Will the 2025 election spark a realignment of climate politics in Australia?

The Labor Party’s landslide win in the federal election on 3 May 2025 has raised speculation and hopes that the second-term Albanese Labor government might take national climate and energy policy to a new level of ambition.

While Labor’s campaign was primarily focussed on cost-of-living initiatives rather than climate policy, the second-term Albanese government will find itself under strong international and domestic pressures to step up its efforts to decarbonise the economy.

It will also face much less opposition from a weakened Coalition.

Australia’s COP31 bid

First, Labor’s victory will considerably boost Australia’s chances of winning its bid to co-host the 31st Conference of the Parties (COP31) in 2026 with the Pacific Islands. A Coalition victory would have ruled out Australia and handed the bid to Turkey, the only other remaining candidate 

The Pacific Island co-hosts will be urging the Labor government to step up its diplomatic efforts to secure the bid, and lead by example on climate diplomacy and national climate policy.  

This will include developing a much more ambitious emissions reduction target for 2035 with supporting policies for the next round of five yearly pledges – called ‘nationally determined contributions’ (NDCs) – which must be submitted this year under the Paris Agreement.  

An early announcement of much more ambitious targets could possibly clinch victory.

Politics & Society

6 ways good climate policy helps your wallet and your health

Strong pressure from Teals and the Greens

Second, although Labor’s win has given it a resounding majority in the House of Representatives (at least 86 seats, with 22 more seats remaining uncertain at the time of writing), it will be under strong pressure from the Teals and the Greens in the Parliament to go for highly ambitious targets.

There will also be eleven Greens holding the balance of power in the Senate.

Of course, there is a temptation for the re-elected government to be complacent and sideline the Greens, given Labor’s strong, two-party preferred result of 54.65 per cent of the vote compared to the Coalition’s 45.35 per cent and the loss of three of the four Greens seats in the lower house. 

This includes Greens leader Adam Bandt, who lost his seat following a boundary change to his electorate, which carved out suburbs that were Greens strongholds.

Back in 2009, the first Rudd Labor government sidelined the Greens by choosing to negotiate only with the Coalition to get its Carbon Pollution Bill through the Senate, which it had watered down significantly to entice Coalition support. 

The Coalition still rejected it, and so did the Greens, but the Labor government has continued to blame the Greens.

But any complacency on Labor’s part would be to misread the election results. When we turn to the primary votes for Labor and the Coalition – 34.80 per cent compared to 32.14 per cent – we see a much less dramatic difference. 

Green preference votes to Labor

Most notably, a record number of voters – approximately a third - shunned the two major parties, and the Greens won the third biggest share of votes (11.78 per cent), followed by the Teals and other minor parties and Independents. 

Environment

We’re missing out on the clean ‘natural nuclear’ energy beneath our feet

So Labor must take note that around two-thirds of voters did not give their primary votes to them. And it was mostly second or third preferences of the Greens that helped generate the big swing in lower house seats to Labor. 

Meanwhile, most of the Teals have continued to hold seats wrested from the Liberals, also contributing to Labor’s victory. 

The Labor government would therefore be wise to work constructively with the Teals, Independents and Greens in the House and Senate to find ways of bridging policy differences and reaching compromises.  

Constructive negotiation from all sides in the parliament would also respond to what most voters want.

Pressure to act on climate from the public

The most recent Lowey Poll on climate change and energy conducted in 2024 found that a clear majority of Australians (57 per cent) agree that “global warming is a serious and pressing problem” about which “we should begin taking steps now, even if this involves significant costs”.

Alongside the pressures to act on climate, in the short term at least, the Labor government will be under less pressure from a bruised Coalition to weaken or abandon climate policy, given its spectacular loss and the unseating of Peter Dutton. 

Indeed, the Coalition’s decision to preference One Nation after their own candidates in 57 lower house seats, and in the Senate in four states, is a clear signal of how far the Liberal Party has drifted away from both liberal and even traditional conservative values to embrace the radical populist right. 

The Coalition’s Trump-like characteristics, especially its anti-woke, pro-fossil fuel, pro-nuclear and anti-climate agenda, failed to appeal to the most voters.  

Politics & Society

10 reasons why nuclear energy is a bad idea for Australia

Yet there remains a risk that these characteristics remain on display, given the gradual disappearance of traditional Liberals from the party ranks and the persistence of the influential cross-cutting climate sceptics faction, which has spearheaded the Coalition’s anti-climate policy stance for nearly two decades.   

Indeed, this faction’s strategies of denial, delay, and denigration of climate expertise are now looking strained and outdated, so continuing these strategies would be a clear failure of the Coalition to learn from the election.

If the Liberal Party is to rebuild voter support, especially in the cities, it will need to regroup and reconsider how it might refurbish its platform and its climate and energy policies to reflect what most voters want. 

Building on Labor’s climate policy groundwork

In the meantime, the Labor government has a rare opportunity to seize the moment and forge a new path. 

Labor has already laid down some groundwork, including the Climate Change Act 2022, the Powering the Nation and Rewiring the Nation plans, the vehicle efficiency scheme, the capacity investment scheme, tax breaks for electric vehicles (EVs) and a very modest tightening of the Safeguard Mechanism.   

During its campaign, Labor also promised to boost investment in renewable energy and low-emission technologies through the Clean Energy Finance Corporation and offer a rebate to make solar battery storage more affordable for households under its Cheaper Home Batteries Program.

But it will need to do a great deal more to meet its renewable energy target of 82 per cent by 2030, including a just and orderly phase-out of fossil fuels.

It would also need a much more ambitious 2035 emissions reduction target (around 75-80 per cent) if the Labor government wishes to move Australia from a relative laggard to a relative leader among OECD countries in this critical decade.  

Business & Economics

Australia’s weather-related disasters are getting costlier

Achieving such a target will require a more integrated, whole-of-government mitigation and adaptation strategy to ensure that Australia’s economy and society are resilient to the harmful impacts of climate change that are already locked in.

And with the mandate it has, this is Labor’s best chance to go down in history as the party that finally exercised the political leadership that is needed to confront the civilisational challenge of climate change.