Federal Election 2025: How Anthony Albanese has snookered Labor with plans for third term and reshuffle

Anthony Albanese has snookered his own team by making public his ambitions to seek a third term as Prime Minister while simultaneously flagging a Cabinet reshuffle after any election win.

The Prime Minister said that a reordering of his frontline ranks was necessary because of the need for political regeneration.

But when it came to his own position as leader of the Labor party, a position he has held for six years, he said it was stability (as opposed to rejuvenation) that was crucial.

“I’m not getting ahead of myself — I’m in a ballot on the third of May, and I’m determined to win,” he told the Latika Takes podcast of The Nightly between campaign visits in northern Australia.

“And I will serve out a full term — I’m determined to do that. Because I think there has been too much chopping and changing.”

Scroll down to listen to the podcast

He then confirmed he planned to fight a third election campaign in 2028 if he was successful next month.

“If I’m successful on the third of May then, yeah,” he said, praising the change in party culture that he had overseen, which meant there was no instability in his ranks.

Mr Albanese may have had a dismal first term, but he has always excelled in managing his party, which is why there has been so little threat to his leadership. That’s despite his poor performance being laid bare in late 2023 when his long honeymoon ended with the defeat of the Voice referendum.

And deliberately flagging a Cabinet reshuffle, was another example of that party management at play.

If Mr Albanese wins and serves a full term without any challenge, that would almost certainly be a stake in the heart of any leadership ambitions held by his allies, but possible heirs to the throne, in the Cabinet, namely Tony Burke and Richard Marles.

It would also delay Jim Chalmers’ own tilt at a run for at least another three years.

And it would start the stopwatch running on his rival Tanya Plibersek’s ambitions to become the country’s second female prime minister. It’s something the PM would privately relish, after refusing to hug his popular NSW left colleague at the party’s launch in Perth on Sunday, despite publicly claiming that they were friends.

Blowing out the timeline for political regeneration at the very top of the party would give ambitious mid-tier MPs time to prepare their own runs, making the front and back bench hungrier. It would also mean that for now they would be more disciplined than ever before in not wanting to put the Labor party’s narrow lead in the polls at any risk.

Finally, it puts an end to any suggestion that Mr Albanese would voluntarily hand over the leadership next term in a peaceful transition in a bid to avert the leadership instability he says he wants vanquished.

Hell, if the 62-year-old Prime Minister wins this election, there’s nothing to stop him from daring to dream that he could sit alongside Bob Hawke and John Howard in the history books for governing for four terms.

It is, all in all, a stunning reversal of the fate that appeared to await Mr Albanese just months ago, when his position seemed terminal and his Government looked about to be forced into minority in a second term.

That could still happen.

But thanks to his surprisingly disciplined start to electioneering, the constant presence of Donald Trump in this campaign and Peter Dutton’s string of unforced errors, the Labor leader has the Government on the front foot halfway through the campaign.

This means for now, his frontbench and backbench have no other choice but to publicly accept the PM’s intention to entrench himself as Labor leader for possibly as long as 12 years.

Labor factions elect who sits on the frontbench but it is the Prime Minister who decides who gets what portfolios.

By declaring his intentions of an immediate post-election Cabinet reshuffle, nervous frontbenchers will be unlikely to dare stepping out of line during the campaign amid fears of future demotion.

Unlike what the polling said just a few months ago, this contest is now the Government’s to lose.

But is the idea of a long-term Albanese Government so surprising though? For those with a longer political memory, not necessarily.

Despite the churn of the last two decades, a bad first term has not always been a barrier to political endurance. Just ask the last prime minister to occupy for The Lodge for more than two complete terms — John Howard.

Mr Howard — whose name Mr Dutton can’t stop dropping, such is the nostalgia in the community for stable, competent government — endured a shocking first term that included the Waterfront dispute, his broken promise on the GST and more than half a dozen ministerial resignations.

He was re-elected, albeit with a reduced majority in 1998 and won a total of four elections.

His last victory in 2004 is the one Mr Albanese constantly references, as he did during a campaign stop in the seat of Adelaide on Monday morning.

“We have a mountain to climb,” Mr Albanese told reporters.

“I’ve been in 10 election campaigns, we’ve won three, three out of 10.

“And one of those we won in minority, it is hard.

“No prime minister has been re-elected since John Howard, having served a term, since John Howard in 2004.

“It’s more than two decades, we’ve had a revolving door, seven elections, seven different prime ministers.”

Mr Albanese’s goal is to further reduce that ratio this election and the next. And the signs suggest he could be on track to achieve that.

Voters today have shorter tolerance and attention spans but may be willing to consider giving him a second go.

In contrast to Mr Howard’s first term, Mr Albanese’s only ministerial casualties, Clare O’Neill and Andrew Giles, pictured, were both moved sideways rather than demoted and Ms O’Neill has thrived in housing which is a frontline issue this campaign.

While competence is something the public will ultimately judge on May 3, no-one can say this Government has been mired in corruption or scandal.

Further, Mr Albanese’s biggest mistake, to foist the Voice referendum on the public, has been somewhat neutralised by Mr Dutton’s bizarre proposal to hold a referendum on deporting dual nationals who are convicted of terrorism and child sex offenders.

Mr Albanese is considered weak and disappointing but he has never been in baseball bat territory and voters anxious by the tumult emanating from the White House may hold their nose and deem him the least worst option.

If Mr Albanese does win again, it will revive a stability, with which gen Z and millennials are unfamiliar. Both generations will outnumber boomers this election, making up 42 per cent of the voting roll.

For example, an 18-year-old voting for the first time this election was born in 2007. They have zero recollection of the Howard government, let alone the concept of a prime minister becoming part of the national furniture.

There’s a lot that can go wrong for Mr Albanese in three weeks, but so far he’s showed no signs of repeating his disastrous 2022 campaign, which only ended in a narrow win.

This time, he is only sometimes irritable, such as when being repeatedly questioned about whether he will do any deals with the Greens to form minority government, and showing an occasional cockiness like when he shut down an attempt to question Foreign Minister Penny Wong about the US relationship, because, “it’s my press conference”.

But if the Coalition, which has struggled to land a decent cut-through moment in this campaign, is agile, it will try and exploit this as Mr Albanese’s “Kirribilli moment”.

That’s a reference to the Opposition Leader’s bewildering decision to indulge a question about whether he’d live in the Lodge or in Kirribilli as PM, when Mr Dutton inexplicably nominated Sydney Harbour.

Labor gleefully accused him of measuring up the curtains.

With Mr Albanese’s dream to govern for several terms, the Coalition can easily accuse the Labor leader as being someone who will survive political near-death and go on to be hubristic, rather than humbled by his near miss.

Who wants six more years of Mr Albanese? That’s the question Mr Dutton can put to the public.

It’s a question many of Mr Albanese’s frontbench will also be asking but one he will silence if he is re-endorsed.