Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has slammed Liberal leader Peter Dutton after his party’s shock defeat in the Aston by-election.
In a historic victory, Labor’s Mary Doyle seized the once blue seat in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs from Liberal candidate Roshena Campbell on Saturday.
The loss of a former Liberal stronghold is a devastating blow to the party, which is reeling from a string of defeats that recently resigned NSW after last Saturday’s state election.
It represents the first by-election victory by a federal government in more than a century.
Mr Albanese celebrated the surprise victory with Ms Doyle in Melbourne on Sunday, but managed to take a moment to blame Mr Dutton for the upset.
The opposition leader has since broken his silence and revealed his plans for the party’s future, amid speculation that he might step down as leader.
It was all smiles for Labor after Mary Doyle (pictured left) claimed the seat in the Aston by-election, securing a historic victory for Anthony Albanese’s government (pictured right)
“After ten years of being part of the problem, Peter Dutton is now failing to be part of the solution,” Albanese said.
Mr Albanese said he agreed with Mr Dutton’s comments at a press conference after Saturday night’s by-election.
“I thought it was a moment of honesty from Peter Dutton when he said out loud what we’ve seen in the year he became leader of the Liberal Party,” he said.
He said his priority was to keep the Liberal Party together.
Australians don’t want a big party focused on themselves.
“What they want is a government and an internal government that focuses on their needs and their problems.”
Mr Dutton told ABC’s Insiders on Sunday morning that he had no intention of stepping down as leader, despite many pundits saying the midterm elections were a barometer of his performance.
“We have a lot of work to do, I accept the responsibility as leader of the party,” the coalition chief said.
“Now the question is how do we rebuild from here, the policies we have, the brand reconstruction we need to do in Victoria.
“I can tell you that it makes me more determined to rebuild this party and be in a winning position in 2025.”
Mr Dutton said the Liberals’ fundamental values would not change, despite admitting that the Liberal brand had “suffered terribly” in Victoria over a long period of time and that the party had failed voters’ test in Aston .
Opposition leader Peter Dutton (pictured right) is about to question his leadership after Liberal candidate Roshena Campbell (pictured left) was defeated in the Aston by-election
“I think the Liberal Party has allowed itself to be defined by our opponents in recent years and I think it’s time we take that back,” he said.
“To stand up for what we believe in, whether it’s trendy or not, and part of that, I believe, is what the Australian public is demanding, especially in our seats in out-of-town and regional areas.”
Mr Dutton said Australians with conservative views on gender should be able to debate transgender rights, saying the issue was important to many people in the suburbs and regional areas.
During the Aston campaign, the Liberal Party suspended Victorian state MP Moira Deeming for attending an anti-transgender rights protest in Melbourne where neo-Nazis were present.
While Ms Deeming and the organizers of the rally said the neo-Nazis crushed the event and condemned their actions, Mr Dutton recently told the federal coalition party chamber that the saga would hurt the Liberals’ chances in the midterm elections.
Mr Dutton would not be immediately enamored of Ms Deeming’s participation in Sunday’s rally, saying: ‘I don’t believe our MPs should be going to anti-everything rallies to be honest.’
But he said the debate on transgender rights issues should be able to go “two ways.”
“There are very strong views within many parts of Australian society,” he said.
“Maybe not here in the inner city areas of our country, but in the outer city areas this is an issue in terms of women’s rights and the gender issue that gets parents and others very excited.”
On climate change, Mr Dutton said he would accept the latest report from the United Nations Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which warns the world is in a ‘last chance decade’ to reverse destructive global warming. fuses.
Former trade union official and breast cancer survivor Ms Doyle (pictured left with Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles) won the seat formerly held by Liberal cabinet minister Alan Tudge is a dramatic swing to Labor
“I’ll gladly accept,” Mr. Dutton said.
“But we have to be realistic because about what we can do as a country and take companies off the coast will only increase emissions into the global environment and it will lose Australian jobs and productivity.”
Mr Dutton suggested that the Liberal Party had beaten itself down in the eyes of voters by not publicly celebrating the strong environmental record he said the party had achieved.
“We’ve been the worst sellers in terms of what we’ve done for the environment,” he said.
“The Prime Minister’s claims today about the amount of solar energy, the amount of hydro, the investment in batteries in our country, all happened under a Liberal government.
“The problem is we never pursued the argument. We never managed to tell people what we had done.’
Mr Dutton said some of the Liberal Party’s traits were “quite frankly timeless” and “worth pursuing again” and said the party would review any policies it planned to take into the next federal election “in due course.” time’ would release.
‘We stand for ambition. We stand for entrepreneurship, so small business, we stand for national security, of course, and we always stand for cleaning up a mess from Labor when we get back into government, so people can make their own choices’ , he said.
“It’s all about timing in this industry and now is not the time to release cost policies and changes in tax policies or social policies or otherwise.”
Mr. Dutton, he had no intention of stepping aside as leader and vowed to rebuild the party to put it in a winning position in the next federal election.
The Aston by-election, triggered by the resignation of sitting MP and former Liberal cabinet minister Alan Tudge, was widely seen as a test of both Mr Dutton’s leadership and the performance of the Albanian government in its first 10 months in office.
The Labor victory was the first time in more than a century that the government won an opposition seat in a by-election.