Ask an Expert: Australian Federal Election 2025 edition

In our inaugural edition of Ask an Expert, Gavin Ryan, Founding Director of Aroca Consulting, answers your questions on the upcoming Australian Federal Election happening on 3 May 2025:

Q: Who is likely to win?

A: When the election was first announced on 28 March of this year, early polling suggested that the Liberal National coalition were set to take majority government. However, as the campaign moves towards the final polling day of Saturday May 3rd, the polling has shifted back towards favouring the Labor government to be re-elected. This steady increase in Labor support and consequent decrease in support for the Liberal National party coalition has been a consistent trend and now shows the Labor party may be on the way to achieving majority government again. The Labor Government secured 77 of the 150 parliamentary seats of the House of Representatives, allowing it to form a majority government.

A campaign centred on increases of the cost of living has effectively become a liability amidst moves by the US President Trump for tariffs to be levied across the world, and upon Australia in particular (where almost all previous national governments have gone to great lengths to seek and offer favourable trade and commercial regulation the US).

This has combined with the perception that the Liberal National party coalition identifies with the cultural and economic conservatives, driving these changes in the United States, in pushing voters away from the coalition and back towards support for the Labor government. However, a note of caution should be applied, as the polling also shows support for minor parties and independents to be strong and may attract as many as a third of all votes, and there continues to be a high percentage of undecided voters in all polls.  

The Liberal National party coalition is hoping that the state of Victoria will prove to be crucial, as this state has traditionally outperformed in its Labor representation in recent years. Currently the Labor state Government under a new leader is showing as unpopular in polling and the Liberal National party coalition are hoping that this will allow them to win back crucial parliamentary seats lost to Labor, and seats lost to independents (‘Teals’) despite the national trend of support moving away from them.

Q: What could the outcome of this election mean from the point of view of an Australian business in Singapore?

A: Australian businesses in Singapore have seen a growing co-operation and deepening economic ties between Australia and Singapore, amidst growing Australian engagement broadly in South-East Asia over recent years.

The outcome of this election, coming against the backdrop of increasing hostilities over international trade, uncertain geopolitics and commercial regulations, will likely alter this recent course depending on which party wins. Labor has signalled that it is committed to continuing this recent course of engagement and trade ties, however the other major parties that may form government – the Liberal National party coalition – have announced increasingly protectionist trade, migration and defence policies. This is combined with the Liberal National party coalition being driven further to the right as it increasingly identifies with the cultural and economic policies of conservatives in the United States, which has meant criticism of China and those Asian nations that China successfully works with.

It’s worth highlighting that the Coalition have proposed a cap for international students at 240,000 if they are elected. This comes after they blocked a bill by the Labor Government that would have set a cap at 270,000. This sector is an important economic driver for Australia and critical to maintain strong ties with the Asia region where most of the students come from. 

Q: What do you think the implications of the various election outcomes (inc. minority vs majority in both directions) are for Australia's Southeast Asia Economic Strategy?

A: As the architect of the strategy in 2022, the re-election of a majority Labor government will most likely mean the continued implementation of the strategy. Even if elected as a minority government, the minor parties and independents who would support the Labor government are left-of-centre and are either ambivalent to regional ties and policy or broadly supportive of deepening regional co-operation, particularly with China.

When the Liberal-National party coalition have been elected to majority government previously in Australia, they have generally left foreign trade and co-operation strategies in place for at least their first term in government. In this election cycle however, they have indicated a strong intention to revisit many agreements and policies enacted by the current Labor government with the intention of reversing or rewriting the aims and intent of these. This combined with their increasingly isolationist positions means that regional co-operation and strategy may be discarded, adding to the geopolitical uncertainty in the region.

If the coalition is elected as a minority government, there would be a marked shift away from regional frameworks and strategy, as the minor parties and independents who support the Liberal-National party coalition are right-of-centre and almost all hold stated public positions that are openly hostile towards any regional ties, strategy and co-operation, especially within Asia.
 

Q: What do you think the implications of the various election outcomes (inc. minority vs majority in both directions) are for Australia and Singapore’s relationship when it comes to energy and renewables?

A: The re-election of a majority Labor government would mean the continued implementation of an energy policy toward the transition away from fossil fuels to clean energy goals. The Labor government has largely left regional frameworks in place and built upon these, even where it involves large fossil fuel interests. If elected as a minority government, the minor parties and independents who would support the Labor government have publicly stated positions that call for stronger action on climate change which may mean that renewable energy targets and the treatment of fossil fuel energy may have to change as a part pf their support. This previously occurred in the last minority Labor government in 2010.

Liberal-National coalition majority governments have previously left regional energy frameworks in place. However, in this election they have put forward a nuclear energy plan which has generated intense public debate around the cost and legacy issues that come with such a change. This move does not seem to have public support and has strengthened a continuing commitment to supporting fossil fuels over renewable energies, so any Liberal-National coalition governments would see an immediate shift away from current energy policy supporting renewables. If elected as a minority government, this shift may be even more pronounced and marked, as almost all of the minor parties and independents who support the Liberal-National party coalition hold stated public positions that strongly favour fossil fuel interests over renewable energy.
 

Q: Polling seems to indicate Australians’ appetite for disruption has been significantly dampened by events across the Pacific – do you think we are seeing the end of the anti-incumbency wave that swept the world and, if so, what is replacing it?

A: There were a number of governments and national leaders across the western world who were voted out of office on the back of their countries suffering extreme rises in the cost of living combined with high interest rates and falls in real incomes.

Parties on the right of the political spectrum sought to gain from this with their messaging, promising simple solutions that would reverse this reality quickly and easily. However, as more and more of these parties and leaders were elected, the policies and actions taken by these governments have shown them in some cases to be worse than those they replaced and their ‘solutions’ to be centred around stoking cultural fears.

Whilst this has been heralded as a return to the previous status quo, the fault lines exposed in the operation of many democracies continue to exist.

To further illustrate this, take both the Australian and Canadian elections, which have a strong similarity in terms of trajectory. In both cases, incumbent governments were behind in the polls (Canadians much further), but both governments have managed to win back support with their strong stance against the disruptions caused by the Trump Administration. Of course, in Canada’s case they are under direct attack from the administration, but regardless, it has also made the Australian public seem to favour stability and incumbency.  
 

Q: The big trend in Australia is clearly a growing shift away from the two major parties towards minor parties and independents, but are we seeing (and where might we in the future see) this shift translate into new or better policy?

A: There has been a long time trend in Australian Federal elections of the major parties achieving less and less share of the votes overall. In federal elections the share of the vote achieved by minor parties and independents has grown from just 8.5% in the 1980 election to 31.5% in the 2022 election. The Labor Party have lost a significant number of seats in the parliament to progressive minor parties since 2010, and the Liberal-National coalition lost a significant number of the parliamentary seats to right of centre independents, parliamentary seats that it once considered its safest held seats.  

There have been few examples of minority governments federally, however when this occurred with the Federal Labor Party lead by Julia Gillard making an agreement with independents to govern in 2010, there was no discernible change in the way that government functioned

Increased representation of minor parties and independents is not intrinsically linked to better policy outcomes; however it often leads to new and different policy outcomes outside those of the major party through the pressure to cater for the policy positions of these minor parties and independents. Often these minor parties and independents almost solely concentrate on single issues, prioritising just a handful of stated policy positions publicly due to their need to focus the limited public attention they receive to a concentrated message.

Minority governments in the Australian states have occurred regularly in recent history, and whilst the policy outcomes and overall records of these minority governments are not noticeably different from those of majority governments, one key difference has been that these minority governments saw increases in government transparency and have lead to more consideration of the aims, intent and content of government policy making and action.

Ask an Expert is a monthly series in which we call on subject experts within the AustCham Singapore community to answer questions that we may have on a specific topic. The strength of our community is in the diverse expertise within our membership, and we want to use this initiative to tap on the knowledge of our members to enrich the community as a whole. 

Our expert for this month is Gavin Ryan, Founding Director of Aroca Consulting, a public affairs agency which works across ASEAN and Australia/New Zealand, specialising in government & regulatory affairs, strategic communications, media and training.

Gavin has almost three decades of experience in politics, government, business and the community sector in Australia. He advises clients on government affairs, policy and regulations across all levels of Government (local, state and federal). He has worked on several federal, state and local election campaigns.

Connect with Gavin on LinkedIn, and find out more about Aroca Consulting.