Albanese's class of 2025 tightens PM's grip on party

The Age

24-06-2025

Many in the current ministry were supported by Albanese on their way up, such as Skills and Training Minister Andrew Giles, Defence Industry Minister Pat Conroy and Communications Minister Anika Wells, Emergency Management Minister Kristy McBain and Bennelong MP Jerome Laxale.
Many of the new MPs have similar ties to the PM, such as former Tasmanian Labor leader Rebecca White, who has been appointed assistant minister for women, Anne Urquhart, who Albanese encouraged to quit her position in the Senate to run for the Tasmanian seat of Braddon, and Rowan Holzberger, who was elected in the Queensland seat of Forde.
Albanese also heavily backed the pre-selection of Matt Smith, the former Cairns Taipans basketball player, whose electorate he visited several times during the 2025 campaign.
Smith said the PM's campaign message of centrist policymaking and stability in an uncertain world would be a marker of success.
'Stability is the aim of any government. You set out to deliver what you said, and that was a strength of the Albanese government coming into this election, and then I think was reflected in the results.
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'Having played sport for so long, when you've got that clear message and everyone's pulling in the right way, that's when you have success.'
Labor won 12 seats from the Liberals or Liberal National Party in Queensland, three from the Greens and one from an ex-Liberal MP Ian Goodenough, who quit the party during the previous term and contested the election as an independent, as well as securing an inaugural victory in the new seat of Bullwinkel in Western Australia.
ANU Australian historian Frank Bongiorno said landslide election wins such as the Menzies' government in 1949 and Bob Hawke's in 1983 have had long-lasting impacts on the political landscape.
Bongiorno said John Howard's big win in 1996, when the Coalition gained 26 seats, launched a number of significant careers such as those of Warren Entsch, Joe Hockey, Sharman Stone, Danna Vale, Joanna Gash and Jackie Kelly and established a new demographic target for the Coalition in the mortgage belts of Howard battlers.
'It brought some very, very significant women into the parliament and also, I think, crafted that idea of Western Sydney being very critical,' he said.
However, Bongiorno said the shock results in formerly safe Labor seats of Bean in the ACT and Fremantle in Western Australia, which the government won by razor-thin margins, showed the unpredictability of elections given the collapse in primary votes of major parties.
'Things have changed in terms of how votes translate into seats and majorities these days. It's a very different world even from 1996,' he said.
'So we're dealing obviously with a really significant number of MPs who, even if they've got what look like reasonably solid margins, are going to have to work very hard to protect them because the idea of the traditional safe seat does seem to be in decline.'