CGTN Europe spoke to Daniel Stone, the Executive Director of a political and policy strategy firm Diffusion.Au, about what is at stake at the 2025 Australian federal election.
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00:00Daniel Stone is the executive director of Diffusion AU, a political and policy strategy firm,
00:06and a former senior strategist for the Australian Labour Party.
00:11The cost of living is really at the top of people's minds.
00:14Energy, food, things like that have increased significantly in cost over the last three or four years.
00:21And some of the behaviour that's happening in the US is only contributing to a nervousness about personal economic security.
00:27So we've seen both major parties really try and make pictures about how they're going to help improve people's lives in that respect.
00:34And in terms of the major parties, the Labour Party, the incumbent government,
00:39polling has shown quite a strong turnaround from what seemed like a likely defeat to a possible win.
00:45Are we seeing a kind of parallel of what we saw happening in Canada recently,
00:48the sort of rallying around the incumbent government in the shadow of Donald Trump and unpredictable US foreign policy looming large?
00:56You mentioned the sense of nervousness there, is there?
01:00Yeah, I don't think that it's quite the same as what's happening in Canada.
01:03Like, to some extent, you know, the political atmosphere in the United States has affected Australia,
01:09but not nowhere near the same extent.
01:11I think what we've seen is two really big things sort of happen over the last six weeks of this campaign.
01:18We saw the opposition leader, Peter Dutton, who's the Conservative Party leader, the Liberal National Party leader,
01:26launch sort of two policies that really crippled him with constituencies that he really needed to win.
01:32Firstly, he announced a dialing back of work from home provisions,
01:36which landed like an absolute thud with particularly out-of-suburban working families,
01:42the people who are feeling the most economic pressure and stress that he most needs to win.
01:46He had to apologise and retract the policy after only a couple of days.
01:50And honestly, I think a lot of people still doubt how committed he is to their interests as a result.
01:55And then the second thing, which also landed a really bad blow,
01:59is that he had announced a long-term nuclear power plan.
02:03Even though Australia has no nuclear industry, no nuclear power,
02:06no ability or no knowledge about how to construct this,
02:10all of the modelling suggests it was going to be astronomically expensive
02:13and take more than 50 years before any of the power came online.
02:17And it just didn't add up with some of the more business-minded
02:20or kind of rational economic voters who were also traditionally conservative supporters.
02:25The two of those together led him into a place where he just wasn't able to build a working coalition
02:30and his support fell away pretty quickly.
02:33It just goes to show that election campaigns can really go in any unpredictable directions.
02:38And turning to foreign policy, how difficult is it for Canberra
02:41to strike a balance between being a very strong US ally
02:45with the growing influence of China in the Asia-Pacific region,
02:49China, of course, being by far Australia's biggest trading partner, not the US?
02:53Australia is part of Asia and China is our largest trading partner.
02:59We have extremely close ties with most of the nations in our region
03:02across the South Pacific and across Southeast Asia
03:04and very much see each other as friends.
03:08Meanwhile, we also have a kind of cultural and sort of values association
03:12with not just the United States, but also the United Kingdom and much of Europe too.
03:16And we're always in a process of trying to find the equilibrium between who we are
03:21and where we belong geographically and the relationships of our friends and neighbours
03:26as well as sort of, you know, where we sit in the world on a more cultural level as well.
03:31And data is suggesting a rise in swing voters in Australia with support for the big parties,
03:37Labour, the conservative-leaning coalition, opposition falling.
03:43How has the political scene in Australia been fragmenting?
03:46We were also hearing about a generational shift.
03:4931% of people in the last election actually prioritised a minor party candidate
03:54as their number one preference, which is an incredibly large number, a big shift.
04:00So we're not seeing it necessarily in the make-up of the parliament,
04:03there is a real pull away from the major parties.