An­tho­ny Al­banese claimed vic­to­ry as the first Aus­tralian prime min­is­ter to clinch a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive term in 21 years on Sat­ur­day and sug­gest­ed his gov­ern­ment had in­creased its ma­jor­i­ty by not mod­el­ling it­self on U.S. Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“Aus­tralians have cho­sen to face glob­al chal­lenges the Aus­tralian way, look­ing af­ter each oth­er while build­ing for the fu­ture,” Al­banese told sup­port­ers in a vic­to­ry speech in Syd­ney.

“We do not need to beg or bor­row or copy from any­where else. We do not seek our in­spi­ra­tion over­seas. We find it right here in our val­ues and in our peo­ple,” he added.

His cen­tre-left Labour Par­ty had brand­ed Al­banese’s ri­val Pe­ter Dut­ton, the op­po­si­tion leader, “DOGE-y Dut­ton” and ac­cused his con­ser­v­a­tive Lib­er­al Par­ty of mim­ic­k­ing Trump and his De­part­ment of Gov­ern­ment Ef­fi­cien­cy.

Dut­ton had ear­li­er con­ced­ed his al­liance of con­ser­v­a­tive par­ties had been de­feat­ed at the elec­tion and that he had lost his own par­lia­men­tary seat that he had held for 24 years.

Dut­ton’s plight par­al­lels that of Cana­da’s last op­po­si­tion leader, Pierre Poilievre, who lost his seat af­ter Trump de­clared eco­nom­ic war on the U.S. neigh­bour to the north. Poilievre had pre­vi­ous­ly been re­gard­ed as a shoo-in to be­come Cana­da’s next prime min­is­ter and shep­herd his Con­ser­v­a­tive Par­ty back in­to pow­er for the first time in a decade.

An­a­lysts ar­gue that mir­ror­ing Trump switched from a po­lit­i­cal pos­i­tive for Aus­tralian con­ser­v­a­tives to a neg­a­tive af­ter Trump im­posed glob­al tar­iffs.

U.S. Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio con­grat­u­lat­ed Al­banese on the vic­to­ry, call­ing Aus­tralia “a val­ued al­ly, part­ner, and friend of the Unit­ed States.”

Labour had held a nar­row ma­jor­i­ty of 78 seats in the 151-seat house House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives, the low­er cham­ber where par­ties form gov­ern­ments.

Aus­tralian gov­ern­ments are usu­al­ly elect­ed for at least a sec­ond term, but are ex­pect­ed to lose seats at the sec­ond elec­tion. But Labour is on track to in­crease its ma­jor­i­ty in its sec­ond term.

High prices are a ma­jor elec­tion is­sue

En­er­gy pol­i­cy and in­fla­tion have been ma­jor is­sues in the cam­paign, with both sides agree­ing the coun­try faces a cost of liv­ing cri­sis.

The Lib­er­al Par­ty blames gov­ern­ment waste for fu­el­ing in­fla­tion and in­creas­ing in­ter­est rates, and has pledged to ax more than one in five pub­lic ser­vice jobs to re­duce gov­ern­ment spend­ing.

While both say the coun­try should reach net-ze­ro green­house gas emis­sions by 2050, Dut­ton ar­gues that re­ly­ing on nu­clear pow­er in­stead of re­new­able en­er­gy sources such as so­lar and wind tur­bines would de­liv­er less ex­pen­sive elec­tric­i­ty.

Labour ar­gues Dut­ton’s ad­min­is­tra­tion would slash ser­vices to pay for its am­bi­tions to build sev­en gov­ern­ment-fund­ed nu­clear gen­er­a­tors. Aus­tralia cur­rent­ly has no nu­clear pow­er.

Echoes of Trump

Op­po­si­tion sen­a­tor Jac­in­ta Nampi­jn­pa Price would have been re­spon­si­ble for cut­ting 41,000 pub­lic ser­vice jobs in Dut­ton’s ad­min­is­tra­tion. She at­tract­ed me­dia at­ten­tion last month when she told sup­port­ers her gov­ern­ment would “make Aus­tralia great again.”

Price told re­porters at the time she didn’t re­call us­ing the words rem­i­nis­cent of the Re­pub­li­cans’ “Make Amer­i­ca Great Again” slo­gan.

Price, who said she was pho­tographed wear­ing a MA­GA cap “in jest at Christ­mas time,” on Sat­ur­day blamed the news me­dia for fo­cus­ing on Trump in the elec­tion cam­paign.

“You made it all about Don­ald Trump,” Price told Aus­tralian Broad­cast­ing Corp. “We re­al­ly couldn’t care less about the way Don­ald Trump is gov­ern­ing for Amer­i­ca. We were con­cerned with the way Aus­tralia is be­ing gov­erned un­der an Al­banese gov­ern­ment.”

The elec­tion took place against a back­drop of what both sides of pol­i­tics de­scribe as a cost of liv­ing cri­sis.

Food­bank Aus­tralia, the na­tion’s largest food re­lief char­i­ty, re­port­ed 3.4 mil­lion house­holds in the coun­try of 27 mil­lion peo­ple ex­pe­ri­enced food in­se­cu­ri­ty last year. That meant Aus­tralians were skip­ping meals, eat­ing less or wor­ry­ing about run­ning out of food be­fore they could af­ford to buy more.

The cen­tral bank re­duced its bench­mark cash in­ter­est rate by a quar­ter per­cent­age point in Feb­ru­ary to 4.1% in an in­di­ca­tion that the worst of the fi­nan­cial hard­ship had passed. The rate is wide­ly ex­pect­ed to be cut again at the bank’s next board meet­ing on May 20, this time to en­cour­age in­vest­ment amid the in­ter­na­tion­al eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty gen­er­at­ed by Trump’s tar­iff poli­cies.

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Lavalette re­port­ed from Perth, Aus­tralia

MEL­BOURNE, Aus­tralia (AP) —