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We’re set for another busy day, as the fallout and counting from Saturday’s election continues.
Labor will resume preparations for its second term, ahead of an expected caucus meeting in Canberra later this week. The Coalition will plan for another three years in opposition, with the appointment of a new leader atop its agenda.
Here’s what else you need to know as we start the morning:
- The Australian Electoral Commission will continue its vote count as the composition of the next federal parliament becomes increasingly clear. The seats of Wills and Franklin were both called in Labor’s favour yesterday, while Liberal Tim Wilson claimed Goldstein from teal incumbent Zoe Daniel, three years since the independent won the Melbourne seat from Wilson.
- Greens leader Adam Bandt is among the political hopefuls nervously waiting for votes to be counted. He is facing a serious challenge in Melbourne from Labor challenger Sarah Witty, while teal candidates Monique Ryan and Nicolette Boele both face tight races in Kooyong and Bradfield, respectively.
- The Nationals Party is set for a leadership reshuffle, as deputy leader Perin Davey faces an uphill battle to be re-elected in the Senate. Davey said she was “shattered” by her looming defeat, which she blamed on elector discontent with the Liberals, rather than the junior Coalition party.
- US President Donald Trump met with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in the White House overnight. Carney addressed Trump’s interest in making Canada the 51st US state, telling Trump in an amicable discussion that Canada “won’t be for sale ever”.
Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt has offered his sympathies to Zoe Daniel, the incumbent teal independent who is set to lose her seat of Goldstein after initially claiming victory on Saturday night.
Daniel looked set to retain Goldstein after early polling results, but an influx of postal votes favouring Liberal candidate Tim Wilson – who held Goldstein from 2016 to 2022 – has now positioned her for a loss.
Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt says “If Zoe does go down, I obviously feel for her”.Credit: Michael Quelch
When asked on Seven’s Sunrise about the Goldstein contest, Watt said that declaring an election victory can come down to “really fine calls” and is often “really hard to work out what is going to happen”.
“If Zoe does go down, I obviously feel for her,” Watt said. “It’s not a great experience, and she was a pretty decent person. But we’ll see what the final result is.”
A dozen seats across the nation remained too close to call on Wednesday as the margins in some high-profile electoral battles narrowed to double digits.
Two contests between Liberal and teal independents – in Sydney’s Bradfield and Melbourne’s Kooyong – were on a knife’s edge and gave the Coalition faint hope of maintaining a presence in metropolitan areas.
Results in some key seats are on a knife’s edge.Credit: Matthew Absalom-Wong
In some seats, the progress of the count has been slowed because the two candidates receiving the most first-preference votes turned out to be different to what the Australian Electoral Commission expected before the election. These are called “two-candidate preferred exceptions”.
When this becomes apparent, the count is stopped and the two-candidate preferred tally starts afresh with the correct top two candidates in a seat. The mandatory secondary count, called “fresh scrutiny” by the AEC, kicked off on Tuesday.
We’ll keep updating here in real time as each seat is called – and let you know which seats changed. hands across Australia.
Read more about the seats still on a knife’s edge here.
Liberal Senator Maria Kovacic has doubled down on her plea for party room colleagues to dump its nuclear energy plan, saying that Australians had rejected the proposal at Saturday’s poll and that it was now time to move on.
Kovacic first broke ranks after telling this masthead that the Coalition’s nuclear policy was among the keystone proposals dismissed by Australians at the election, flagging instead her preference to back the private market’s renewable energy investment.
Senator Maria Kovacic says Australians have delivered a “very, very clear message” about the platform required to lead the nation.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
It comes as Angus Taylor, Sussan Ley, and Dan Tehan court support for respective tilts at the Liberal Party leadership, after Peter Dutton was ousted from parliament as part of a disastrous election result for the Coalition.
Speaking on ABC Radio National, Kovacic said Australians had delivered a “very, very clear message” about the platform required to lead the nation, finding that the nuclear plan did not exist within that framework.
“As Liberals, we are the party of the free market and small government” Kovacic said.
“And the notion that is meant to do that, is the cornerstone of its values, would then nationalise a portion of our energy system, is completely at odds with who we are and what we stand for.
“That also confused voters on the weekend, because we weren’t aligned to the people we are.”
Ousted Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather has called parliament “bloody awful” and a “sick place” in an interview with the ABC on Tuesday evening, days after conceeding defeat in the Brisbane seat of Griffith.
Chandler-Mather’s hard-line stance on growing public housing supply drew the ire of the government in the previous parliamentary term, causing the Greens MP to face extensive derision from the rest of the chamber.
Anthony Albanese took a thinly veiled swipe at Chandler-Mather and ousted Liberal housing spokesperson Michael Sukkar upon returning to Canberra on Monday, saying that “part of the reason why they’re not in the parliament is that they held up public housing”.
Max Chandler-Mather says he won’t miss a workplace where people “come up and just yell at you while you’re trying to give a speech”.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen
In his first interview since losing his seat, Chandler-Mather told triple j’s Hack program that while he was “proud of his work” he would not miss parliament, which he described as “bloody awful” and a “sick place”.
“We were getting attacked because we said we should spend a bit more on public housing and give something for renters,” Chandler-Mather said.
“Can you imagine if you’re in a workplace and you have people in that workplace coming up and just yelling and screaming at you while you’re trying to give a speech … it’s odd.”
Chandler-Mather shared optimism for the Greens’ prospects in the new term despite losing his own seat, flagging confidence in the minor party retaining the seats of Melbourne and Ryan, while maintaining considerable influence in the Senate. The Greens also conceded defeat in Brisbane, which was held by Stephen Bates.
Liberal Party candidate for Kooyong Amelia Hamer has taken a swipe at her own side, including the main slogan plastered on her corflutes.
Speaking to Jacqui Felgate on 3AW Drive on Tuesday, Hamer, whose political future still hangs in the balance as votes are counted, was asked to reflect on the Coalition’s loss.
Amelia Hamer casting her vote on election day.Credit: Rachael Dexter
“The one piece of feedback I was hearing consistently throughout the campaign is that people wanted to see more substantial policy from us – and they wanted to see it earlier,” she said.
“Not just ‘hey nuclear’ and a little bit of tax here and there, but substantive taxation reform and a real vision as to what our country should look like, and what it would look like under a Coalition government.”
She questioned the meaning of the Coalition’s central slogan – “Getting Australia back on track”.
“We talked a lot about getting Australia back on track, but the question is: back on track to what?
“We didn’t set that. We didn’t make that clear.”
Read more in our Victoria’s hot seats blog here.
The Labor Left is poised to gain a key place in the federal ministry after winning up to a dozen seats at the election, taking a prized position vacated by former party leader Bill Shorten and extending its influence in government.
The moves depend on the final election tally, with many seats still in doubt, but have already triggered concerns in the party’s Right faction about the limited options for promotion into the ministry and cabinet.
Anthony Albanese is celebrating a landslide election victory.Credit: James Brickwood
Albanese will convene a caucus meeting in Parliament House on Friday to mark the historic election victory and formalise the vote on ministry membership.
The caucus will increase from 103 members and senators to at least 110 and as many as 121.
The Labor Left will add more members to the caucus than the Right.
Incoming Tasmanian MP Rebecca White, a former state opposition leader, is seen as a likely appointment to the ministry in the Left faction vote. The other leading candidates are Ged Kearney, a former president of the ACTU and Jess Walsh, an economist and former union official.
Read the full story here.
We’re set for another busy day, as the fallout and counting from Saturday’s election continues.
Labor will resume preparations for its second term, ahead of an expected caucus meeting in Canberra later this week. The Coalition will plan for another three years in opposition, with the appointment of a new leader atop its agenda.
Here’s what else you need to know as we start the morning:
- The Australian Electoral Commission will continue its vote count as the composition of the next federal parliament becomes increasingly clear. The seats of Wills and Franklin were both called in Labor’s favour yesterday, while Liberal Tim Wilson claimed Goldstein from teal incumbent Zoe Daniel, three years since the independent won the Melbourne seat from Wilson.
- Greens leader Adam Bandt is among the political hopefuls nervously waiting for votes to be counted. He is facing a serious challenge in Melbourne from Labor challenger Sarah Witty, while teal candidates Monique Ryan and Nicolette Boele both face tight races in Kooyong and Bradfield, respectively.
- The Nationals Party is set for a leadership reshuffle, as deputy leader Perin Davey faces an uphill battle to be re-elected in the Senate. Davey said she was “shattered” by her looming defeat, which she blamed on elector discontent with the Liberals, rather than the junior Coalition party.
- US President Donald Trump met with Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney in the White House overnight. Carney addressed Trump’s interest in making Canada the 51st US state, telling Trump in an amicable discussion that Canada “won’t be for sale ever”.
Hello and welcome to our Wednesday live news blog.
We’ll continue to bring you the wash-up from Saturday’s federal election, including the latest on each of the 12 seats that are too close to call.
I’m Daniel Lo Surdo, and I’ll be helming the blog this morning.
Stick with us throughout the day.
