News update for Mon 12 May 2025

Your trusted guide to the top independent news and views of the day...

May 12, 2025

Welcome to your TrueNorth news update where every weekday afternoon we share curated articles from Australia’s independent news media sector.

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Today’s news overview from TrueNorth…

Labor has decisively won a second term with an increased majority (93 seats and still counting) - leaving a shattered Coalition "lost in the wilderness of irrelevancy" and facing an identity crisis. While big hopes are pinned on the Albanese government for bold reforms, it must also navigate internal factional spoils and contentious issues like AUKUS.

Scroll down for the news and views you need to know today…

TODAY’S BREAKING NEWS UPDATES: See all the breaking news of the day through The Guardian here - and through 6 News here

BREAKING NEWS:

Anthony Albanese reveals new cabinet with Tanya Plibersek named as minister for social services - The Guardian
Monique Ryan wins Kooyong while Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian takes Bradfield - The Guardian
David Littleproud re-elected National party leader after challenge from Matt Canavan - The Guardian

Amy Remeikis: Liberal party is lost in the wilderness of irrelevancy - The New Daily

Winners have parties. Losers have meetings. And there have been a lot of meetings in Canberra this week.

If the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results, then we are in for another rough three years.

There are always set pieces to election wash-ups. Finger pointing. Re-writing of history. People who were silent suddenly expressing ‘long held’ concerns.

Everyone knew all along what was happening, but can only express it once the votes are counted.

What doesn’t happen, is change.

Election 2025: A Post-Mortem - Fourth Estate Podcast

In what turned out to be a much more definitive result than most pundits were expecting, the Labor government of Anthony Albanese has been returned to office for a second term with an increased majority. Meanwhile, the Coalition suffered devastating losses across the board, and lost the head of their party in Peter Dutton. Why did the Coalition lose so spectacularly? How did the Albanese Government manage a largely unprecedented comeback? Is the once undeniable influence of Rupert Murdoch's media now irrelevant? And does this result signal a seismic shift in Australian politics?

Joining Tina Quinn for a post-mortem is Amy Remeikis, Chief Political Analyst at The Australia Institute, Louise Milligan, Investigative Reporter for the ABC's Four Corners, and Mark Kenny, Director of the Australian Studies Institute at the Australian National University.

Listen to the Fourth Estate Podcast

Also read >

The Muslim Vote-endorsed candidates who scored numbers at the polls say they're just getting started - ABC News
Liberal Party reclaims Goldstein – how Tim Wilson turned back the Teal tidal wave - The Conversation
Laboration Day has struck the west coast — and it’s clear the sands are shifting - Crikey (paywall)
A Reflective Assessment of Goldstein’s MPs Through the Lens of Moral Disengagement - Sue Barrett
Labor's landslide victory obscures a disturbing trend for the major parties - ABC News

Tim Dunlop: Did Australia really reject Trumpism at the federal election? - The Future of Everything

No amount of centrist waffle can extricate us from the fact that AUKUS connects us at an absolutely molecular level with an Administration proving by the day that they are run by amongst the worst people on earth, a cadre who have little regard for the rule of law in their own country, let alone elsewhere in the world.

Albanese’s realism—if that’s what you want to rationalise it as—risks taking us into the realms of tacit approval for this sort of fascism, and I’m pretty sure we didn’t vote for that.

The government’s continued embrace of AUKUS is particularly problematic.

Also read >

Tackling the AUKUS zombie - Inside Story
Labor stalls on defence reform as AUKUS woes grow - Bernard Keane for The Mandarin
Can Albanese resist the temptation to fall for Trump’s flattery? - Pearls and Irritations
Dumped minister Ed Husic labels Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles ‘factional assassin’ - The Conversation

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Frank Bongiorno: Will Labor meet its promises? - The Saturday Paper

Not many saw that coming. A Labor victory, yes, and by the end even a majority government. But not many foresaw a landslide that has Labor likely to land on about 90 seats in the House of Representatives.

The first Albanese government was cautious: critics eventually called it timid. A big win, though, unleashes big hopes. Those who want greater boldness from the re-elected Labor government have been assembling their shopping lists.

Ross Garnaut, economist and adviser to the Hawke government, wants Albanese to follow in its footsteps, with reforms that would achieve full employment and a successful transition to renewable energy, setting up Australia for decades of prosperity.

Laura Tingle: Labor, Greens and the Coalition are carving up the spoils in a Bonfire of the Vanities - The ABC

First, there is the savage contest during the election campaign. Then, there is the elation and despair at the outcome, and the assertion of what voters were telling us about our country in the result.

Finally, there is the just plain venal, as political parties turn inward to carve up the spoils, which turn the elation into a Bonfire of the Vanities.

A week of fairly widespread astonishment at the comprehensiveness of Labor's two-party-preferred win last Saturday turned deeply sour on Thursday as the realpolitik of factional politics — firstly in the party's NSW and Victorian Right — played out for all of us to see, uninhibited by any attempts at intervention by a prime minister who has the enhanced authority to at least urge caution, or even stop it.

Ketan Joshi: What happens when the opposition elevates enemies of renewable energy?- Renew Economy

The post-election joy didn’t last long for the newly victorious Labor government, who were quick to snap at the Greens for their perceived losses (some real, some exaggerated).

But whatever the mixed emotions among the Labor party, the Greens and the various ‘teal’ or teal-adjacent independent candidates, there is no way they’re down in the same pits as the Liberal-National coalition opposition party, who’ve suffered their worst election loss in living memory.

When Peter Dutton was confident that he was going to win the 2025 federal election, he said “I’m very happy for the election to be a referendum on energy, on nuclear, on power prices, on lights going out, on who has a sustainable pathway for our country going forward”.

Also read > The first order of business for the Coalition: Fight a major battle over energy - Bernard Keane for Crikey (paywall)

The politicians who'll get paid for life - The Daily Aus Podcast

Did you know that some politicians still get paid an annual salary (or in this case, a ‘pension’) upon retiring from Parliament? The scheme no longer exists, but politicians who were in Parliament prior to it being axed in 2004 are still eligible. And the reason we are talking about it now is because Peter Dutton, who just lost his seat of Dickson, is one of the eligible politicians. We thought it was the perfect time to explore this little-known scheme that will see millions of dollars being paid out to former politicians for decades to come.

Listen to The Daily Aus Podcast

Alan Kohler: Australia's economy is a basket case again. Will Jim Chalmers take it on? - The ABC

In his 2004 thesis on Paul Keating's prime ministership, Treasurer Jim Chalmers wrote that Keating could not have "imagined the plethora of reforms" that marked his turn as treasurer without the electoral success and popularity of Bob Hawke as PM.

"Hawke was the ALP's most electorally successful leader ever," Chalmers wrote, and he provided the "the public support which allowed Keating to indulge in his passion for bold policy."

Anthony Albanese hasn't yet won as many elections as Hawke, but in his second election he has won more seats than Hawke ever did.

NSW abortion debate has intensified the Liberal party identity crisis - Women’s Agenda

The New South Wales lower house will soon vote on a proposed reform to broaden access to abortion by allowing nurses and midwives to prescribe medical terminations up to nine weeks.

Greens MP Amanda Cohn proposed the legislation, which was amended significantly before being passed by the state’s upper house last week.

It will be subject to a conscience vote in the lower house and has won support from both major parties, including from Premier Chris Minns and opposition health spokesperson, Kellie Sloane.

However, it’s proving more divisive for the Liberal Party.

Australia’s rental crisis is not what you think it is - The Guardian

The rapid rise in advertised rents grabs headlines but it’s only a small part of the market, an expert says, and for most renting households there is no crisis.

Footage of long queues at the doors of properties for lease has become a regular feature of property reporting over the past few years.

Landlords have upped their asking rents by double digits. Ahead of last weekend’s election, the Greens campaigned hard for rent freezes to stop the “unlimited rent increases” they claimed the major parties tacitly supported.