Watching Australia’s 2025 federal election from Wellington gave me an uncanny sense of déjà vu. As Labor swept to power with a commanding parliamentary majority and the Liberal-National Coalition suffered its worst defeat in generations, I could not help but think: “I have seen this movie before.”
New Zealand’s Labour Party swept to power in 2020 with the first single-party majority under our proportional representation system. Ardern secured 50 percent of the vote while National collapsed to 26 percent – their worst result in decades.
Three years later, Labour was unceremoniously ejected from office.
How could fortunes reverse so dramatically? And what might this mean for Anthony Albanese’s triumphant Labor party?
The Australian results mirror New Zealand’s 2020 election. Labor now commands nearly 90 seats in the 151-seat House of Representatives. The Coalition lies shattered, with Peter Dutton losing his seat.
In Melbourne, Adelaide and Brisbane, Liberal representation has virtually disappeared – a blue blood-bath of historic proportions.
After such a victory, Labor’s strategists must feel the intoxicating pull of ambition. Why not seize this moment to fundamentally reshape Australia?
New Zealand’s experience offers a sobering answer.
Ardern’s government, drunk on its parliamentary majority, embarked on an ambitious agenda of structural reforms that nobody had actually voted for.
Consider their “Three Waters” programme – a classic case of centralist overreach. Councils would be forced to relinquish control of water assets to new mega-entities with complex co-governance arrangements with Māori. In reality, it exemplified bureaucratic empire-building and sparked nationwide backlash.
Or take Labour’s overhaul of the Resource Management Act – replacing New Zealand’s primary planning legislation. The ambition was breathtaking: simultaneously addressing housing, environment, infrastructure and climate change. But by election time, this supposedly transformational reform had only made a poorly performing regulatory system worse.
Meanwhile, Labour created a new centralised health bureaucracy that consumed billions while hospital waiting lists grew ever longer and health outcomes deteriorated.
What do these initiatives share? They were ideologically motivated, bureaucratically complex, and failed to address everyday concerns of voters. While Labour restructured everything that moved, New Zealanders worried about immediate concerns. Inflation surged to 7.3 percent. Mortgage rates doubled. Grocery prices soared.
How did Labour respond? Initially with denial. Then with token gestures – a temporary petrol tax cut here, a cost-of-living payment there. But these were all sticking plasters. By the time Chris Hipkins replaced Ardern in early 2023, promising to focus on “bread and butter” issues (and resulting in a bounce upwards for Labour in the opinion polls), the damage was done.
Does this sound familiar to Australian observers? It should.
Albanese’s government shows worrying signs of similar tendencies: grand ambitions for housing, sweeping climate targets, industrial relations reforms, and Indigenous recognition. No matter their individual justifications, taken together, these would be a recipe for overreach.
The fundamental lesson: landslide victories create a dangerous illusion. They suggest broad endorsement of a party’s entire agenda when they often simply reflect rejection of an unpalatable alternative.
New Zealanders did not vote for Labour in 2020 because they wanted water infrastructure to get an extra dose of centralisation. They voted Labour because Ardern had created her own brand during the early phases of the pandemic, while National appeared divided.
Similarly, Australians did not vote Labor because they crave expansive government programmes. They voted Labor because the Coalition had not offered much of substance.
Here lies the trap: mistaking rejection of your opponents for endorsement of your most ambitious plans.
What should Albanese do? The answer is counterintuitive: do less, but do it well.
This means focusing on economic fundamentals. Addressing cost-of-living pressures with more than token gestures. Ensuring reforms are practical and deliver tangible benefits. Voters care more about outcomes than intentions.
Meanwhile, Australia’s Coalition should take heart from New Zealand’s National Party, which demonstrated how swiftly political fortunes can reverse.
After their 2020 humiliation (and a later leadership change), National rallied behind Christopher Luxon and focused on issues affecting household budgets.
Their message was brutally simple: Labour failed to deliver; National offered more competent management. By election day 2023, that was enough to form a coalition government. Meanwhile, Labour lost nearly half its voters over just three years.
A few decades ago, such volatility would have been unheard of. But we are witnessing a fundamental shift in democratic politics. The anchors that once secured political loyalty (think of church or trade union memberships) have dissolved. Today’s electorate swings more dramatically and forgives less readily.
Voters’ political promiscuousness creates a paradox: parliamentary dominance often contains the seeds of its own destruction. It breeds complacency, encourages overreach and sets impossible expectations.
Ardern discovered this too late. The question now is: Will Albanese learn from her experience?
History would suggest not. Politicians rarely believe others’ mistakes apply to them. Until suddenly, they do.
Perhaps the true lesson from across the Tasman runs even deeper. It shows that democracies, for all their flaws, have the ability to correct themselves.
No matter how overwhelming the majority, governments ultimately face the most effective constraint: the judgment of ordinary citizens, concerned more with results than rhetoric, perfectly willing to discard yesterday’s political heroes when the results do not match the promises.
That is both the frustration and glory of democracy – a lesson New Zealand’s Labour learned the hard way.
Australia’s Labor Party might believe they are different. They are not.
To read the full article on The Australian website, click here.