By Renju Jose
SYDNEY (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump said on Monday he did not know anything about the weekend election in Australia, where the ruling Labor party decisively beat the conservatives, though he praised Prime Minister Anthony Albanese.
“I don’t know anything about the election other than the man that won, he’s very good,” Trump told reporters at the White House after disembarking from the Marine One helicopter.
“Albanese I’m very friendly with … I can only say that he’s been very, very nice to me, very respectful to me.”
Cost-of-living pressures and concerns about Trump’s policies had been among the top issues in the Australian election, polls showed.
About 48% of voters picked the uncertainties triggered by Trump as one of their top five concerns, one survey said, after his tariff plans sent shockwaves through global markets and raised concerns of voters on the impact on their pension funds.
Albanese had called Trump’s tariffs “not the act of a friend.”
The prime minister’s office did not immediately respond to a request seeking comments on Trump’s remarks.
Albanese was returned to office for a second term in a stunning comeback against the conservative Liberal-National coalition, which was ahead in polls as recently as February.
Labor is leading in 85 electorates in the 150-seat lower house as of Monday morning, as vote counting continued, data showed. At least a dozen seats are too close to call, with about three-quarters of votes tallied.
Albanese, Australia’s first prime minister to win a second consecutive term in two decades, had struggled to lift ratings through 2024 as households grappled with high costs.
But inflation eased this year, and polls reversed in March after the conservatives unveiled proposals to slash the government workforce and ban federal employees from working from home, which was compared to Trump’s policies.
The shadow of Trump likely cost opposition leader Peter Dutton his seat, mirroring the Trump backlash in Canada’s election a week earlier, say analysts.
Opposition lawmaker Jason Wood, who is leading in his electorate in Melbourne’s southeast, said his party initially thought Trump’s election could boost the party’s fortunes, but those hopes were never realised.
“We would never have thought we would have had the fallout with Trump on … tariffs,” Wood told ABC Radio.
(Reporting by Renju Jose in Sydney; Editing by Michael Perry)
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