Anthony Albanese to become the 31st Australian Prime Minister

By DANIEL LO SURDO

The inner city-raised and Marrickville local Anthony Albanese will become the 31st Australian Prime Minister after Scott Morrison conceded defeat amid a disaster election day for the Liberal Party.

Key Labor victories in Western Australia and Victoria, and swings to Independent and Greens candidates in Liberal seats in the eastern states, spelled the Coalition’s collapse during the election and has installed a Labor government for the first time since 2013, when Albanese was deputy prime minister under Kevin Rudd.

In his concession speech, Morrison congratulated Albanese on Labor’s success at the polls and said that he would step down as the leader of the Liberal Party, paving the way for a new leader of the opposition.

It is unknown at this point whether Labor will be able to form a majority government (76 seats) in the House of Representatives, or will have to form a minority government with the support of independents or the minor parties.

In becoming prime minister, Albanese will be the first Grayndler member to hold the office, the first prime minister without an Anglo-Saxon last name, and the first Sydney Labor prime minister since Paul Keating, who resigned from his Blaxland seat after defeat at the 1996 election.

While speaking to City Hub earlier in May, Albanese said that he’s “never taken the people of Grayndler for granted” and would “never stop fighting for it”, regardless of becoming prime minister.

Albanese was raised by his single mother Maryanne in a Camperdown public housing estate and graduated from the University of Sydney in 1984 with a Bachelor of Economics.

He was first elected to the seat of Grayndler in 1996 and has held ministries for Regional Development, Local Government, Infrastructure and Transport, as well as being Leader of the House and the leader of the Labor Party since Bill Shorten’s election defeat in 2019.