Source : the age
Key posts
Good afternoon, I’m Gemma Grant and I’ll be taking over from Daniel Lo Surdo as we continue our live coverage following Saturday’s election result.
If you’re just joining us, here’s what’s happened today:
- Our seat predictor is currently showing 13 electorates that are too close to call. It will likely be some days before the most marginal seats are called.
- Albanese has returned to work in Canberra, and says he had a ‘warm and positive conversation’ with US President Donald Trump. The pair are expected to meet in person at the G7 summit in Canada in June.
- A 20 per cent cut to HECs debt will be the first thing on the government’s agenda, as Albanese said it was unlikely the Senate would get in the way.
- Sussan Ley has started the week as acting opposition leader – and she’s believed to be one of three MPs already campaigning for the top job.
- Greens leader Adam Bandt has declared he is “confident” of retaining his seat of Melbourne, despite facing a serious challenge from Labor candidate Sarah Witty that has left the electorate too close to call.
- The seat of Kooyong in Melbourne’s inner-east is back in play, after independent incumbent Dr Monique Ryan told ABC Radio that she was “not at all” sure of victory.
- Independent MP Dai Le has described her victory against Labor candidate Tu Le in the south-west Sydney electorate of Fowler as a ‘David vs Goliath’ battle.
- Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce is preparing for surgery for prostate cancer after retaining his New England seat.
Find out about every seat that has changed hands and those that remain too close to call here.
Westpac chief executive Anthony Miller has flagged boosting productivity as a key priority for the Labor government, adding that its decisive election win should provide certainty during a volatile time.
Miller on Monday said the government had a key opportunity to drive productivity after its election win over the Coalition on the weekend’s federal election, without nominating specific policies.
Westpac’s CEO, Anthony Miller.Credit: Oscar Colman
“I think it’s too early for me to comment or speculate on potential tax or other reforms, but I think the opportunity around driving productivity is an obvious one,” he said.
Miller said the result should provide greater certainty, which was positive for attracting talent and capital to Australia’s economy.
“I definitely think there’s a really significant positive for Australia as a result of that election victory in the sense that the continuity, the consistency, the certainty that that re-election delivers is quite profound. And it certainly sets us up and sets us apart from many other countries around the world given the uncertainty and given the inconsistency and the volatility that we’re seeing,” he said.
Speaking from her campaign office in Scarborough, Western Australia, re-elected Curtin MP Kate Chaney delivered a scathing assessment of the Liberal Party, saying that its failure to elect former Curtin MP Julie Bishop as its leader in the 2018 spill was a sliding-doors moment.
Curtin MP Kate Chaney.
Credit: Hamish Hastie
“I certainly think that when the Liberal Party knocked back Julie Bishop and chose Scott Morrison instead, it was a sliding-doors moment for the Australian Liberal Party,” she said.
“A lot of women looked at that point and thought, ‘this does not look like a party that represents me.’
“More broadly, I don’t think the Coalition has done much to prove that it is a good place to be if you’re a woman in politics, and certainly, I look at some of my female colleagues in the Coalition, and I think they’ve had a really tough time.”
She also placed some of the blame at the feet of Peter Dutton. “I think in Curtin, there are a lot of people who feel that Peter Dutton does not represent their values,” she said.
Labor’s majority control of the lower house means Chaney and the other teal independents elected on Saturday will not have the negotiating power they hoped for with a minority government scenario.
Chaney said she would continue voting on every piece of legislation on its merits.
The Curtin campaign was the most high profile in WA, with both camps spending more than $1 million each on their campaign. Chaney managed a 1.5 per cent swing toward her to hold Curtin against her opponent Tom White by 2.9 per cent.
If you’re obsessively refreshing the tally room feed today – you’re not alone. But the bad news is that the count is slowing down.
I just got off the phone with Evan Ekin-Smyth, a spokesman for the Australian Electoral Commission, who gave a clearer picture of what’s happening behind the scenes.
There were 100,000 AEC staffers working at polling places and on the initial count on Saturday. But that number drops significantly after election day as, from here, it’s less of a wave of votes and more of a trickle, especially when it comes to postal votes.
“They absolutely had to have completed their vote by the close of polls on election day, 6pm on election day,” Ekin-Smyth said. “But they didn’t have to put it in the mailbox by then. So they could have completed it at 5.59pm on election day and they could be coming out this morning to find a post box”.
Ekin-Smyth said the vast majority of postal votes would arrive well before the deadline and most seats should be called before then. But in really tight contests (Goldstein, I’m looking at you), the wait could stretch the full two weeks.
You can read more of Rachael’s reporting in our Victorian Hot Seats blog here.
NSW Liberal leader Mark Speakman has made a veiled swipe at Peter Dutton’s election strategy, saying his state campaign won’t be “focused on culture wars” nor “how many flags I stand in front of”.
Less than two years out from the NSW election, Speakman all but put a line through nuclear energy and said the party needed to be more than “just a party for Anglo-Celtic, middle-aged men”.
“Our values of aspiration, opportunity, end product, harder work, are timeless, and we will anchor our policies on those but I won’t be focused on culture wars,” he said. “I won’t be focused on issues like how many flags I stand in front of. Young people in the street aren’t talking about that.”
NSW Liberal leader Mark Speakman has all but put a line through nuclear energy.Credit: Kate Geraghty
The comments doubled down on a statement released by the NSW opposition leader on Sunday, who called for an end to the party’s “wild fluctuations” on energy policy.
“I can’t see nuclear energy happening in the foreseeable future in NSW or Australia. You’d never say never,” he said.
“But what is important is that you have a road map for the long term, for the medium term, for the short term, and that’s why just getting it on with rolling out renewables.”
Billionaire Gina Rinehart has urged the Coalition to still embrace Trump-style policies despite the party’s devastating election loss.
In a statement to The Daily Mail, Rinehart said it was time to build and enlarge the foundation of “common sense” for the party.
“The left media did a very successful effort, frightening many in the Liberal Party from anything Trump, and away from any Trump-like policies,” she said.
“This has been especially obvious this year, with the Liberals instead becoming known as the ‘me too’ party. Trump-style ‘make Australia great’ policies via cutting government tape, government bureaucracy and wastage, and hence being able to cut taxes, [are] too scarce in Australia this year to rate a mention.
“No doubt the left media will now try to claim that the Liberal loss was because the Liberal Party followed Trump and became too right! The two simply don’t add up!
“One of the first things the Liberals need to do is education, based on the old but true principles of common sense and truth.”
Good afternoon, I’m Gemma Grant and I’ll be taking over from Daniel Lo Surdo as we continue our live coverage following Saturday’s election result.
If you’re just joining us, here’s what’s happened today:
- Our seat predictor is currently showing 13 electorates that are too close to call. It will likely be some days before the most marginal seats are called.
- Albanese has returned to work in Canberra, and says he had a ‘warm and positive conversation’ with US President Donald Trump. The pair are expected to meet in person at the G7 summit in Canada in June.
- A 20 per cent cut to HECs debt will be the first thing on the government’s agenda, as Albanese said it was unlikely the Senate would get in the way.
- Sussan Ley has started the week as acting opposition leader – and she’s believed to be one of three MPs already campaigning for the top job.
- Greens leader Adam Bandt has declared he is “confident” of retaining his seat of Melbourne, despite facing a serious challenge from Labor candidate Sarah Witty that has left the electorate too close to call.
- The seat of Kooyong in Melbourne’s inner-east is back in play, after independent incumbent Dr Monique Ryan told ABC Radio that she was “not at all” sure of victory.
- Independent MP Dai Le has described her victory against Labor candidate Tu Le in the south-west Sydney electorate of Fowler as a ‘David vs Goliath’ battle.
- Nationals MP Barnaby Joyce is preparing for surgery for prostate cancer after retaining his New England seat.
Find out about every seat that has changed hands and those that remain too close to call here.
At every election some seats go down the wire; our seat predictor shows 13 electorates still too close to call, with almost 80 per cent of votes counted nationally.
In some close races, the Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) has suspended the two-party preferred count on its tally room website.
That’s because the two candidates receiving the most first preference votes turned out to be different to what the AEC expected before the election. It calls these “two candidate preferred exceptions”.
In the past, most two-way contests were easy to predict (normally ALP vs Coalition) but in the past few elections, as the share of first preference for the major parties has fallen, this has become more difficult.
A person casts their vote at the Clovelly Surf Life Saving Club polling booth in Sydney.Credit: Getty Images
At this election, there’s been an unusually high number of those maverick “two-candidate preferred exceptions”.
When this happens the vote count effectively has to start again, so the AEC stops displaying the two-candidate preferred tally.
It can take some time to determine who the top two candidates should be when those running second and third in the count are very close.
Once the top two is sorted out the AEC starts displaying the two-candidate preferred count again. It will probably be several days before very close seats are called.
Anthony Albanese has revealed he will attend the G7 summit in Canada in June, the likely location for his first meeting with US President Donald Trump since the election. The prime minister said his conversation with the president canvassed the AUKUS submarine agreement and the American tariffs on Australian exports.
Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney will host the 2025 G7 Leaders’ Summit in Kananaskis, Alberta, from June 15 to 17. Australia would not normally attend the G7 summit, being a smaller economy than the seven members, but Australian prime ministers have been invited in the past.
“I had a very warm and positive conversation with president Trump just a short while ago, when I was at the Lodge, and I thanked him for his very warm message of congratulations,” Albanese said.
Donald Trump and Anthony Albanese could meet in Kananaskis, Alberta.Credit: Marija Ercegovac
The mood has shifted dramatically in Kooyong since Saturday night, when Dr Monique Ryan and her supporters were celebrating.
Speaking on ABC Radio Melbourne this morning, Ryan sounded far less confident than she had 36 hours earlier.
Asked by host Raf Epstien if she was still sure of victory, she responded: “not at all”.
“I think it’s 50-50 in Kooyong. Things were looking good on the night and, you know, in Antony Green we trusted,” she said, referring to the ABC’s respected election analyst who called the seat for Ryan on the night, as did The Age. The ABC and our mastheads have since downgraded their calls.
Monique Ryan and Amelia Hamer.Credit: The Age
“But postal votes have been very much pro the conservative side. So I think at this point, the crown is still very much up in the air.”
Asked directly whether she could lose, she said: “It’s possible. Absolutely”.
Meanwhile, her Liberal opponent Amelia Hamer — who has remained silent publicly since election night — appears to believe momentum is now with her.
I’ve just seen an email sent by Hamer to party volunteers late on Sunday night. The subject line: “We now need just 943 votes to win the seat of Kooyong.”
Albanese says it is a different sort of parliament these days, as he claims he always treated crossbenchers with respect while demanding maturity from journalists.
When one reporter asked: “Would you ensure that, if the Coalition was, for instance, to split for a spell that they would retain the sort of resources they have now, in terms of staff that an opposition normally gets?”
Albanese launched into a speech on how the parliament would be different.
“It’s a different parliament these days, so I mean, we’ll consider that,” he said.
“I’ve always treated both the Liberal Party and their leader and the National Party and their leader with respect.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s first press conference at Parliament House.Credit: James Brickwood
“I treat people with respect, like it’s not it’s not rhetoric, it’s real … it’s up to them [the opposition] what what they do. My job is to govern effectively. I’m proud, of course, of leading the Labor Party … I came out of the womb Labor, I’ll go in the ground Labor when it’s all over. I’m loyal.
“But I also treat people with respect … I treated crossbenchers with respect in the last parliament.”
Albanese then shifted his answer to criticising the media “frenzy” when he invited crossbenchers into the Lodge.
“The frenzy that was there because I invited crossbenchers to the Lodge with respect, like, frankly, get a bit of maturity about you. Seriously, they’re entitled to be treated with respect. That’s what I did. That’s what I’ll continue to do,” he said as he ended the press conference.
