Prime minister of Australia, leading the Labor Party government. Won the May 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. Mr Albanese was trusted more than Mr 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 of December 2025—the deadliest in Australian history, killing 15—Mr 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 2024 and funded security for synagogues. Binyamin Netanyahu accused the government of inaction.
Under Mr Albanese, Australia has committed more than $1bn to new security agreements across the Pacific, including treaties with Tuvalu and Nauru and a military alliance with Papua New Guinea—the first new military alliance in the Asia-Pacific since the cold war. A similar deal with Vanuatu failed. Experts expected an Albanese-Trump deal trading a boost in Australian defence spending for renewed support for AUKUS.
If you are a fatalist, what can you do about it?