LAST UPDATE | 22 May 2022

US PRESIDENT JOE Biden has called Australia’s incoming prime minister Anthony Albanese to congratulate him on his election victory and underline the strength of their countries’ alliance, according to the White House.

The two leaders will meet on Tuesday at the Quad group summit in Tokyo and the White House has praised Albanese for deciding to make the trip.

“President Biden reaffirmed the United States’ steadfast commitment to the US-Australia alliance and his intent to work closely with the new government to make it stronger still,” it said in a statement.

“President Biden expressed deep appreciation for the prime minister-designate’s own early commitment to the alliance, reflected in his decision to travel almost immediately to Tokyo to attend the Quad Summit.”

This is “a vital opportunity to exchange views and continue to drive practical cooperation in the Indo-Pacific”, the statement added, using the administration’s term for the Asia-Pacific region.

The Quad, comprising Australia, Japan, India and the United States, is a loose grouping established during Washington’s efforts to reinforce its regional leadership and counteract an increasingly muscular Chinese military and trade presence.

Government formation

There is still no clear answer as to whether Australia’s new prime minister Anthony Albanese will be able to form a majority government or have to rely on the support of an increased number of independents and minor party candidates who won seats in yesterday’s election.

With counting set to continue for many days as postal votes are tallied, one prospect that emerged was that Albanese may need to be sworn in as acting prime minister to attend the Quad summit in Tokyo with Biden, Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi.

The election delivered a clear rebuke to Australia’s traditional two-party system, both to Albanese’s Labor and the heavily defeated conservative coalition led by the Liberal party’s outgoing Prime Minister Scott Morrison. The major parties bled votes to fringe parties and independents, including in many seats considered Labor or coalition strongholds.

Needing 76 seats in the lower Parliamentary chamber, the House of Representatives, to govern in its own right, Labor on Sunday afternoon was being called the winner in 71, with 67% of votes counted, according to the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

The Liberal-National coalition was ahead in just 52 — drastically down from its bare-majority 76 in the 2019 poll, in what analysts called a fierce rejection of Morrison and his team’s handling of many issues in its three-year term including climate, Covid-19, women’s rights, political integrity and natural disasters such as bushfires and floods.

A total of 15 seats had been declared for independents or minor party candidates. Of these, three were from the environment-centric Green party and 12 were non-aligned politicians, with up to nine of those so-called teal independents.

In a new wave in Australian politics, the teal independents are marketed as a greener shade than the Liberal Party’s traditional blue colour and want stronger government action on reducing Australia’s greenhouse gas emissions than either the government or Labor are proposing.

Most of their successful candidates are women, their success seen partly as a repudiation of Mr Morrison for his handling of gender issues including sex scandals that have rocked Parliament during his latest three-year term.

While Labor will form either a majority or minority government, both major parties lost ground, with support for the coalition dropping by more than 6% from the 2019 election, and Labor’s vote falling by around 1.2% as of Sunday morning.

Albanese vowed to bring Australians together, increase investment in social services and “end the climate wars”.

Speaking to reporters while walking his dog in his electorate this morning, Albanese evoked a more cooperative approach to Parliamentary business — possibly unavoidable if Labor cannot form a majority government — and described his victory as “a really big moment”.

“It’s something that’s a big moment in my life, but what I want it to be is a big moment for the country,” he said. “I do want to change the country. I want to change the way that politics operates in this country.”

Greens leader Adam Bandt concurred, saying his party wanted to work with the next government to “tackle the climate crisis” and an “inequality crisis” he said was threatening Australia.

“The Liberal vote went backwards, the Labor vote went backwards,” he told reporters. “More people turned to the Greens than ever before … because we said that politics needs to be done differently.”

Mr Albanese, who revealed in a 2016 interview he had tracked down his biological father in Italy in 2009, four years before his death, said his surname and that of new government Senate leader Penny Wong, who is of Chinese ancestry, reflected modern, multi-cultural Australia.

“I think it’s good… someone with a non-Anglo Celtic surname is the leader in the House of Representatives and that someone with a surname like Wong is the leader of the government in the Senate,” he said.

Labor has promised more financial assistance and a robust social safety net as Australia grapples with the highest inflation since 2001 and soaring housing prices.

Additional reporting from PA