While Peter Dutton's hope of becoming prime minister was crushed by the Liberal's blue domino falling on him, the political dominoes kept on falling and weren't just limited to the election - the Albanese government has pushed over two respected ministers - Dreyfus and Husic - in favour of 'duds' to placate the Victorian Right Faction led by Richard Marles: a factional assassin according to Ed Husic.

14 May 2025

ALAN HAYES

 

AS the dust settled on the election, a rusted-on Liberal supported, as expected, cried foul – posting on Facebook that the voting in Dickson had been rigged. The claim appeared after it was announced that Labor’s Ali France had exiled Peter Dutton from the outer Brisbane seat.

 

The Facebook posting claimed that 28, 272 votes went missing.

 

“This is another disappointing example of a social media user misunderstanding data from the AEC’s virtual Tally Room and publishing something inflammatory rather than checking their understanding with the AEC,” an AEC spokesperson said.

 

When the post was made, the AEC had only counted 74% of the total votes in the seat. Thousands of votes — mostly declaration votes, which include absentee, provisional, pre-poll and postal ballots — were yet to be counted.

 

And the reason Dutton, and the Coalition, failed to understand that the dominoes were destined to fall? Hubris and a classic misreading of young voters, in particular that phantom army of right-wing young men streaming through the election booth doors to save the misunderstood mirage that was in line with the MAGA-Australis dream. Just like the legion of ‘quiet Australians’, who would guarantee a Coalition election victory – they too didn’t exist.

 

This perceived far-right radicalisation of gen Z male soldiers, allegedly solidified in Trumpiness and destined to relegate the Albanese government to a one-term failure, had been misread.

 

The domino effect decimated the Coalition, but they were not alone. Clive Palmer’s quarter-billion dollars of political dilettantisms saw his only domino fall and those Patriots that aspired to political Trumpiness didn’t even make the game board. The only constant in the  Palmer campaign was himself and his love of attention, but voters didn’t share the love – nor did they share the desire for far-right extremism.

 

And although the federal election rewrote the Australian political history book, for both the Coalition and Labor, Dutton wasn’t the only political party leader to get the toss. Green’s leader, Adam Brant also became a victim of the domino effect.

 

Bandt has been the Leader of the Australian Greens since 2020 and the Member for Melbourne since 2010, and the first Greens MP to win a Lower House seat at a Federal Election.

 

So, what went wrong for the Green’s leader? Straying too far from their core beliefs?

 

While the Greens got the highest vote in Melbourne, Bandt said the main reason for his loss was the preference votes for Liberal and the far-right One Nation party.

 

"To win in Melbourne we needed to overcome Liberal, Labor and One Nation combined, and it's an Everest we've climbed a few times now, but this time we fell just short," Bandt said.

 

"We came very close," he added, "but we couldn't quite get there."

 

Bandt also cited the so-called Trump effect as a "key defining feature of the election".

 

Peter Dutton’s campaign didn’t do any favours for the Greens, either. It was a campaign that was often compared to the US President, which, in the latter part of his campaign Dutton rejected, but the mud still stuck.

 

Bandt said that contributed to the five-week "riptide" that saw votes swing away from the Coalition and towards Labor.

 

“This same effect also pulled votes away from the Greens,” he added.

 

"People in Melbourne hate Peter Dutton, and with very good reason. They've seen his brand of toxic racism for many years... and like me, many wanted him as far away from power as possible.”

 

But for many voters - who contributed to the historic domino effect and were hitherto Liberal supporters – the realisation of their disillusionment only crystallised with the 2025 election campaign. The fear of MAGA-Australis was a determining factor! The “Let’s Make Australia Great Again” campaign was seen as a leaf straight out the Trumpian playbook.

 

As one disillusioned Central Coast former Liberal Party female voter told the Grapevine: “No-one, except Clive Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots wants Trumpism in Australia.”

 

She also said that Dutton and the Liberals failed to understand why woman turned away from the Coalition rhetoric. “They continue to be disconnected from society.”

 

"Whether it was the work from home policy, which turned into an unmitigated disaster, or whether it was the brand they've developed for themselves, women in their 30s and 40s just don't view the Liberal Party as a political party that understands our needs,” she said.

 

“There just wasn’t any real direction. It was obvious to me the Liberals were clutching at straws … they didn’t get my vote.

 

“Many of my friends, who are just like me and who have young children or teenagers are against nuclear power. The Liberals didn’t get that … they didn’t talk to woman about it to see how they felt. It was just a boys-club concept. They deserved to lose.”

 

The domino aftermath

 

The Liberal Party’s crushing election defeat has inspired various post-mortems of what went wrong, but beneath the surface for both parties an ongoing trend on how Australian’s now vote is being ignored. Both major parties’ primary vote has, once again, fallen.

 

And while the domino effect quietly erodes previous voting trends, those that now wear the ‘laurels of victory’ have still not learned the lesson. The sacking of Mark Dreyfus and Ed Husic sends a signal that performance and party loyalty are far less important than what the factions want. Hubris and appeasement proves that it is just business as usual and just more of the same political BS.

 

Internal ‘dominoing’ has cast a murky shadow over what should have been an undiminished Labor triumph – celebrating the ascension of Anthony Albanese to the Labor pantheon. But instead, Albanese could now be seen as placating the party’s fractional hacks – Marles’ Labor Right fraction - than a willingness to deliver better governance.

 

The sacking of two well-regarded ministers, at the behest of his single worst minister, Richard Marles, and replacing them with duds has exposed a weakness in leadership of a government that, just like its first term, may well be timid, unambitious and craven in its governance.

 

As Paul Keating pointed out in blasting Albanese’s failure to prevent the sacking of two highly respected ministers, the Victorian Right faction, led by Marles, is “demonstrably devoid of creativity and capacity”.

 

Marles has been beset with major scandals, notwithstanding the Thales munitions factory contract – who clinched the government munitions deal after the company stopped hiring an employee accused of corruption – and didn’t bat an eyelid when the details of the allegations were unveiled on his watch. Not to mention that, despite the ongoing problems with AUKUS and the likelihood of ever receiving a single submarine, he continues with a singular mindset: All the way with Trump and the USA.

 

Instead of strong leadership, Albanese made excuses for the faction assassination of two senior ministers and is allowing political dominoes to continue to fall.

 

As Keating further pointed out: Albanese could have intervened, as he has intervened in other factional disputes.

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