LATIKA M BOURKE: Anthony Albanese has won the majority he desperately wanted. Now it’s on him to own it

Anthony Albanese has long yearned to be Labor’s John Howard and entrench his party as a long-term government.

Tonight he defied history and even outperformed Mr Howard — long viewed as the modern titan of Australian politics — in dispatching Peter Dutton as opposition leader.

“I know there’s still so much more to do to help people under pressure,” he said.

“I make this solemn pledge, we will not forget that, we will never take it for granted.

“We take up this task with new hope, new determination.”

He promised to repay the trust of those who voted Labor for the first time and spoke regularly of kindness.

His unexpected turnaround is as sensational as it is stunning, not least because his political timidity was widely viewed as one of the many reasons Labor’s primary remains stubbornly low.

But in the end, all that matters is the win and who occupies the Lodge. And that is the Prime Minister, who has won himself a second term. This is something that has not happened in the lifetime of a first-time voter today. The last to do it was John Howard in 2004.

But in a uniquely Albanese-only achievement, he looks to have helped oust the Opposition Leader Peter Dutton from his seat in Dickson.

While two Prime Ministers have lost their seats before, no Prime Minister has ever terminated the career of their opposition leader.

“That is earthquake stuff,” Albanese’s one-time rival Bill Shorten acknowledged.

Finally, Mr Albanese has increased his majority.

This is something that not even John Howard achieved in his second go. Mr Howard scraped through a poor first term to hold government with a reduced majority.

Mr Albanese has done the reverse. He has not just defied history but rewritten it. The name Albanese has a new legacy in Australian political history.

While Mr Albanese deserves his win, he must not learn the wrong lesson.

While he stunned his critics by campaigning with vigour, energy, discipline and confidence — the kind that he failed to exhibit in 2022 and during the Voice referendum campaign — he has also been blessed with extraordinary luck.

“If Anthony wins, he will not have understood the role of luck,” one of his cabinet ministers told The Nightly before the campaign started.

While it is not the whole story, given Labor’s focused campaign, there is some truth to this observation.

Two things shaped this campaign that Labor and Mr Albanese had no control over, although they were deft in exploiting.

Mr Albanese could not have imagined that Mr Dutton would be even more hopeless than he himself was in 2022.

Inexplicably, Peter Dutton fumbled in the final sprint. He released policies that had nothing to do with the central question plaguing voters — the cost of living.

It is a bitter loss for Mr Dutton, who, despite Labor’s scare campaigns, is a patriot and has served his country in two different ways, first as a policeman and as a politician and minister.

Out of practice he could not communicate his message through the media or outside of them. His campaign lacked purpose and clarity.

And then there was Donald Trump. The US President drove a wrecking ball through this campaign, injecting a new anxiety into national mood.

Just like in Canada, this only served to propel voters into the arms of an incumbent government that voters just a few months ago felt in the mood to turf.

It’s no accident that Mr Albanese’s final message to voters was about sticking with the certainty of what they know in uncertain times.

The US President also made many of Peter Dutton’s policies, such as cutting public servants and government waste, look like they were lifted out of the Make America Great Again and Elon Musk’s DOGE playbook.

They weren’t. But Labor weaponised the US President with ruthless precision, launching a vicious but effective scare campaign against Mr Dutton, even at one point absurdly claiming he would build a nuclear reactor in his own suburban electorate of Dickson in Brisbane.

Mr Dutton plodded in response, banking on “Smart Australians” to see through their own fears.

He was naive. He was foolish. He was complacent. He was negligent. He was lazy. He was too ideological. He did not do his homework on time. He did not counter the lies in any way.

But he has paid a price lesser Opposition Leaders have not in losing his own seat.

It is humiliation. It is painful. It is a bitter loss for Mr Dutton, who, despite Labor’s scare campaigns, is a patriot and has served his country in two different ways, first as a policeman and as a politician and minister.

“I accept full responsibility,” he said, with little emotion. He graciously told Mr Albanese that his mother would be proud of his success. He went onto to apologise to the Liberals whose careers he had killed.

“I’m sorry for that, and we will rebuild,” he promised.

Of his own loss, he said the “one-term curse” of the seat of Dickson that he’d stopped in its tracks for 24 years had returned.

“Our liberal family is hurting across the country tonight.”

It was a classy speech with no bitterness, and the most visible insight into the man he failed to show in his run to be Prime Minister.

His loss closes the door on his two-decades-long career in Australian politics.

But critically, it paves the way for the next generation of Liberals to regroup and return to home base.

They have no future if they carry on indulging in culture wars and providing zero point of difference from Labor when it comes to fiscal management and tax reform.

Tonight, Mr Albanese is a conqueror but this is the majority he should have, but failed to win, in 2022.

Now that he has won it, he must promise to govern differently and use the mandate the Australian people have given him to be the Prime Minister the public hoped he would be in his first term.

He has had plenty of time to consider how to approach his second term.

He has barely faltered from looking like a man confident that he was on his way to winning since he fired the starting gun on the five-week campaign.

Indeed, he declared it early on Saturday morning on the hallowed ground at the MCG.

“He’s about to be trumped,” he joked with reporters between his breakfast television crosses. For once, he wasn’t talking about the US President but of Mr Dutton. And tonight’s result shows it was no act.

He deserves to toast his own success. But he should feel emboldened to be a Prime Minister that no one ever underestimates again.