SYDNEY, Australia: Australia’s left-leaning Prime Minister Anthony Albanese basked Sunday in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil.
Residents clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee Jodie Haydon visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and TV journalists.
Albanese’s Labour Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt.
“We will be a disciplined, orderly government in our second term,” Albanese said, after scooping ice cream for journalists in a cafe he used to visit with his late mother.
“We’ll work hard each and every day,” he promised, but took a quick break first for a Sunday afternoon visit to a craft brewery, Willie the Boatman, that serves “Albo Pale Ale.”
Dutton, a hard-nosed former policeman — who critics tagged “Trump-lite” for policies that included slashing the civil service — endured the rare humiliation of losing his own seat.US President Donald Trump’s trade tariffs, and the chaos they unleashed, may not have been the biggest factor in the Labour Party victory — but analysts said they helped.
“If we want to understand why a good chunk of the electorate has changed across the election campaign over the last couple of months, I think that’s the biggest thing,” said Henry Maher, a politics lecturer at the University of Sydney.
“In times of instability, we expect people to go back to a kind of steady incumbent.”
The scale of Albanese’s win took his own party by surprise.
“It’s still sinking in,” Treasurer Jim Chalmers said.
“This was beyond even our most optimistic expectations. It was a history-making night. It was one for the ages,” Chalmers told national broadcaster ABC.
But the win came with “healthy helpings of humility,” he said, because under-pressure Australians want “stability in uncertain times.”
Albanese has promised to embrace renewable energy, cut taxes, tackle a worsening housing crisis, and pour money into a creaking health care system.
Dutton wanted to slash immigration, crack down on crime and ditch a longstanding ban on nuclear power.Before the first vote was even counted, speculation was mounting over whether the 54-year-old opposition leader could survive an election loss.
“We didn’t do well enough during this campaign. That much is obvious tonight and I accept full responsibility,” Dutton told supporters in a concession speech.
Economic concerns have dominated the contest for the many Australian households struggling to pay inflated prices for milk, bread, power and petrol.
“The cost of living — it’s extremely high at the moment... Petrol prices, all the basic stuff,” human resources manager Robyn Knox told AFP in Brisbane.
The 36-day campaign was a largely staid affair but there were moments of unscripted levity.
Albanese tumbled backwards off the stage at a heaving campaign rally, while Dutton drew blood when he hit an unsuspecting cameraman in the head with a stray football.
Leaders around the world congratulated Albanese on his triumph.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said he hoped to “promote freedom and stability in the Indo-Pacific” with Australia, a “valued ally, partner, and friend of the United States.”
An unnamed Chinese foreign ministry spokesperson said Beijing was “ready to work” with Australia’s government.
Albanese said he had spoken with the prime ministers of Papua New Guinea and New Zealand, and received “some good text messages” from leaders in Britain, France, “and a range of others.”
The premier said he planned to speak with the leaders of Indonesia and Ukraine, promising to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion: “That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is.”

BUCHAREST, Romania: Romanians are casting ballots Sunday in a critical presidential election redo after last year’s annulled vote plunged the European Union and NATO member country into its worst political crisis in decades.
Eleven candidates are vying for the presidency and a May 18 runoff is expected. Polls opened at 7 a.m. (0400 GMT) and will close at 9 p.m. (1800 GMT). Romanians abroad have been able to vote since Friday.
Romania’s political landscape was shaken last year when a top court voided the previous election in which the far-right outsider Calin Georgescu topped first-round, following allegations of electoral violations and Russian interference, which Moscow has denied.
Like many countries in the EU, anti-establishment sentiment is running high in Romania, fueled by high inflation and cost of living, a large budget deficit and a sluggish economy. Observers say the malaise has bolstered support for nationalist and far-right figures like Georgescu, who is under investigation and barred from the rerun.
While data from local surveys should be taken with caution, a median of polls suggests that hard-right nationalist George Simion will enter the runoff, likely pitting him against Bucharest Mayor Nicusor Dan, or the governing coalition’s candidate, Crin Antonescu.
Dan, a 55-year-old mathematician and former anti-corruption activist who founded the Save Romania Union party (USR) in 2016, is running on a pro-EU “Honest Romania” ticket. He says Romania needs a president “who has the will and the ability to reform the system.”
Veteran centrist Antonescu, 65, has campaigned on retaining Romania’s pro-Western orientation, while Victor Ponta, a former prime minister between 2012 and 2015, has also pushed a MAGA-style “Romania First” campaign and boasts of having close ties to the Trump administration.
Another hopeful, Elena Lasconi, came second in last year’s first round ballot and is participating in the rerun. She has positioned herself as a staunchly pro-Western, anti-system candidate, railing against what she describes as a corrupt political class.
Distrust in the authorities remains widespread, especially for those who voted for Georgescu, a sizeable electorate that Simion has sought to tap into.
“The anti-establishment sentiment is not like an anarchic movement, but is against the people who destroyed this country,” Simion, who came fourth in last year’s race and later backed Georgescu, told The Associated Press. “We are not a democratic state anymore.”
Simion said that his hard-right nationalist Alliance for the Unity of Romanians party is “perfectly aligned with the MAGA movement,” capitalizing on a growing wave of populism in Europe after US President Donald Trump’s political comeback. AUR rose to prominence in a 2020 parliamentary election, proclaims to stand for “family, nation, faith, and freedom,” and has since doubled its support.
The election redo is a crossroads moment for Romania as it seeks to restore its democracy and retain its geopolitical alliances, which have become strained since the canceled election fiasco.
The decision to annul the election and the ban on Georgescu’s candidacy drew criticism from US Vice President JD Vance, Elon Musk and Russia, which publicly supported his candidacy in the rerun.
The presidential role carries a five-year term and significant decision-making powers in national security and foreign policy.