the total and utter decimation for the coalition and the Greens, with leaders of both parties losing their own seats,
00:01:46
Speaker
The Teals retaining most of their seats won in 2022, albeit not without a knife-edge fight. So we're here today to break down all your questions to help you understand what is in the results of this federal election for you.
00:01:59
Speaker
For instance, why is it taking so long for all the votes to be counted? What happened exactly to the Greens in the lower house? What went so wrong for the Liberals? What does a re-elected Labour majority government mean for Australia's future?
Tunnel Vision Check & Polycrastination Term
00:02:12
Speaker
But as always, before we dive into the election analysis, we'll be doing our regular tunnel vision check. And before we even dive into this one today, we actually have some exciting news to share.
00:02:23
Speaker
So when we've been doing our tunnel vision checks, we've been describing a problem seen in Australia that until now, hasn't really had a name, or at least in the terms we've been describing it, has at times the potential to feel convoluted, uncool.
00:02:40
Speaker
That is, the behaviour of politicians lacking vision, only able to see as far as three years into the future. Decision makers not properly doing the costings or providing the detail necessary to properly assess the long-term impacts that policy will have on our future.
00:02:55
Speaker
Leaders focusing on how to remain in power rather than what is best for the country. Like, what do we actually call this poor habit? Well, the exciting news is that we now finally have a name for this.
00:03:07
Speaker
It's a concept that's been developed in collaboration with General Strategic, which is an award-winning creative and political strategy firm, and it's called polycrastination, a blend of the two terms political plus procrastination.
00:03:20
Speaker
So yes, the term itself refers to the tendency of political leaders to de defer, delay or dodge decisions that would safeguard the long-term well-being of current and future generations. Now, the reason it's so vital that we're able to put a label to this habit is because the very first step in creating bold cultural change is to be able to actually describe the problem you're trying to dissolve to solve if you can't do that it's pretty hard to actually demand better of leaders so by using the term which can be used as a verb to polycrastinate we're aiming to reframe this problem of political short-termism that we've been giving examples of the past couple of episodes in a way that you can access accessibly understand engage with and act on
00:04:00
Speaker
So our challenge to you, dear listener, is to see if you can use this term in a conversation, a text, in the family group chat, maybe in an article or paper you're writing. The more we can popularize it, the better we're able to craft a shared language to advocate for bold, ambitious change in the behavior of our leaders.
00:04:20
Speaker
So now let's actually get into the tunnel vision check of the week. Claire, could you take it away for us?
Albo's Leadership & Speech Analysis
00:04:28
Speaker
I absolutely can. So I want to preface this by saying, i know we just introduced the term to polycrastinate, but the example that I want to give today is not actually a true example of polycrastination.
00:04:40
Speaker
I want to talk about an example of leadership that for once actually inspires and reflects the courage to stand up for Australian values rather than just more of the same political short-termism that we seem to all be so used to now.
00:04:54
Speaker
So what I want to talk about is how during his victory speech last Saturday night, Albo, our leader, chose to address the outcome witnessed For the opposition leader, Peter Dutton is elected to Nixon, where ah some of you who may have been watching the news cycle know, he suffered a major blow and actually lost to the Labour candidate, Ali France, who was going up against him for the third time in a row.
00:05:17
Speaker
And when addressing this loss, Albo seemed to be confronted by ah chorus of cheers that broke out in the crowd cheering all for Dutton's loss of his own seat.
00:05:28
Speaker
But how did Albo actually respond to this? Well, instead of letting the cheers and the boos ring out, he was very, very quick to raise his hands and actually shut down the celebrations. His actual words were, no, in this country, what we do is we treat people with risk respect.
00:05:46
Speaker
And was a moment that actually gave me chills to hear. And it also gave me flashbacks to just a few weeks ago in the campaign where Albo quite similarly got up on the ABC 730 program to address the debate around the kinds of traits Australians value having in a leader.
00:06:04
Speaker
And what he was doing, in effect, was responding to... The trend we saw throughout the campaign where Dutton was frequently compared to the US President Donald Trump, who stylized as more of a hard man leader than Albo, who, by contrast, was being depicted in this comparison as the weaker prime minister for Australia. um And in raising this, Albo went on to point out that This is a kind of leadership style that is quite consistent with the promotion of division. It's encouraging of things like culture wars that only further disempower the country's most vulnerable rather than lifting them up.
00:06:41
Speaker
And it's a kind of leadership that Australians overwhelmingly rejected last Sunday when they chose to vote for the Libs in less than a third of the primary vote overall.
00:06:52
Speaker
What Albo then raised during this debate ah was that this approach, or at least his approach in contrast to Dutton's, has been one of trying to bring people together.
00:07:03
Speaker
He self-described himself as a kind rather than a strong leader. And he went on to point out that one of the best things you can do as a leader is show kindness and compassion to the vulnerable.
00:07:14
Speaker
And that not doing so is not actually a show of weakness that Dutton seemed to make it out to be. And on Saturday night, after claiming victory, he circled back to this in his speech, claiming that today, or at least on Saturday, Australians had voted for Australian values, and not the things that we're seeing in America. So things like fairness, aspiration, opportunity for all, the strength to show courage in adversity and kindness to those in need. And This is a very true thing, in my opinion. I think the polls very much reflected that Australians didn't like what Dutton was offering in terms of his leadership style. It was a style that made them feel nervous and actually the kind of leadership they were looking for, the leadership that would give them a sense of comfort.
00:08:00
Speaker
a sense of security, was the leadership that style that was being embraced by Elbow, leadership that unifies and brings people together in times of certainty rather than divides them. And I think that his ability to use this moment of victory to promote unity rather than further entrench hate and division was a very inspiring show of the gracious and the humble leadership that that really endures and I think can really help a country weather through uncertain times. It was leadership that, for the first time in a long time,
00:08:29
Speaker
left me, along with I think many other people that I've spoken to about this, actually feeling very proud to be an Australian. Anyway, I know that was a long one. um So I think it's time we actually get into our postmortem of this very exciting election that we had on Saturday.
The Greens' Electoral Challenges
00:08:45
Speaker
And my goodness, I don't think I know quite where to begin, and um I think, though, a theme that has been on all of our minds the last week has been, what on earth happened to the Greens in the lower house?
00:08:58
Speaker
They experienced some very, very mixed results in this election. And for many, that has been raising questions about what exactly happened. Why did they experience such an unexpected swing against them?
00:09:10
Speaker
A lot has been said and it hasn't all been consistent. So if you're one of the ones like me the last week who was finding it pretty difficult to make sense of it all, don't worry because you're not alone.
00:09:22
Speaker
What we do know, though, is that going into this election, the Greens were banking on predictions that Labour would fall into minority and this would give them more leverage to push harder for things like action on policies like negative gearing, the capital gains tax, things like that.
00:09:36
Speaker
Okay, so... That makes sense. But can you tell us a bit about which seats have been lost and which seats have actually been won? Yeah, of course. So in 2022, taking us back to the last federal election, the Greens experienced historic wins in places like Queensland, where they got three seats, significantly boosting their representation in the lower house.
00:09:57
Speaker
And this historic result was overturned in this year's election with many are predicting now actually a complete wipeout for the minor party in the lower house where they haven't actually secured a single lower house seat.
00:10:10
Speaker
The major losses for the party this year were in Queensland where Stephen Bates in the seat of Brisbane and Max Chandler Mather in Griffith both lost their seats to Labour as well as in the seat of Melbourne in Victoria where the leader of the Greens Adam Bant has also just conceded to Labour's Sarah Whitty.
00:10:27
Speaker
And one thing that's important to note is that these seats are lower house seats in the House of Representatives. The Greens are still on track in the Senate to retain all of the six seats that were up for re-election, which if they did so would give them a total of 11 seats.
00:10:43
Speaker
and actually make them the largest cross-bench Senate party. And the reason this is important is because it means that they will effectively hold the sole balance of power. The sole balance of power, meaning that for any legislation that's introduced by Labor, if the coalition is opposing it, Labor will only need the support of the Greens to pass it.
00:11:04
Speaker
Interesting, but i'm so I'm curious as to the reasons, um you know, that you think why that they suffered such losses. Yeah, it's such a great question. I think it's been one that's been, yeah, so many have been racking their brains this week trying to work out what actually happened.
00:11:20
Speaker
And there has been, it's true, a lot of speculation and commentary in the media about these results. And it hasn't exactly been easy to make sense of what has happened. Many people have come out claiming to some extent falsely, that these losses mean Australian voters were leaving the dream the Greens in droves, they were punishing them for being the party of hate and division, for their form of protest politics the last three years, which if we actually break down and look at the voting data, this is just simply not factually correct.
00:11:49
Speaker
According to data released by the Australian Electoral Commission, the AEC, the Greens party actually received its highest ever national vote in history. Now, the reason it might not look this way is because the voting data is represented in terms of electorates rather than as a whole, where if you look at the numbers, more people than ever actually voted Greens in this election as their primary choice on their vote card.
00:12:15
Speaker
One really common explanation that has been thrown around for the Greens' tough results in the House of Representatives is the flow of vote preferences. Now, for anyone unfamiliar with our preferential voting system in Australia, this might sound a bit confusing.
00:12:30
Speaker
Like preference flows. What does that mean? Essentially, what Greens members like Adam Bowne and Max Chancellor Mather have been repeating this week in interviews and media about their results has been that they're claiming that their tough results have been because of the flow of Liberal preferences to Labour candidates.
00:12:46
Speaker
But what does this actually mean? So Adam and Max are right to say that in this election, many voters who would normally vote more conservatively chose to vote more progressively this time around. And they seem to do this in either one of two ways.
00:13:02
Speaker
Either they chose to preference liberal first, followed by more socially progressive candidates belonging to parties like Labour, or they seem to abandon the Liberals and the Nationals altogether and just put Labour as their first choice.
00:13:15
Speaker
And this kind of voting style or approach had a very significant impact on the ability of the Greens to not only win in the primary vote, but to win based on preferences.
00:13:26
Speaker
And if we actually take a look at the voting data, what it shows is not people leaving the Greens in droves, but rather masses of voters choosing them to leave the Liberals.
00:13:37
Speaker
And if you were listening to the news this week and heard anything about the Liberal result, probably one of the most commonly trodden out statistics was that Liberals are actually projected to record one of their lowest primary votes since 1949 when the party was in its early establishment.
00:13:52
Speaker
Never in history has it actually recorded ah primary vote of less than one third of the votes. And we will be coming back to break down the reasons for this low, this record low a little bit later on. But what I want to say here is that what this data means is that people...
00:14:07
Speaker
who would normally vote Liberal instead chose to give their vote to another candidate in this election specifically. And if we think this through logically, voter who has like traditionally voted Conservative their whole lifetime is not very likely to suddenly just switch and put a party, ah very socially progressive leftist party like the Greens, as their first choice.
00:14:31
Speaker
So what most of these voters did was choose to put Labour as their primary alternative. And it's very likely that in addition to this, they were also putting the Greens last. So this preferencing of Labour demonstrates that the ALP actually benefited significantly from the Liberal Party's loss of primary votes, while the Greens suffered because of this.
00:14:52
Speaker
That's one reason. On top of this, we also have the impact of preference flows, which are the is the thing that Adam and Max have been talking about this week. And it's a feature of our country's preferential voting system.
00:15:03
Speaker
Before I go into that, though, I want to explain and break down a little bit what's going What does preferential voting actually mean? This is another piece of jargon we definitely need to talk about. So preference flows, to be specific, are the feature of our electoral system that mean that if you are a candidate that isn't leading in the overall vote count of an electorate, you can still end up winning a seat because of the flow of preference votes.
00:15:26
Speaker
In essence, what this means is we have a system in Australia that requires voters to number candidates in order of their preference. First choice, second choice, third choice, so on. And during counting, if no candidate has yet achieved a majority, the candidate with the fewest votes is eliminated and their votes are then redistributed to the voter's next preference.
00:15:49
Speaker
And this process is repeated until there is a clear winner. Now, the most important aspect of the preferential voting system to look at when it comes to the results of the Greens and demystifying these claims that huge numbers of people chose not to vote for them is first preferences.
00:16:04
Speaker
If we take, for example, the seat of Wills, which is where the ex-leader of the Victorian Greens, Samantha Ratnam was running, we can see that on primary votes, she actually achieved the highest vote share of all the candidates.
00:16:16
Speaker
There was a very positive swing towards her. When we look at the Liberal candidate, though, there is a huge negative swing against them. And again, when we think about who voters are moving, who are who who are moving away from Liberal are actually likely to put as their second, third and fourth choice and so on, it's not very likely to be the Greens. It's most likely to be Labour.
00:16:37
Speaker
And so in this seat, this means that the Labour candidate, again, who is benefiting hugely from the flow of Liberal preferences towards them, helping them to gain a majority in the preference count over the Greens candidate,
00:16:49
Speaker
despite them having a primary, like a higher primary vote share. And this is, in effect, how preferential voting works, which historically has always been a huge hurdle for Greens to overcome in the elections. It just so happens that this time, as Adam Bandt quite humbly, I think, acknowledged on ABC's 7.30 on Thursday night, there was such a huge swing away from the Liberals this election that Labour was actually able to win many seats that would normally be a much tighter race for the Greens.
00:17:18
Speaker
Okay, that was a really interesting breakdown. To be honest, I had more of a perception that the Greens had a branding issue as opposed to really like understanding the like the insights around preferential voting and and like the kind of natural habits that people who have historically voted conservative um wouldn't preference the Greens and hence Labor winning over those seats.
00:17:42
Speaker
So that makes a lot of sense. I... Again, it's like it's a curiosity that I have around, i are Australians just wanting less of the highs and lows and less of the extremisms and just moving more towards the center?
00:17:55
Speaker
I feel like that's sort of the resonance that I'm getting from a little like a lot of my friends and people in um sort of the spheres that I am operating in is people just want centricity, reliability. They don't want the most extravagant promises. They just want promises that ah but being delivered on. And that's not perfect policy. It's just progress in the right direction.
00:18:15
Speaker
So I think that's the Greens. Now, let's actually move to the Liberals. Absolutely. So, Anna, can you talk us through some of the results that the coalition experienced on Saturday night?
Liberal National Coalition's Performance
00:18:27
Speaker
Yes. So one of the most interesting aspects of this election was the record low primary votes recorded by the Liberal National Coalition. So while the count is still ongoing and the AEC is yet to declare final numbers, the Liberals are on track to secure just shy of one third of the primary vote, which would be their poorest result in nearly 70 years since their establishment in the nineteen and the early nineteen forty s Not only did the Liberals not win more than a third of the seats of the House of Reps, the leader of the Liberal Party, codi Peter Dutton, also lost his own seat.
00:19:00
Speaker
Ouch, that's got to hurt. After having held it for 24 years since 2001. two thousand and one Yes. And despite, I think, the record low number of people who voted for the Liberals and the Nationals this election, I think I do have to at least try and empathise with someone like Peter Dutton and what it would actually be like to lose your seat.
00:19:21
Speaker
after having been in Parliament for 24 years. Like, public life can be really, really tough. um So, yeah, Anna, can you talk us through what do you think are some of the reasons for this overwhelming rejection by the Australian people of the Liberal National Coalition?
00:19:37
Speaker
Yeah, look, you you raise a good point. Like ultimately that Peter Dutton has had been entrenched in that identity for 24 years and the transition away from that world is going to be obviously very challenging. And I think that um someone who who' spent 24 years doing anything I think deserves the due credit of the resilience to persevere and something like that. So, you know,
00:20:01
Speaker
a bit of empathy, people. um But to your point, the Australian people's overwhelming rejection of the Liberal Party suggests that something fundamentally was wrong about what they were actually offering. And when we actually take a minute to look at the campaign they ran, many aspects of it seem to reflect the shortcomings of short-term, short-sighted thinking. So Australians are currently experiencing pressures, cost of living, housing, energy bills, student debt. These are the issues that the liberals simply didn't seem to speak enough about.
00:20:29
Speaker
And to credit Bill Shorten and Christopher Pine on the 7.30 on Thursday night, they put it incredibly well. It seemed like if you're a migrant or international students, the libs made it look like they didn't really want you in this country.
00:20:42
Speaker
And if you're a public servant, you definitely had a target on your back. And if you were woman working partly or fully from home, well, they didn't want you either. And if you were born after about 1981, you weren't in the mix at all. And the Libs didn't have any policies specifically aimed at connecting with young people, despite them being the largest voting bloc in the election. So to put it simply, they just did not read the room. So to put it plainly, it's not just one single area of um loss or one void that the like the Liberal Party was experiencing that made them lose this election.
00:21:17
Speaker
it was it's It was simply way too many issues, almost to count. that were There was a lack of costing, a lack of detail, a lack of policy, what seemed like a lack of vision, inconsistencies.
00:21:29
Speaker
policies were that were announced and then backtracked. There was a lack of compassion. and to be honest, I think that there's just a real wariness from the Australian public around the sentiments, you know, that we've seen from Trump and similar styles that were employed um with Dutton's leadership. And I think that that harsh style approach in politics, were just we're just not a fan of it here in Australia. We really are very, very cynical ah of it. And we we just don't embrace it in the same style.
00:22:00
Speaker
And so the message sent by voters this election is that they don't want anything to do with Trump
Rejection of Divisive Politics & Labour's Mandate
00:22:05
Speaker
here in Australia. they instead really value things like fairness, equality, and humility. And while the Liberals historically have a reputation as a party of aspiration, they seem to be a bit lost.
00:22:17
Speaker
Well, in fact, a lot lost in this election. There will absolutely always be room for a more economically dry party in Australia, but this time around, I think many Australians were quite enraged that they didn't seem to have any sensible alternative they that they could vote for and if they weren't happy with Labour. The reality was that there were just weren't any viable alternative policies being put forward that they really could believe in.
00:22:42
Speaker
Okay, so interesting. I think the way that you broke that down just then shows that, yeah, very evidently it's impossible to sum up the reasons for Peter Dutton, the Liberal Party and the national party the national Liberal National Coalition's all in one hand, like there were many, many contributing factors, but what is really overwhelmingly clear about the results from Australian voters on Saturday night is that they do not want, as you said, those that Trump-style approach to politics here in Australia.
00:23:14
Speaker
They really value things, as you said, like centricity. And I think that by embracing that, Peter Dutton ultimately set himself up to alienate rather than India, Australian voters in this election.
00:23:26
Speaker
So now that Labour has been returned, and not just returned, returned with quite an overwhelming majority, frankly, I think the AUC are predicting that in total Labour could end up once the vote count is finally finished with possibly a total of 95 seats in the lower house.
00:23:42
Speaker
What I want to talk about next is what kind of mandate does this give them, this overwhelming majority, to pursue more ambitious policy, to actually look at enacting the structural reforms that people have been calling for? Like the emphatic and historic win that Labour experienced last weekend meant that they secured, i think now it said, 55.1% of the two party preferred vote. And that is one of the highest since Malcolm Fraser's 55.7% in And it's only been exceeded on three other occasions in the past one hundred years
00:24:14
Speaker
So many people have come out and said that this emphatic win, this overwhelming majority, delivers them a mandate for more ambitious policy and reform, for more spending on things like Medicare, a range of other health measures, for helping people to buy homes with deposits of as little as 5%, for reducing student debts, fee-free TAFE, incentives for the installation of domestic solar batteries, cheaper medicine, cheaper childcare, etc.
00:24:37
Speaker
Not surprisingly, Albo seems to have already been inundated with an avalanche of demands from business to see the government look at tackling some of the nation's biggest structural challenges, the productivity crisis, the inequalities of our tax system, the broken environmental laws, the list goes on.
00:24:53
Speaker
But I think we should start with what's been said so far, right, Anna? Yes, absolutely. So Albo in his first press conference addressed in Canberra on Monday, the 5th of May, said that the gap government he leads will be stable and orderly.
00:25:06
Speaker
But he also acknowledged the demands on his government to go further and to be more ambitious. And what he said was that we already have a large and ambitious en agenda on the table, a suite of reforms and policies on housing, gender equality, education to implement.
00:25:20
Speaker
He identified the ALP as an ambitious government and as a government that won't get carried away and that will continue to engage across the parliament. A memorable quote that I took away from this was when he said that people are entitled to their ambitions and And do you know what my ambition is for?
00:25:37
Speaker
My ambition is for the country, which I really, you know, I appreciate and I can see that as what he's focused on is to simply be modest, moderate and consistent in his delivery.
00:25:50
Speaker
And all of this is true. But this doesn't negate the fact that overall, neither Labour nor the Liberals, on the other hand, took any real visionary, exciting big ticket policies items to the election.
00:26:03
Speaker
Right. That's totally, that's just it. Like people, so many people in the last week have come out to say that despite the overwhelming majority that Labor secured in this election, there were no big ticket items taken by the ALP this time around. Like there were, for example, in 2022 with The Voice. There were no big exciting social or economic policy reforms like, you know, as the Greens been advocating for, putting dental into Medicare or abolishing things like negative gearing.
00:26:29
Speaker
And so while it is true that their agenda is ambitious in terms of having a lot on it, many of the things that they put on the table are just incremental steps, adding to an already existent agenda, which is very, I think, for me at least, reminiscent of the same behaviour of tinkering around at the margins rather than tackling the issues like cost of living and housing and income equality at their core.
00:26:56
Speaker
Despite this, though, I do think it's really interesting to see that many still overwhelmingly trusted Labour as the best placed party to govern over the next three years. And part of this, I think, has to do with the fact that in general, the Australian voting population is very rational.
00:27:13
Speaker
Many people... could recognise, as Peter Dutton was saying, they're not better off than they were three years ago. But they could also see that change like this takes more than three years to implement.
00:27:26
Speaker
And Labour were quite evidently, in contrast to the Liberals, the only party seen to be rationally And concretely trying to do something about the challenges being faced in this country. So and despite the initial hesitance, I think, expressed by the Prime Minister to add more to the agenda, I do think it's inevitable that they will look at more structural things like changes negative gearing, the capital gains tax, reforms to super, providing much needed support to small businesses who are the backbone of this economy.
00:27:55
Speaker
I think just like when they abandoned the stage three tax cut reforms, Labour have demonstrated in the last three years of their governance that they are a party that is adaptable and they are a party that's willing to listen to what voters want and need. So I don't i don't think these reforms are completely out of the question.
00:28:14
Speaker
I also think that Albo will be reflecting upon the legacy he wants to leave as a leader and very real opportunity that he has now to lead the nation
Voter Priorities & Leadership Qualities
00:28:25
Speaker
for six years. Like that's no small chance to make a real difference to people's lives. And much of his political career to date has been already dedicated to either rescuing or improving some of later's greatest social policies,
00:28:40
Speaker
Medicare, HEX, childcare, for example. And I think this is where some of the greatest opportunity lies for that real long-term structural change and reform and a shift to a style of governance that will set up every generation for success.
00:28:54
Speaker
And that was something that actually he's already he already acknowledged, I don't know if you noticed, in his press conference last Monday. He holds a genuine belief deep down that if Labour can get things right in the next three years, they can set up this country perfectly.
00:29:08
Speaker
not just for the next three years, but for the next three decades. And I think it's phrases like this that one can take hope from, that there will be some sort of shift to looking at policymaking through more of a long-term lens rather than a short-term one that's always framed in terms of three-year electoral cycles.
00:29:24
Speaker
Yeah, I think that's a really comprehensive breakdown. And I think, look, if there's one thing that the 2025 Australian election made clear, it's that people are no longer voting based on tribal loyalty. They're voting based on trust, values and lived experience. And here in Australia, Labour didn't just hold on. They grew their majority. And why they?
00:29:43
Speaker
It seems because they spoke to what's actually real, housing pressures, rising costs, climate anxiety. And look, they didn't offer perfect solutions.
00:29:53
Speaker
but Instead, they offered practical, pragmatic ones. And that was enough to restore faith. And to be honest, in a world where faith in government feels increasingly fragile and rare, that says a lot. And so this pattern, this it seems to all be pointing to the craving for authenticity.
00:30:12
Speaker
And, you know, i could go on about this for hours, but wrapping it all up, I think if I were to take anything from this episode, Claire, it's that these are the results are all pointing the to the same trend. People want politics.
00:30:23
Speaker
They feel less like a theatrical performance and more like a commitment, a commitment to doing the hard work, long and, you know, the long-term work of governing with clarity, compassion, and a sense of a shared future.
00:30:37
Speaker
And so for us, whether we're in leading in boardrooms or in policy forums or community spaces, we're The cause is evident. It's very clear.
00:30:48
Speaker
The world doesn't need louder leaders. It needs clearer ones, grounded ones, leaders who are willing to own their mess and still try to move us forward. So with that all said, we've come to the end of our very, very jam-packed episode for today, but we are still keen to keep the conversation going and to hear from all of you.
00:31:08
Speaker
So as a young Aussie, how are you feeling about your future after this election? We'd love to hear from you. So please send us an email at hello at foundationsfortomorrow.org or slide into our DMs at For Our Future Campaign and at the Foundations for Tomorrow.
00:31:26
Speaker
and let us know what you think. As always, if you loved this episode, we would be so grateful if you could leave us five stars on Spotify or Apple Podcasts, wherever you listen in. And please do not forget to sign our petition for a Wellbeing of Future Generations Act in Australia.
00:31:41
Speaker
I'm Anna Bazou. And I'm Clare Beaton-Wells. We'll be back shortly with another episode breaking down what's in policy and politics for you. Bye!