Prime minister of Australia, leading the Labor Party government. Won the May 3rd 2025 election in a landslide—Labor's best result since the second world war, taking at least 90 of 150 seats. Opposition leader Peter Dutton lost his own seat. Albanese was trusted more than Dutton to manage relations with Donald Trump. His dullness became an asset: Australians voted for stability.
Has little interest in questions of geopolitics, leaving them to Penny Wong, the foreign minister, and Richard Marles, the defence minister.
After the Bondi Beach terrorist attack on December 14th 2025—the deadliest in Australian history, killing 15—Albanese toughened hate-speech laws, introduced new visa powers against those spreading hate and unveiled a gun-buyback scheme, the largest since a 1996 mass shooting in Tasmania. His government also appointed Australia's first-ever antisemitism envoy in July 2024 and funded security for synagogues. Binyamin Netanyahu accused the government of inaction.
Under Albanese, Australia has committed more than $1bn to new security agreements across the Pacific, including treaties with Tuvalu, Nauru and a military alliance with Papua New Guinea signed on October 6th 2025—the first new military alliance in the Asia-Pacific since the cold war. An attempt to sign a similar $324m deal with Vanuatu in September 2025 failed. On October 20th 2025 he was due to fly to Washington to meet Trump—one of the last leaders of an American ally to do so since Trump returned to office in January. Experts expected a deal trading a big boost in Australian defence spending for renewed support for AUKUS.
Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.