Australia’s left-leaning Prime Minister Anthony Albanese basked Sunday in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil.
Residents clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee Jodie Haydon visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and TV journalists.
Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 82 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 36 seats, and other parties 12. Another 20 seats were still in doubt.
“We will be a disciplined, orderly government in our second term,” Albanese said, after scooping ice cream for journalists in a cafe he used to visit with his mum.
“She would be very proud,” Albanese said of his late, single mother Maryanne, who raised him in a modest government-subsidised Sydney flat.
“We’ve been given a great honour of serving the Australian people, and we don’t take it for granted, and we’ll work hard each and every day,” he said.
Dutton, a hard-nosed former policeman — who critics tagged “Trump-lite” for policies that included slashing the civil service — endured the rare humiliation of losing his own seat.
