Anthony Albanese, the prime minister of Australia, remarked on Monday (Apr. 3), “I won’t get carried away.” This came after his Labor party, against all chances, snatched a seat from the opposition at a by-election, a first in a century, despite voters’ struggles with rising living expenses.
Mary Doyle of Labor defeated the conservative Liberal-National opposition combination in one of its long-standing strongholds in Victoria state, winning the weekend by-election for the lower house federal seat of Aston in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs with a swing of more than 6%.
Albanese claimed that voters connected with the government’s emphasis on improving people’s lives on a practical level. And they comprehended that the increase in living expenses was due to problems with the global supply chain related to Russia’s conflict in Ukraine.
But despite calling the election result “a historic win”, Albanese said his government would remain grounded.
The last time the opposition lost a by-election to a government candidate was in 1920, in the Western Australia state goldfields electorate of Kalgoorlie.
Former Liberal minister Alan Tudge, who won the 2022 general election by a narrow margin of 2.8 percent, resigned from politics for personal reasons, which led to the calling of the by-election in Aston.
High approval ratings of Albanese
Next month, Albanese will have served as prime minister for a full year. He has had high approval ratings during that time. A newspoll published by the Australian newspaper on Monday showed him stretching his lead to 58 per cent as the preferred leader, eclipsing opposition leader Peter Dutton’s 26 per cent support.
The survey of 1,500 voters also showed Labor extending its lead on a two-party preferred basis to 55 per cent, against the opposition’s 45 per cent.
The by-election win comes a week after Labor returned to power in New South Wales, Australia’s most populous state. The win means the party now governs at state and federal levels across Australia’s mainland, leaving the island state Tasmania as the conservative outlier.