The 2025 federal election delivered not just a win to Labor, but a defining moment in modern Australian politics. Anthony Albanese secured a second term with an increased majority—something no Labor Prime Minister had done since Bob Hawke in 1990. More astonishingly, Peter Dutton became the first federal Opposition Leader in history to lose his own seat. For the Liberal Party, this wasn’t just a defeat—it was an ideological reckoning.

What went wrong? Almost everything. From a culture war campaign that misjudged the national mood to a tax policy that appeared elitist and economically incoherent, Dutton led the Coalition into an election with tactics better suited to a Fox News panel than a modern Australian electorate.

Culture wars don’t pay the bills

Dutton’s campaign was steeped in cultural grievance – attacks on Welcome to Country, critiques of “woke” school curricula, and warnings of national decline. Culture wars may play well to Sky News After Dark– guided by Peta Credlin and Andrew Bolt–but failed to reach—suburban families, renters, young workers, and middle-income earners buckling under economic pressure.

Where Dutton offered fury, Albanese offered calm focus. The Prime Minister stuck to cost-of-living measures, housing, health, and energy. In the face of an uncertain global environment—including President Trump’s return to the White House—Albanese projected stability, pragmatism, and calm. And that’s exactly what Australia wanted.

Stage 3 Tax Cuts: A trap Dutton walked into

More than any other policy arena, tax marked the starkest contrast—and revealed the deep strategic flaws in Dutton’s campaign.

Labor made a bold move early in the year: it reshaped the Stage 3 tax cuts to better support low- and middle-income earners, without increasing the deficit. While the Liberal Party howled about broken promises and class warfare, Labor sold it as “fairer” and “more responsible”—and voters agreed.

Dutton’s promise to reverse Labor’s changes was a political own goal. It sent a message that the Coalition cared more about preserving tax cuts for high-income earners than offering practical relief to the average household. In a time of mortgage stress and grocery inflation, defending tax relief for the top 10% looked not just tone-deaf—it looked arrogant.

No vision, no structure

The Liberal Party under Dutton presented no clear tax vision. There was no credible long-term plan for personal income tax reform, no roadmap for addressing bracket creep, no mention of modernising the GST, and certainly no structural policy to meet Australia’s future fiscal challenges.

Labor, meanwhile, avoided radicalism but implemented a string of targeted changes: taxing superannuation balances over $3 million at a higher rate, strengthening ATO oversight of multinationals, and aligning with the OECD’s global minimum tax reforms. These moves, modest yet strategic, helped fund services while giving Labor an aura of credibility.

The “black hole” of Coalition economics

Most damaging of all was Dutton’s economic promise to deliver $150 billion in savings over ten years through “waste cuts” and public sector restraint—without modelling, costings, or revenue trade-offs. He claimed he could fund new tax relief while slashing government spending but refused to say what would go. Public servants, health administrators, and educators feared what was coming. Voters didn’t buy it.

At a time when Australia faces rising healthcare demands, aged care pressures, and climate infrastructure needs, the Coalition’s promise of austerity with no detail looked reckless. Dutton preached fiscal responsibility but came armed with slogans, not spreadsheets.

Multinational tax and missed opportunities

Dutton also failed to present a robust alternative on corporate tax and global reform. While Labor embraced the OECD’s Pillar Two minimum corporate tax and anti-avoidance measures, the Coalition barely engaged with the issue. This opened Labor up to business support while Dutton alienated both reformists and the electorate’s growing demand for fairness from tech giants and global corporations. Even conservative economists admitted post-election that the Coalition missed an opportunity to seize the mantle of modern, market-based tax reform—especially in a global economy reshaped by U.S. and EU tax reform efforts.

The seat of Dickson: collapse at the centre

Dutton didn’t just lose nationally—he lost in his own backyard. His seat of Dickson, once held by a thin margin, fell after a targeted campaign by Labor and grassroots independents. Dutton’s tough-on-crime, tough-on-borders persona once resonated, but in 2025 it felt out of step with a diverse, middle-class electorate concerned more about day care, mortgages, and Medicare than ideological brawls.

His fall in Dickson symbolised a broader collapse of the John Howard’s successful “battlers” strategy. The Coalition failed to appeal to either working-class aspirants, or cosmopolitan professionals. That leaves the party marooned: strong in parts of regional Queensland, but bleeding everywhere else.

Internal party anger and donor revolt

Post-election, a slew of major Liberal donors announced they were pulling funding. Their frustration? A campaign devoid of policy, vision, or modernity. Many expressed fury at Dutton’s concentration of control, exclusion of moderates, and insistence on fighting a 2010-style campaign in a 2025 electorate. The truth is, Dutton ran a campaign designed to appeal to the party base—not the country. And he paid the price.

Albanese’s Victory was earned, not gifted

To say Albanese won by default would be wrong. His government campaigned on a steady economic hand, sound budget management, and credible social investment. He expanded social housing, invested in renewable energy infrastructure, and recalibrated tax policy in ways that lifted household confidence without fuelling inflation.

Labor didn’t promise a revolution. It promised to continue governing competently—and after a decade of climate wars, pandemic chaos, and rotating prime ministers, that was enough.

A cautionary tale

Peter Dutton leaves the political stage as a cautionary tale. He mistook anger for a vision, mistook culture war clickbait for national leadership, and mistook elite tax cuts for economic policy. His defeat—historic, personal, and deeply symbolic—should shake the Liberal Party to its core.

For Albanese, the path forward won’t be easy. But he now governs with a fresh mandate, a politically realigned map, and an electorate that has said, in no uncertain terms, that it wants leadership grounded in fairness, policy, and modernity.

The future of the Liberal Party depends on whether it listens.

*Tony Anamourlis is a tax law specialist in multinational transactions, negotiating with the Commissioner of Taxation and other regulators and is a regular contributor to Neos Kosmos.