What we learned, Tuesday 6 April
That’s where we’ll leave the blog for today. Thanks for reading, and I hope you have a great evening. Here were today’s major developments:
The Liberals were expected to regain the seat of Goldstein in Melbourne’s southeast. Tim Wilson was expected to defeat former ABC journalist turned “teal” independent Zoe Daniel, who won the seat off Wilson in 2022.
In another knife-edge contest, Peter Khalil, who was first elected to federal parliament in 2016, defeated the Greens’ Samantha Ratnam to hold onto the Wills electorate in Melbourne’s inner north.
Analysts were split on Greens leader Adam Bandt’s hopes of holding onto Melbourne, although a final call was yet to be made on whether Labor could regain the seat for the first time since 2011.
The race for the new Coalition leadership was underway following Peter Dutton’s defeat, with deputy leader, Sussan Ley, the shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, and the shadow immigration minister, Dan Tehan, among the leading contenders.
Erin Patterson’s triple murder trial continued in Victoria. Ian Wilkinson, the sole sole surviving guest of the 2023 fatal mushroom lunch, told the court Patterson refused help in plating up the meal.
The coronial inquest into last year’s mass stabbing at Bondi Junction has heard from a Queensland police officer who said a lack of resources explains why her colleague overlooked an email requesting mental health support for Joel Cauchi a year before he stabbed six people to death.
And the Australian billionaire and Pratt Industries and Visy chair Anthony Pratt was photographed at the Met Gala in New York, donning a bright green suit with “Pratt 100% recycled” covering the entire outfit, from the suit to the shirt and tie.
Updated
Tim Wilson projected to win Goldstein back from Zoe Daniel
Zoe Daniel appears to have lost the seat of Goldstein, after the ABC called the electorate for her Liberal challenger Tim Wilson a short time ago.
While Daniel, a former ABC journalist, had initially claimed the win for a second-term shortly after results came in on Saturday night, postal votes have turned the tables in the Liberal’s favour.
With around 80% of the votes counted as of 5pm Tuesday, Wilson is leading on a razor-thin margin of 50.4% on a two-candidate preferred count.
Daniel had held the seat on a 3.3% margin after beating Wilson in the 2022 federal election. The loss marks the first for the “teal” independents who claimed wins in several inner-city Liberal-held seats in 2022.
Monique Ryan in the nearby Melbourne seat of Kooyong is also fending off a Liberal challenger, Amelia Hamer, who narrowed Ryan’s lead once postal votes began being being counted.
For now, Ryan remains ahead on 0.5% in a two-candidate preferred count – but watch this space.
Updated
Antony Green predicts another four to five Senate seats for Labor
Labor is on track to win four or five additional Senate seats, ABC election analyst Antony Green says.
Green, who is retiring as the public broadcaster’s chief election analyst, has just wrapped up an interview on ABC Radio Sydney, where he spoke about the state of play in the upper house of federal parliament.
While votes are still being counted and the final results are yet to be determined, Green said Labor could win four or five extra Senate seats, mostly off the Liberal party.
He said there wouldn’t have been enough votes for the Coalition in New South Wales for the Nationals senator Perin Davey to retain her seat, as she was in third place on the party’s ticket.
Green believed the seat was likely to go to Labor but said there was an “outside chance” One Nation could win it based on preferences.
He said he could give “no indication” on whether firebrand Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie would be re-elected to the Senate, saying:
The Tasmanian Senate is the hardest to call, because roughly a quarter of voters do their own preferences and vote below the line.
I would imagine that from every other group on the ballot paper, Jacqui Lambie, will get a high below-the-line vote, so she will get a flow of preferences.
Lambie has ended up in a fairly tight contest with One Nation candidate Lee Hanson – founder Pauline’s daughter – for one of the remaining Tasmanian Senate seats.
For live results:
Updated
Go8 urges Albanese government to fund more research and development
The Group of Eight (Go8) - the peak body representing Australia’s sandstone universities - has urged the federal government to boost its research and development (R&D) spending in its second term to address productivity shortfalls.
Its chief executive, Vicki Thomson, said Go8 universities had an “important role” to play in Labor’s second term agenda, which Labor has flagged will turn from addressing inflation to boosting productivity.
Thomson said:
The Albanese government has recognised that R&D is essential to lifting productivity and underwriting national prosperity through its Strategic Examination of Research and Development. This is a critical government initiative which will unlock Australia’s innovative and productive capacity and drive economic growth.
We will continue to advocate for policies to boost investment in R&D to 3% of GDP, and to make the case for a fit for the 21st century national research and industry strategy.
You can read more here:
Updated
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young downplays party’s poor results in lower house
Greens senator Sarah Hanson-Young has downplayed the Greens’ poor federal election result in the House of Representatives.
The Greens have lost two of their three Brisbane-based MPs from seats they won from Labor at the 2022 election.
Their leader Adam Bandt may still lose the seat of Melbourne after nearly 15 years as the member for the progressive inner-city electorate, and the Greens also failed to pick-up the neighbouring Wills electorate as they had hoped.
Hanson-Young talked up her party’s election results during an interview with the ABC’s afternoon briefing a short time ago, saying:
More people than ever before voted Green in this election and we had a record vote in the Senate.
We are going to have the sole balance of power in the Senate to push Labor to do the things they promised and pushed them to go further on dealing with the issues that people are struggling with in their daily lives and, of course, on climate and environment.
Hanson-Young acknowledged that “some of these lower house results have not got in our favour” and said there were “a number of reasons why”.
She said:
The main reason is the huge drop in the Liberal vote that went directly from Liberal to Labor.
Liberal voters [were] preferencing Labor and it was just a lot of harder for our candidates to get over the line.
Hanson-Young said the Greens would undertake a review of the election and their campaign to work out the other reasons why they weren’t as successful as they hoped they would be.
She said she believed Bandt would retain his seat.
Updated
Allegra Spender lauds independent movement
The independent MP for Wentworth, Allegra Spender, says independent candidates have “done well” in the election, and she has her “fingers crossed” for those in seats that are still too close to call.
Speaking on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, Spender said more than 1 million Australians had given their first preference votes to an independent, making it the “fasting growing political movement in the country”.
While Spender was re-elected to her electorate in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, other “teal” independents who were elected to parliament with her in 2022 may not have fared so well.
The contests in the Melbourne seats of Kooyong and Goldstein have come down to the wire, with independents Monique Ryan and Zoe Daniel fending off challenges from Liberal candidates hoping to regain the seats for the Coalition.
Asked by the ABC whether she was surprised Ryan and Daniel had suffered swings against them and could lose their seats, Spender said:
These seats have been Liberal forever. It was a huge change to even have these people in these seats – non-Liberals, independents and, frankly, women.
I think for both of those seats, neither of them have ever had a woman represent them before as well.
It’s very unusual and they had quite big redistributions. I’m not sure what has happened, whether it’s redistributions, local factors or campaigns, I don’t know, but they were marginal seats and I still have my fingers crossed.
Updated
Liberal senator says party needs to work on getting more women into parliament
Tasmanian Liberal senator Jonathon Duniam says his party has “a lot of work to do” to increase its number of women candidates before the next election.
Duniam, who criticised the Coalition’s campaign HQ in an interview with Sky News earlier today, has just been up on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, where he expanded on some of his concerns.
Asked where he stood on quotas as a way to address the party’s gender imbalance, Duniam said:
Look, I think it is something we need to address.
Here in Tasmania of course at the last election, we had 50% female representation, not with a quota but it was the way it unfolded.
We have to make sure we can represent the community we seek to represent and I’ll do my bit along with our organisation to ensure we encourage people … but we have a lot of work to do in that space.
In 1994 the Labor party adopted a mandatory 35% preselection quota for women in winnable seats at all elections by 2002.
Updated
Greens leader Adam Bandt now expected to lose Melbourne, analyst says
And just as quickly as that, another electoral analyst is predicting Greens leader Adam Bandt will now lose the seat of Melbourne by a very slim margin.
In more bad news for the Greens, analyst Kevin Bonham is projecting Labor’s Sarah Witty will clinch the inner Melbourne seat by less than 1% after “very bad preference flows” in a few booths counted recently.
Guardian Australia spoke to Bonham only an hour before his latest call, but it seems the odds are turning against the minor party leader for now as the Greens fight to hold on to the seat they’ve held since 2010.
Bonham had earlier described Bandt’s position as “shaky”.
Meanwhile, Ben Raue has tempered his prediction that Bandt will just scrape in.
He’s now projecting a Greens win in Melbourne by just 0.2%. Either way you cut it, it’s not a great result for the Greens which hoped to rule with Labor in a minority government.
The speculation will likely last at least another day or two but could take as long as a week for the results to finalise.
Updated
Guardian Australia calls the seat of Wills for Labor
Peter Khalil, who was first elected to federal parliament in 2016, fought a tight contest against the Greens’ Samantha Ratnam to hold onto the electorate in Melbourne’s north.
Khalil had held the seat, which takes in the suburbs of Carlton North, Brunswick, Coburg, Glenroy, Fawkner and Pascoe Vale, on a margin of 8.6% on a two-candidate preferred basis against the Greens.
The Greens were hoping they could win the seat, which covers some of Melbourne’s most progressive territory, but the results had been too close to call until this afternoon.
The Australian Electoral Commission’s most recent update, published this afternoon, put Khalil in front of Ratnam with 51.84% of the two-candidate-preferred vote to 48.16% – a lead of 3356 votes.
The race narrowed even further in terms of primary votes alone - Khalil had secured 32,926 primary votes and Ratnam 32,179, as of this afternoon’s AEC update.
Updated
Adam Bandt expected to retain Melbourne for Greens
The count in the Greens-held seat of Melbourne is still tight but electoral analyst Ben Raue thinks Adam Bandt will hold onto the inner-city seat.
As of 3pm on Tuesday, Labor’s Sarah Witty is leading Bandt 52% to 48% on a two-party preferred margin although only two-thirds of ballots have been counted.
The Greens have held the seat since 2010 and few would have predicted the size of swing against the minor party, even after an unfavourable boundary redistribution hurt their lead ahead of polling day.
But Raue says his calculations predict the Greens leader will hold on, if only just.
This is because the Australian Electoral Commission began with counting postal votes, which have typically not gone the way of the Greens.
Raue says pre-poll and election day votes would typically favour Greens over Labor and Liberal and on those projections, Bandt should lead with a very slim margin.
Raue said:
Bandt has had a swing against him. There’s no denying that. It’s definitely happening.
I think that probably reflects Labor’s resurgence and people want to vote for the government.
And, you know, it’s a very progressive area. And so there are probably people who like the Greens, but also want to have a Labor government, and that influences how they vote.
Inside Bandt’s camp, the vibes remain positive even as the nearby seat of Wills has been called for Labor, with Peter Khalil retaining the seat. Party sources blame the collapse in the Liberal vote and Labor’s advantage in three-way contests for the loss of some lower house seats.
Like other complicated seat counts, the results in Melbourne could take a few more days before an outcome is clear.
Updated
Hello. I hope you’ve had a good day so far. I’m here to take you through the rest of the day’s news.
I will now hand the blog over for the afternoon to my colleague, Catie McLeod, who will guide you for the remainder of the day.
Search for missing swimmer suspended
Just an update on our earlier posts about the search for a missing swimmer on a northern rivers beach in NSW. Police say that they’ve now suspended the search for the woman, and she has not been located.
The woman didn’t reportedly didn’t resurface after entering the water shortly after 7am at Pottsville beach.
There have been no official missing person reports and no unattended vehicles or items have been located near the beach.
The woman is described as of Caucasian appearance, aged in her early 20s, of thin build, with light brown shoulder-length hair worn in a ponytail. She was wearing cream-coloured shorts. Police want anyone who matches the description of the woman to contact local police
Updated
Man dies in Erskine Park warehouse incident
A 29-year-old man has died after reports of a workplace incident at a warehouse in Erskine Park in NSW.
Emergency services were called out to a warehouse on Grady Crescent at 8.30am on Tuesday after the reports. NSW police attended with NSW Ambulance to treat the man, who died at the scene.
The man has yet to be formally identified. An investigation into the incident is under way.
A report will be prepared for the coroner and the incident has been referred to SafeWork NSW.
Updated
More on Tim Wilson now leading in Goldstein
Just a bit more on Liberal candidate Tim Wilson being now ahead of independent Zoe Daniel in Goldstein, with a two-candidate preferred margin of 348 votes.
There’s still quite a few postal, absent and declaration votes to be counted, with at least 8,589 listed as waiting to be processed by the AEC. The postal votes so far are very strongly in favour of the Liberals, with 64.5% Liberal to 35.5% independent on the two-candidate preferred count.
It would take quite a margin in Daniel’s favour in the other non-booth votes waiting to be counted for her to regain the lead.
Updated
AEC admit to error in transcription of original count in Menzies
The Australian Electoral Commission has admitted there was an “error in the transcription of the original count” in the tightly contested Victorian seat of Menzies on election night.
Sitting Liberal MP Keith Wolahan is currently trailing Labor’s Gabriel Ng by about 1,300 votes in the count for the seat in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.
But Wolahan’s scrutineers are concerned about a big change in votes at a booth in Doncaster East. They say on election night, he had 8,817 first-preference votes in the booth but during a recount on Sunday it was reduced to 6,966 – a difference of about 1,800 votes.
In a statement, the AEC said it was “not unusual” to make corrections during the counting process.
They blamed the discrepancy in Menzies on an “error in the transcription of the original count”, which was “detected and quickly rectified during scrutiny on Sunday”.
They said scrutineers were present for this process. The AEC statement went on:
Election night counts are conducted by our temporary election workforce at the end of the polling day. The ‘fresh scrutiny’ currently being conducted is a re-check of all ordinary ballot papers received from every polling place, pre-poll voting centre and mobile polling team in a division, and is required by the Electoral Act to further ensure the accuracy of the counting process.
A spokesperson for the Liberal party said it would continue to watch the count in the seat:
We are closely watching the Menzies count as postal votes continue to be received. We are aware of some inconsistency in reported figures on Saturday night and are making inquiries to the AEC about those matters.
Wolahan’s defeat has been regarded as a huge loss for the Liberals and with the neighbouring seat of Deakin also set to turn red, leaves the party without a seat in Melbourne.
Updated
Continued from previous post
This is another seat where the two-candidate preferred count has been delayed, as the initial pairing decided by the AEC (Greens v Liberal) was not the pairing that eventuated on the night. So we’re going to have to wait a while to see how the preferences flow with the new Greens v Labor pairing. At the time of writing, the AEC shows Labor with 55.6% of the two-candidate-preferred vote, and the preference flows are going very strongly to Labor, which is not a good sign for Bandt.
That said, this re-count is so far based only on six regular booths and a pre-poll centre, with the counting only 15% complete. Further, election analyst Kevin Bonham suggests that the early preference flows were based on a vote sample that was uncharacteristically bad for the Greens, and that Bandt will likely win narrowly once more booths go through the re-count process.
The ABC’s chief election analyst, Antony Green, also said on 7:30 Monday night that he doesn’t think the rest of the preferences will flow to Labor as strongly, and so Bandt may hold on.
In Ryan, we have another three-cornered contest and at the moment it looks like the Greens have beaten Labor for second place on the primary vote by 661 votes. If this position holds, the Greens should win the seat against the LNP off Labor preferences. However, it’s possible that absent, postal and other pre-poll votes could make a difference in the final order, so we’ll have to wait for counting to continue.
Updated
Will Adam Bandt hold his seat?
In this update, we’ll take a closer look at the count unfolding in the seats of Melbourne and Ryan.
Probably the biggest question at the moment is whether or not Greens leader Adam Bandt is likely to lose his seat. On election night, the Green’s national vote looked steady compared with 2022, however with more of the vote counted their overall primary vote is down by almost half a percentage point.
Their bad result in Griffith and Brisbane was in part due to the nature of those seats - both are three-cornered contests, where the order of parties in the primary vote (and subsequent preference rounds) matters a lot. The swing to Labor flipped the order in these seats compared with 2022, and so in Brisbane, rather than Greens and LNP in the final two, as it was in 2022, it ended up as Labor v LNP, which Labor won with strong preference flows.
In Griffith, the final two were Labor and Greens, rather than Greens and LNP as in 2022, and Labor won again with strong preference flows.
But what is happening in Melbourne?
The Greens’ margin in the seat of Melbourne has declined compared with 2022 due to boundary redistributions, which resulted in the electorate losing some strong Greens-voting areas in the north of the seat, and gaining areas in South Yarra where the Liberal vote is higher. This redistribution is likely responsible for at least some of the swing against the Greens.
Continued in next post.
Updated
While we are looking at the teal contests, the Liberal candidate in the Sydney seat of Bradfield, Gisele Kapterian has also overtaken independent candidate Nicolette Boele by 44 votes on a two-party basis.
Updated
Wilson overtakes Daniel in Goldstein count
Liberal Tim Wilson has overtaken independent Zoe Daniel in the seat of Goldstein according to the current tracking of two-party-preferred count, with a 348-vote lead.
It flipped from Daniel having a 95-vote lead early this afternoon. The counting is ongoing.
Updated
Workplace bullying and sexual harassment reported in Tasmania’s fire and State Emergency Service
More than one in five (23%) at the Tasmanian Fire Service and State Emergency Service have reported workplace bullying in the past five years, and nearly one in six (15%) have reported sexual harassment, according to a new report released by the State Fire Commission.
Tasmanian Fire and Emergency Services commissioner, Jeremy Smith, said the behaviour was unacceptable.
To employees and volunteers who have been harmed by these behaviours – I am deeply sorry for the hurt you experienced.
I am committed, along with the SFC and the TFS and SES Executive, to building safe and respectful workplaces.
He said the executive had signed a statement of commitment to act on the findings of the report, which heard from employees and volunteers on harmful workplace behaviours.
The TFS-SES Culture Review Report outlines the deep sense of pride and commitment of employees and volunteers to the TFS and SES and in serving the community, and strong bonds particularly in times of emergency response.
We can build on these positive experiences and cultures.
There were 26 recommendations in the report, and Smith said a framework on how to drive change will be implemented by October.
Updated
New Zealand looks to adopt Australian-style social media ban
An Australia-style legislative ban on social media for under-16s is being proposed by New Zealand’s governing National party, AAP reports.
The prime minister, Chris Luxon, has announced his party will back a private member’s bill which will require social media companies verify a user’s age as above 16 before they can access certain platforms.
The bill, to be introduced by backbench MP Catherine Wedd, does not list which platforms will be included, but includes maximum fines for noncompliance at $NZ2m ($A1.8m).
Wedd said the “bill closely mirrors the approach taken in Australia”.
As a mother of four children I feel very strongly that families and parents should be better supported when it comes to overseeing their children’s online exposure.
Centre-left opposition Labour is warming to the idea but it’s not over the line, with leader Chris Hipkins saying it is a “debate we need to have”.
National’s coalition partner New Zealand First holds a similar view, while the third coalition partner ACT, a libertarian party, won’t offer support.
“Social media is doing enormous harm to young people [but] for every problem there is a solution that is simple, neat – and wrong,” ACT leader David Seymour said.
ACT opposes National’s bill banning under-16s from social media because it is not workable.
We would be better to learn from the Aussies’ mistakes than make the same mistakes at the same time as them.
Without support from Labour, National’s bill would require either the support of the Greens, or both NZ First and the Maori party to become law.
Updated
Median weekly share house rent in Australia hits $243 per week
The median cost to rent a share house has hit $1,055.89 per month, or $243 per week, according to rent.com.au’s April snapshot.
The national median rent for all properties has increased $5 to $630 per week in April, the last increase in this median was in January 2025 when there was also an uplift of $5.
Since April 2024, the median apartment rent has increased 3.3% (+$20 to $620) and 4.1% (+$25 to $635) for houses. This remains just above inflation, but is a moderation on the level of annual increases we saw through most of 2024.
Along with the slight median rent increase, the national weekly price per room also rose slightly – up $3 to $243. This was influenced by the median apartment price per room which also lifted $3 to $363, while the median price per room continues to be stable at $200.
Updated
Household spending falls after five months of growth
Households cut their spending in March after increasing it for five months in a row, in a surprise fall that further supports predictions of an RBA rate cut.
Spending fell by 0.3% from February, Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed, the first fall since September and the biggest cutback since December 2023.
Alcohol and tobacco purchases have fallen for three months in a row, and we’re spending less on hotels, cafes and restaurants than we were at the end of 2024.
Queensland cut back the most, especially on transport and health spending, amid ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, but the state paid more for one type of good, according to Robert Ewing, ABS head of business statistics:
Food spending in Queensland rose 2.9% as households stockpiled before the cyclone made landfall.
Banks and markets had expected the national figure to keep rising in March and deliver a total annual increase of nearly 4% but the fall implied spending rose only 3.5% over the year.
Customers also bought about the same amount of stuff in the first three months of 2025 as they bought in the last three months of 2024. That implies the small increase in total spend before March was just to cover inflation, so while we’re spending slightly more, we’re not getting any more goods or services.
Retail spending data last week also suggested spending had slowed, and NAB’s chief economist, Sally Auld, predicted the Reserve Bank would slash its key interest rate to 3.1% by August while giving this warning on Monday:
Retail sales [volumes] were flat for the first three months of 2025 and highlight the risk that the consumer has been unable to sustain the robust momentum witnessed in spending in 4Q 2024.
Updated
Nationals deputy ‘obviously shattered’ at expected loss of Senate seat
The Nationals deputy leader, Senator Perin Davey, has told ABC NewsRadio she is “obviously shattered” that it looks likely she has lost her Senate seat in the election.
Davey placed blame on the loss to being third on the joint Liberal-National Senate ticket behind two Liberal candidates.
I’m still watching the count, but I am a realist, and it doesn’t look good for me at all … It’s not based on a loss in the National party vote. My loss will be based entirely on people not wanting to vote for the Liberals because of our agreement with the Liberals that on this cycle, the Nationals position falls to the third spot on the Senate ticket, which is the most at-risk spot.
If people didn’t want to vote for the Liberals in the Senate that impacts my vote as as well. And it’s just a numbers game.
Davey said there was a strong case for the Nationals to get more shadow cabinet positions as a result of the changing numbers of Liberal and Nationals, and talked down the idea of the Nationals ending the Coalition agreement, noting it would be harder to get a Nationals elected in the Senate in NSW on their own, given the majority of the population live in Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong.
She said there was support for nuclear in the regions, and called on the government to lift the moratorium, adding people in the regions were concerned about the large scale solar farms and windfarms.
Davey said she would be very surprised if David Littleproud was challenged for the leadership job.
Updated
Tasmanian Liberal senator says Coalition HQ ignored local feedback in ‘bad campaign’
The Tasmanian Liberal senator Jonathon Duniam has criticised the Coalition’s campaign headquarters, saying it ignored local feedback, following Labor’s landslide federal election win.
Speaking on Sky News earlier, Duniam said the Coalition’s central HQ had “frankly” run a “bad campaign”.
He said:
Many of us on the ground right across the country, me here in Tasmania, saw some pretty alarming signs, which we fed in but were ignored.
We had bad pollsters giving us bad numbers, way off the mark, totally out of line with all of the published polling.
Our own polling here in Tasmania pointed to the wipeout we ultimately got and so there are some people in our campaign headquarters who are going to have to answer some questions for us around what went wrong here.
Labor has won two Tasmanian seats – Bass and Braddon – off the Liberals, meaning the state has been left with no Coalition members in the House of Representatives.
Updated
Future Fund beats 10-year target, swells to $241b
Australia’s sovereign wealth fund has beaten its mandated 10-year target and grown its total funds under management to $307bn, AAP reports.
The Future Fund itself reached a record value of more than $240bn by 31 March, after securing 7.9% returns for the year.
“This was a strong result that reflects the work we have been doing for the past four years to ensure the portfolio is resilient and flexible to a range of scenarios,” Future Fund chief executive, Raphael Arndt, said on Tuesday.
By comparison, the S&P/ASX200 rose just over 2% in the 12 months to April, or almost 9% in the 2024 calendar year, when the Future Fund improved by 12.2%.
Pleasingly returns have also increased the value of the other six funds managed by the Future Fund Board of Guardians by $4.9bn to $66.8bn while also providing $985.7 m in payments to support their intended programme priorities in the financial year to date.
Difficult market conditions elevated by recent US trade policy and geopolitical tensions would likely lead to higher bond yields and could stir up inflation.
We are seeing consequential changes in geopolitical, economic and market environments at the moment and that is causing volatility and uncertainty for investors.
These are the conditions for which the portfolio has been built over the past five years, and it has behaved to our expectations in recent months.
Updated
Monique Ryan retains slim lead in Kooyong
Both Bendigo and Kooyong are back to being too close to call.
Bendigo is another seat where the two-candidate-preferred count is being redone, with the new final two of Labor and the Nationals. The new count is showing strong preference flows to the Nationals, which means the seat is now undecided – previously we had it as going to Labor.
In Kooyong, independent Monique Ryan is still in the lead, and still remains likely to win according to models from election analysts Ben Raue and William Bowe. However, the race is a lot closer than we previously thought, so it will remain on the undecided list until things become more clear.
Updated
Home approvals down 8.8% in March amid struggle to meet target of 1.2m new homes
New home approvals were 8.8% lower in March in a further sign the economy is struggling to meet the Albanese government’s target of 1.2m new homes by mid-2029.
The fall to 15,220, from 16,683 in February, puts the brakes on an upswing that had started in mid-2024. That February figure came in 26.5% higher than it had the year before but the growth rate halved in today’s March figure, at just 13.4%, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Much of the slippage came from apartments and other non-house dwellings. About 7,200 of those were approved in February, but only 6,100 in March, though Westpac analysts noted units jump around a bit and were unusually high early this year.
But the private sector also received fewer okays for new houses, which continued to fall from its September peak back to levels seen in February 2024.
The slide was much bigger than expected, with the market predicting approvals to fall by 0.6%, Westpac said, while the bank itself was expecting a 1.5% slide.
The re-elected Albanese government has promised to see 1.2m new homes built by mid-2029, or at least 240,000 per year. but economists have warned the country is well behind on that figure. Building approvals pretty neatly track new building starts, and with just over 180,000 new approvals in the year to March, Australia is still running well behind.
Will that pace improve? Commonwealth Bank analysts had been optimistic as to the rest of the year ahead of the data release, though they had only been expecting a 2% fall:
We do expect interest rate cuts and rising dwelling prices to support a continued improvement in building approvals through this year.
Time for an update on undecided seats – Queensland’s Forde for Labor
We’re calling Forde for Labor, which is a gain at the expense of the LNP’s Bert van Manen.
The Liberals have also successfully retained Forrest in WA.
Fremantle, Wills, Menzies, Monash, Flinders and Calwell are still too close to call at this point.
Bullwinkel is so close that the Labor and Liberal candidates are separated by only 28 votes, with the Labor candidate Trish Cook in the lead. The AEC lists 3,081 postal and other votes still to be processed today (and this number will change, with most absent and pre-poll votes yet to be counted), and so far the postal votes are splitting narrowly in favour of the Liberal party candidate.
In Longman, the LNP candidate leads by 309 votes, despite a swing against him of 2.9 percentage points. Postal votes are now favouring the LNP, with 53.2% going their way compared with 46.8% for Labor, so it’s hard to see how Labor could take the lead here. But again, most absent and declaration votes have yet to be counted and may favour Labor more.
The ALP are very likely to retain Richmond against the Greens, but this is one of the seats where the two-candidate preferred count is being re-done, so we’re going to hold off a little longer before making a call.
I’ll do a separate post on the other seats which involve either the Greens or independent candidates.
Updated
Liberal Hollie Hughes: Taylor should have been supporting Dutton, not mulling future leadership role
Outgoing Liberal senator for NSW Hollie Hughes has claimed the shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, was manoeuvreing for the Liberal leadership two to three weeks before the end of the election campaign on Saturday.
Hughes told Sky News on Monday night:
I got a phone call today from someone who was a very senior person within the organisation at the federal level, and they had received a phone call – they were saying two to three weeks ago – encouraging her to get behind supporting Angus for leader. So that was two, three weeks before the election was finished, and I was horrified when the numbers were being done.
She said it wasn’t something she was privy to during the election campaign, and she said Taylor should have been supporting Dutton during the election.
I am a Liberal, and I’m still very much committed to Liberal values, but I think the behaviour of some of the people in that party room is absolutely reprehensible. I don’t think they were supportive of Peter Dutton. I don’t think they did the work. And I think they were more interested in their own future political ambitions than they were [anything] else. And you know, I think that shows from the policy vacuum that we saw.
Hughes said a joint Taylor and Dan Tehan ticket may be the wrong call, given the party’s problem with female voters, and she said they should “go back to the monkey pod” – a reference to the room members of the right faction met in parliament for lunch. She said she supports Sussan Ley for the leadership. Hughes will get to vote in the party room before her term in the Senate expires next month.
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Wild winds forecast for Victoria’s eastern ranges, this afternoon
A severe damaging winds warning has been issued for parts of the eastern ranges of Victoria, with gusts around 90km/h possible above 1200 metres from this afternoon.
The Bureau of Meterology has said the winds will ease after sunrise tomorrow.
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Dutch academic poses new theory about centuries-old shipwreck
An “evil” man took advantage of a shipwreck to lead a mutiny that caused the death of more than 100 men, women and children.
So goes the story of the Batavia, wrecked off the Western Australian coast in 1629. But does the truth lie elsewhere?
Read more on this story below.
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Victoria Health: beware of poisonous mushrooms, this autumn
The Victorian health department is warning people to be aware of poisonous mushrooms growing during autumn as weather becomes wetter and cooler.
Death cap mushrooms and yellow-staining mushrooms are more evident at this time of year, the Victorian chief health officer, Dr Christian McGrath said, and people should be on the lookout for the mushrooms growing in home gardens and publicly accessible areas.
Initial symptoms of the poisoning include stomach pains, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.
McGrath said:
Adults and children should not touch wild mushrooms with their bare hands, let alone eat them, and animals should be kept well away from them.
Anyone who collects and consumes wild mushrooms of unknown species is putting themselves at risk of potential poisoning and serious illness. Consuming a death cap mushroom can be fatal.
The mushrooms should only be removed from home gardens by wearing gloves, placing them in a bag, and disposing of them in a closed general waste rubbish bin.
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Tasmania’s homeless numbers ring ‘alarm bells’, says community services peak body
Tasmania’s social housing waitlist has hit a record high of more than 5,000 applications, with 3,871 people homeless or sleeping rough.
The data was released as the Tasmanian Council of Social Service (TasCOSS) unveiled a new, interactive housing dashboard.
TasCOSS chief executive Adrienne Picone questioned if the state was on track to meet its target of 10,000 social and affordable homes by 2032.
She said:
The dashboard shows Homes Tasmania has delivered a mix of 4,345 ‘homes’ since 2022, but this includes land lots and crisis units. In actual fact, the number of safe, secure and appropriate new homes is only, at most, 2,567.
Meanwhile, a key barometer for affordable housing availability in this state – the social housing waitlist – hit a record high 5,000 applications last month, with 3,871 of those homeless or sleeping rough.
This must ring alarm bells for a government committed to end homelessness in Tasmania by 2043.
It begs the question, is the government’s housing target and record on delivery keeping up with the level of need in the community?
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Victoria’s new commissioner: police exist to prevent crime
Mike Bush says the issues facing Victoria – last year it recorded its highest crime rate in almost a decade – are not unique. He says he will take a “different” approach to the former leadership of Victoria police to tackle it.
There are crime issues within the state. Everyone knows that these crime issues are actually global, quite similar wherever you go, but it’s not good enough just to turn up after the act. It’s really important that we respond well, we investigate, we resolve, but you have to do more.
You have to get in front of these things. And having a prevention mindset and a prevention focus at the front is really, really important. Some of you will be familiar with Sir Robert Peel, that is the number one principle of policing. We actually exist to prevent crime and harm. So yeah, we will be taking a different look at that as to how we do [approach] it. There’ll definitely be more visibility, but we’ll also be quite sophisticated about how we bring in the intelligence and deploy people to get in front of crime issues.
Bush also confirms he was approached by the Victorian government for the role. Allan explains:
The appointment of a new chief commissioner is a significant one for any government. It’s an important one, and it’s a significant one for the community … The instruction to the recruiting agency and the panel was to go and find the best person for the job, to go and find someone who could look at what some of the challenges are.
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New Victorian police commissioner appointed
The former head of New Zealand’s police force, Mike Bush, has been appointed Victoria police’s next chief commissioner.
The premier, Jacinta Allan and police minister, Anthony Carbines, have just made the announcement this morning and were joined in person by Bush.
Bush joined the New Zealand police in 1978 and was chief commissioner from 2014 until April 2020, when he retired. He led the police response to the 2019 Christchurch massacre and the White Island volcano eruption.
Asked what made him come out of retirement, Bush tells reporters:
I have a real passion for police that’s kind of in my blood. I’ve been doing it my entire adult life and most of my life has been committed to public safety. It’s just so important that people in communities are safe and feel safe, and police services are at the forefront of that. So that’s two very good reasons, and the third one is that the state of Victoria is a brilliant place. Kiwis love Victoria. I’m no different and I’m very honored to be part of your community and to serve you.
It is the first time someone who has not worked at Victoria police has been appointed to the top job since 2001.
It follows the resignation of commissioner, Shane Patton, after a no confidence vote by rank and file police officers. Rick Nugent was then appointed as acting commissioner but blindsided the government last month when he announced he would not be applying for the post.
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Visy chair Anthony Pratt resplendent at Met Gala in ‘recycled’ outfit
Australian billionaire and Pratt Industries and Visy chair Anthony Pratt is at the Met Gala in New York, donning a bright green suit with “Pratt 100% recycled” covering the entire outfit, from the suit to the shirt and tie.
And here’s a closeup of the suit.
Pratt, a supporter of US president Donald Trump, last week announced a US$5bn (A$7.8bn) investment pledge to make recycled goods in the US, which he said would create 5,000 manufacturing jobs and would help the “reindustrialisation” of the US. He attended a White House event hosted by the president and his company’s press release called the announcement a “vote of confidence in President Trump’s leadership”.
For more on the Met Gala, we have a separate live blog running below.
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Swimmer goes missing at Pottsville Beach, Northern Rivers of NSW
A search is under way for a missing swimmer at a beach in the Northern Rivers of NSW.
NSW police said emergency services were called out at 7.10am to Pottsville Beach after reports of a missing swimmer, and officers were told a woman had entered the water a short time earlier but had not resurfaced.
With help from marine area command, the Westpac rescue helicopter and Surf Life Saving NSW, police are searching for the woman, said to be of caucasian appearance and in her early 20s.
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Seven West Media buys Southern Cross regional stations in $3.8m deal
Seven West Media has agreed to buy the TV licences and assets of stations in Tasmania, Darwin, Spencer Gulf, Broken Hill, Mount Isa, and remote, central and eastern Australia from Southern Cross Media, the company announced to the ASX today.
The deal is worth $3.75m.
SWM managing director and chief executive, Jeff Howard, said:
Following this acquisition, Seven will reach almost 100% of Australia’s population [exRiverland]. With the successful launch of our Phoenix total television platform, our valued advertising partners and media buyers will be able to seamlessly reach and target these new and attractive audiences across both broadcast and digital campaigns.
The deal came after an initial deal struck with Australian Digital Holdings in February, which was set to launch right-wing news channel NewsMax Australia on the stations, fell through, Southern Cross told the ASX on today, with final conditions not satisfied.
ADH was launched with the backing of broadcaster Alan Jones after he left Sky news, before later rebranding to Newsmax Australia. The Newsmax Australia website still says “coming 2025”.
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We’ve had a ‘gut full’: Sydney council addresses dumping with NSW’s first shared e-bike agreement
Waverley Council in Sydney’s east has signed an agreement with share bike provider Lime to regulate the use of the bikes in the area.
The council says the memorandum of understanding will put a responsibility on Lime to better manage and regulate the bikes, and contribute to the provision of parking infrastructure, as well as establish rules on where bikes can be ridden or parked.
Mayor Will Nemesh said:
We have taken urgent action because our community has had a gut full of e-bikes being carelessly dumped all over the place. This agreement is about ensuring there is a clearly defined framework of accountability and transparency for share bike operators.
I congratulate Lime for demonstrating their commitment to working with Council and ensure public safety and public amenity comes first.
The agreement will start on 30 June, and run for two years after a six-month trial period. The bikes are limited to 25km/h but this may be restricted in certain locations.
Lime said it is the first shared e-bike agreement in NSW.
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AEC vote count reaches 78%, including 1m postal votes
An update on where the Australian Electoral Commission is at with vote counts, as of Tuesday morning, 8am, via AAP.
The vote count is at 78% nationally, with 14.1m lower house first preferences counted, including 1m postal votes.
First preferences have been counted for 7.2m Senate papers.
The AEC is delivering 1.3m ballots to home electorates for counting, and a mandatory second count of all votes will begin today.
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Voters rejected attacks on Labor’s climate crisis policies
Analysis of the election result has barely begun, but this much is clear: the country has backed a rapid acceleration towards renewable energy. Labor didn’t say much about the climate crisis during the campaign, announcing only one new policy. But Anthony Albanese and his climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, emerged with their ambitious goal of the country sourcing 82% of electricity from solar, wind and hydro by 2030 not just intact, but emphatically endorsed.
Labor’s position has been relentlessly attacked by the Coalition, right wing organisations backed by fossil fuel interests and one of the country’s biggest news media companies. Australians rejected that position comprehensively.
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Changes to victims of crime registers to come before NSW parliament
Victims of crime in NSW will be given a chance to receive notifications about their offender’s progress through the custodial system in a change backed by prominent advocates, AAP reports.
Laws mandating a victim receive information about their rights to sign up as a registered victim-survivor and receive the critical information about perpetrators will hit NSW parliament on Tuesday.
Notifications a victim-survivor can receive include details about an offender’s location, their sentence, parole eligibility and other things affecting a victim’s safety.
Victim-survivors are often able to make a submission relating to an offender’s suitability for parole.
Victims advocate Howard Brown welcomed the changes and said they would help people move on with their lives.
The victims registers are able to provide the kind of information that victim-survivors may feel they need to be able to take back control of their lives, sometimes many years after a serious crime has been committed against them.
Maximising free and full access to such a vital resource like the victims register is a major step towards healing for victim-survivors.
Corrections minister, Anoulack Chanthivong, said the changes balanced the safety implications for victims with the need for them to not to be retraumatised.
The mandatory notifications are expected to be for families of murder victims, those where an offender is serving a life sentence, and for victims of serious offences such as attempted murder, sexual assault and abduction.
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David Pocock: unlikely a second ACT independent will be elected to Senate
The independent senator for the ACT, David Pocock, said it was “really humbling” to nearly double his vote from the 2022 election, but he told ABC RN Breakfast he wasn’t taking it for granted.
I’ll continue to represent people in the ACT, as I have been doing, engaging in good faith, really bringing their voices into parliament. My commitment was to be accessible and accountable to people in the ACT, and over the last three years, I held over 50 public forums, from town halls, round tables, mobile offices, really wanting to hear from people in the ACT. And one of the things I take very seriously, as one of only two senators in the ACT is that not everyone voted for me.
There’s a whole bunch of people in Canberra who don’t like me, but I represent them, and I vote on their behalf. And so I take that very seriously, to actually get out there and hear a really wide range of perspectives to help inform how I conduct myself and ultimately how I vote.
He said there was a frustration in the community that the major parties weren’t standing up to vested interests, and that was a big reason people were voting for independents over the major parties. But he said, given the huge Labor vote in the ACT, it was unlikely a second independent would get the second senate spot in the ACT.
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Wong says she will remain foreign affairs minister and Coalition ‘are not the party of middle Australia’
The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, continues her media appearances for the day, telling ABC’s RN Breakfast she will stay on as foreign minister in the government, and said the most surprising factor in the election for her was the realisation that the Coalition “are not the party of middle Australia”.
I had a look at the AEC’s current count of metropolitan seats. So they have an inner and outer metropolitan seat at this stage. On current numbers, the Coalition are down to seven out of 88 seats in metropolitan areas.
Know what that says? Sally, that says that in the cities and suburbs, the Coalition does not represent middle Australia. It doesn’t represent the hopes, aspirations and struggles of people, of Australians and their families living in our cities and suburbs. That really was a profoundly, profound message from the electorate.
She said the government would continue to talk to the US administration to argue against tariffs, and repeated her earlier comments regarding film production that Australia and the US collaborate well on film production.
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Bridget McKenzie: Coalition had many problems and Labor ran a ‘superior’ campaign
Nationals senator, Bridget McKenzie, told ABC’s RN Breakfast there needs to be a “deep, honest and brutal” examination in what went wrong in the Coalition’s election campaign, but said no one factor was at fault.
There’s no one issue that you can point to that was the reason the Coalition had a catastrophic loss … there are issues around the campaign, research, communication, policy, etc., and tactics and strategy. And let’s be give credit where credit’s due. The Labor Party ran a superior campaign.
McKenzie said the Donald Trump factor benefits the incumbents at a time of global uncertainty, and said Trump “isn’t a conservative” as he “is literally ripping down institutions in a reaction to a political class in America which is very different to the political class here in Australia.”
Here in Australia, we have a compulsory voting which tears us to the center, and for good reasons.
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Wong says US, Australia ‘make great films together’
In response to US president Donald Trump suggesting tariffs could be placed on foreign-produced movies, Wong says “we make great films together”.
We’ve got Australian actors who work on American films. We have American films which are filmed here in Australia. We have collaboration between our artists in the creative industries. The collaboration is a good thing. So let’s not get in the way of that.
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Penny Wong: Liberal Party was ‘very aggro’ and wanted a ‘culture war’
The foreign minister, Penny Wong, says the media response to her comments in the final week of the election campaign about the voice to parliament were disappointing and an inaccurate “beat-up”.
She told ABC News Breakfast it was also a signal for where the Coalition was focused.
I think more importantly, what it did show Australians is that the reflex for the Liberal Party was to have a culture war and get very aggro, let’s be frank. Whereas most Australians weren’t there. You know, most Australians wanted to talk about Medicare and schools and cost of living and tax cuts and fee-free Tafe and childcare and 20% off their Hecs debt.
That’s where most Australians were. But the Coalition – yet again – their reflex is to have a culture war, which is often very hurtful to First Nations Australians but, more generally, to people who care about reconciliation. So I think it was a demonstration of why the Liberal Party has done so badly in Australia’s cities and suburbs.
Wong also said that Liberal senator Jane Hume’s comments that alleged Labor volunteers were Chinese spies was “extraordinary” and showed the party’s approach to “a whole range of issues” of concern to the Australian-Chinese community.
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With the Coalition’s loss, has News Corp’s influence finally waned?
Award-winning author and freelance journalist, and member of the Scott Trust board, which owns Guardian Media Group, Margaret Simons, looks at whether this election is finally an acknowledgment that News Corp isn’t as influential as people think (or fear).
Simons also writes there are lessons for all media about their role.
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Warm weather, high fire danger for Victoria
It is expected to be a warm May day for large parts of the country today, with Sydney expecting temperatures of up to 26C, the same in Melbourne and Brisbane, 24C in Perth, 23 in Adelaide with a shower or two, 20 in Hobart with a possible shower, 23 in Canberra, and 34 in Darwin.
Meanwhile, the Country Fire Authority has issued high fire danger warnings across large parts of Victoria, including the areas of Mallee, the north of the state, central Victoria, and west and south Gippsland.
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Good morning,
I’ll be taking the live blog for this morning.
There are still more than a dozen seats to be declared in the federal election. The focus will be on the tight races in Kooyong, Goldstein, and on whether the Greens leader, Adam Bandt, can retain his seat of Melbourne.
You can see our results page below, and we will have updates from our Canberra team soon.
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Full Story podcast asks: what comes next for the Liberal party?
The Liberal party is facing its worst crisis since it was formed in the 1940s. With Peter Dutton booted out of parliament, the question has quickly turned to who will take over the party’s leadership, and if it can survive the changing mood in the electorate
Nour Haydar talks to chief political correspondent Tom McIlroy about what comes next for the Liberal party.
Listen in full here:
Which demographics swung to Labor?
We have an excellent selection of analysis this morning about what shaped the election result, and what lessons can be drawn from the outcome.
Our number crunchers have been trying to identify the main demographic groups that swung to Labor – and they include urban voters, women, young people and Australians whose first language is not English.
Read the full piece here:
We'll gravitate to sensible centre, says NSW Liberal leader
Liberals in Australia’s most populous state will focus on the party’s “timeless values” after a federal election drubbing, Australian Associated Press reports.
The party’s NSW branch will not get bogged down in internal or external culture wars, the opposition leader, Mark Speakman, said ahead state parliament resuming today.
“The policies we’ll be developing as an opposition will be evidence-based, they’ll be rigorous, they’ll be prompt, and they will gravitate to the sensible centre of NSW politics,” he told reporters ahead of a shadow cabinet meeting yesterday afternoon.
“Our values of aspiration, opportunity, enterprise, hard work, are timeless, and we will anchor our policies on those.”
His comments came with the Liberals likely to be left with four federal seats on Sydney’s urban fringes after Saturday’s election.
Speakman promised policies will be rolled out in a timely manner before the March 2027 state election.
“But above all be coherent, cohesive and focused on the issues that matter,” he said, pointing to housing affordability, the cost of living, schools, hospitals and infrastructure.
The state branch remains committed to the 2050 net-zero target Speakman announced as environment minister in 2016, with a continuing rollout of renewable energy backed by batteries, pumped hydrogen and gas.
“I can’t see nuclear energy happening in the foreseeable future in NSW, or Australia, but you never say never,” Speakman said.
Watt predicts Labor’s second term will be a 'bit easier' in Senate
Watt also said Labor was under “no illusions” about the number of people voting for the party for the first time, or rejoining it – while adding “new things” would emerge this term.
The federal government picked up seven seats in the senator’s home state of Queensland in the federal election, including six in Brisbane and Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson. Federally, Labor has enjoyed almost a 3% swing in its favour.
Watt said:
We want to retain that trust by acting in accordance with the mandate that we received. There will be new things that emerge, globally and domestically, that we’ll need to deal with. But the priority is about respecting the mandate that we’ve been given.
Watt said Labor’s second term may also be a “little bit easier” for the federal government given the current makeup of the Senate.
Labor is on track for 28 seats in the Senate, meaning it would only require support of the Coalition or the Greens to pass legislation.
It is a significant change to the Senate … The idea that we can potentially get an outcome with either the Coalition or the Greens without having to cobble together all sorts of coalitions may make things a little bit easier.
I guess it will also depend on the approach that those parties take in the Senate and I think if there’s one thing that I would hope that both the Coalition and the Greens have learned from the last term is that being obstructive to the government’s agenda actually ends up rebounding on them. I think that that was a really key reason that we saw the Greens in particular go backwards, particularly here in Queensland.
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Labor to deliver more on housing in second term, Murray Watt says
Labor will be “able to deliver” action it has promised on housing in its second term, the minister for employment and workplace relations, Murray Watt, has flagged.
The Labor senator told ABC’s 7.30 on Monday evening that Labor’s agenda in its first term was “more ambitious” than it is credited for, particularly on housing.
I think this term … we’ll actually now be able to deliver a lot of the things that we have promised in housing.
Pressed on whether Labor would make tax changes in its second term, including to negative gearing, he said the party had been “very clear” that it wasn’t proposing to change its policy and wouldn’t “start scrapping policies” either.
We think that we can meet the needs of younger Australians through the policy platform that we took to the election. Of course, the commitment to reduce Hecs debts by 20% was very popular among younger people. The commitments we’ve made to build more homes for first home-buyers. The 5% deposit scheme backed in by the government was very popular among young voters.
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories before the main action kicks off.
Labor have not been given enough credit for policies to ease the housing crisis, Murray Watt said last night, as the Labor senator promised that the new Albanese government “will be able” to deliver more to help in its second term, expecting things to be a little easier for Labor’s policy agenda in the new Senate.
It came as the prime minister warned crossbenchers last night to “get out of the way” and allow the private sector to get on with building more homes. More coming up.
It’s an altogether different outlook for the Liberals who are well on their way to a full-blown existential crisis. Gina Rinehart has suggested the party needs to become more Trumpian while others, especially former senior women MPs and senators such as Linda Reynolds say the party has to reform and get more women into parliament. In New South Wales, the Liberal leader says the party needs to revert to “timeless values” after the drubbing. More on that in a few minutes.
