Donal Trump congratulates Prime Minister Anthony Albanese as he gets back to business

Donald Trump offered his congratulations to Anthony Albanese in a Monday morning phone call, after saying he had “no idea” who vanquished Opposition leader Peter Dutton was.

It was straight back to work for the Prime Minister after his emphatic election win at the weekend.

He spoke with Mr Trump about tariffs and AUKUS, accepted an invitation from the new Canadian leader to attend the G7 and took briefings from senior bureaucrats.

The Prime Minister also told his political opponents to “get out of the way” as he moves on his second-term agenda, starting with student debt and housing.

Mr Albanese said he and the US President had had “a very warm and positive conversation” and agreed to meet face-to-face in the near future.

“I won’t go into all of the personal comments that he made, but he was very generous in his personal warmth and praise towards myself,” the PM said.

“He was fully aware of the (election) outcome and he expressed the desire to continue to work with me in the future.”

Someone Mr Trump was less than fully aware of was Mr Dutton, who during the election campaign was accused of borrowing Mr Trump’s policies and talked up his ability to negotiate with the US President.

“I don’t know anything about the election other than the man that won. He’s very good. Albanese I’m very friendly with,” Mr Trump told the Sydney Morning Herald.

“I have no idea who the other person is that ran against him.”

Mr Albanese has spoken with a raft of current and former international leaders, including his newly elected Canadian counterpart Mark Carney, who invited him to attend the G7 in Alberta in June.

The Prime Minister intends to make his first overseas visit one to Indonesia, mirroring what he did in his last term, and has also spoken with the country’s leader, Prabowo Subianto.

Labor has secured at least 86 seats in the lower house and was ahead in another five as counting continued on Monday.

The huge victory, which surprised the majority of people on both sides of Parliament, has led to many interest groups calling for Labor to use its newfound authority to move much further than its mandate on a variety of issues.

Mr Albanese rejected the suggestion his Government had not been ambitious already.

“Look at our agenda on the clean energy economy, on child care, on gender equality, on education, where we went beyond where we said we would. I didn’t promise to deliver surpluses, we delivered two,” he said.

“We’ll continue to be an ambitious government, but we won’t get carried away, and we’ll continue to engage.”

Treasurer Jim Chalmers said Labor had shown throughout its first term that it “governed every day for the working people of middle Australia” and nothing would change in terms of that approach.

“In uncertain times, we will continue to manage the economy in a responsible and a methodical and a considered way, and the working people of our great country will continue to be front and centre,” he said.

While a parliamentary timetable has yet to be set, the first item of business will be moving to slash student debt by 20 per cent.

Further action on housing is also high on the agenda.

Mr Albanese said while he was always up for hearing good ideas from any quarter, he was clear that Australians had given him a strong mandate.

He pointed out the Liberals and Greens had both lost their housing spokespeople with voters rejecting Michael Sukkar and Max Chandler-Mather respectively.

“I think part of the reason why they’re not in the Parliament is that they held up public housing. They held up emergency housing for women and children escaping violence. They held up our Build to Rent scheme, they held up our Help to Buy scheme,” he said, before issuing a warning to those who remained.

“I say this message to the Senate and to members of the House of Representatives … we have a clear mandate to build more housing.

“The key is supply. Get out of the way and let the private sector build it. That is going to be one of my priorities.”

He also indicated he would push ahead with establishing a Federal environmental watchdog and overhauling approvals processes.

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher pointed to the commitments to Medicare and other big items funded in the March Budget.

“It’s really exciting to be able to implement all the things we’ve worked on for a long time,” she said.

“Obviously, you deal with other issues as they arise, but I would imagine he’s going to be very focused on delivering exactly what we said we would do, how we would do it, and when we would do it.

“And if I know anything about Anthony Albanese, that’s what he’s focused on this morning.”

The Prime Minister would not be drawn on any discussions about a new-look ministry, but said the suggestion that Tanya Plibersek would be handed Bill Shorten’s old NDIS portfolio was “nonsense”.

Multiple caucus colleagues said conversations about who will fill the two vacant ministry positions and any wider changes had barely started.

One pointed out that many people had spent Sunday nursing hangovers after celebrating the unexpectedly positive win, plus May Day marches in WA and Queensland, and thanking voters kept colleagues busy.

Dr Chalmers publicly made a case for more Queenslanders to join the ministry given its swathe of new MPs, but also said the State had been “long on influence but short on numbers in the Federal parliamentary Labor Party”.

Mr Albanese avoided answering a question about whether WA would get a second Cabinet minister, saying he would respect the caucus decision.

“We are overflowing with talent — that’s the truth. We have so many people who you could put forward,” he said.