Anzac Day 2025 as it happened: PM says Welcome to Country booing a ‘disgrace, low cowardice’; Dutton plays two-up in Townsville

Thanks for joining us today. Here’s a recap of the main events from our Anzac Day coverage.

• Melbourne’s dawn service was disrupted by white supremacist Jacob Hersant. Police removed him from the crowd. He and a small group of men booed and heckled as Bunurong elder Uncle Mark Brown delivered the Welcome to Country. Hersant is expected to be charged on summons.
• In Perth, a lone heckler shouting obscenities disrupted the Welcome to Country at the Kings Park dawn service. The West Australian premier branded the behaviour “disgusting”.
• The prime minister said the Melbourne and Perth incidents were “an act of low cowardice” and called for those responsible to face the full force of the law.
• Dutton said the Welcome to Country was “an important part of official ceremonies” and any act of neo-Nazism was a “disgrace”.
• Indigenous elder Aunty Joy Murphy, who frequently gives Welcome to Country addresses, said the heckling neo-Nazis had made her even more determined to stand proudly at such events.
• After the PM and Dutton laid wreaths at dawn services in Canberra and Brisbane respectively, Dutton visited Townsville RSL where he played two-up and poured beers.
• More than 50,000 people gathered at Melbourne’s Shrine of Remembrance for the dawn service, 10,000 more than last year. In Sydney, More than 8000 serving Australian Defence Force members and veterans marched from Martin Place to the Anzac Memorial in Hyde Park. Many more Australians attended Anzac Day events in cities and towns across the nation.

  We’ll be back on Saturday morning with live coverage of the election campaign. Good night.

The far-right hecklers who disrupted the Welcome to Country ceremonies at Friday morning’s Anzac Day services in Melbourne and Perth were quickly condemned as fringe actors.

But what they shouted – “We don’t need to be welcomed,” according to reports – has become a common refrain. It is repeated with rising frequency in conservative debates about Welcomes to Country on social media, in Sky News segments and even the Senate.

Police lead away white supremacist Jacob Hersant, who heckled the Welcome to Country at the dawn service at Melbourne’s Shrine of Rememberance.Credit: Getty Images

The Coalition stoked this debate earlier this year, when it brought the phrase into mainstream politics by pledging to wind back spending on Welcomes to Country if it formed government.

“Welcomes to Country should be reserved for rare occasions, especially when the taxpayer is being asked to pick up the tab,” the opposition’s Indigenous affairs spokeswoman, Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, said in February.

Clive Palmer’s $100 million Anzac Day ad blitz, including in this masthead, has kept the issue alive ahead of next weekend’s election, with banners that declare: “We don’t need to be welcomed to our own country.”

Then, on Friday, neo-Nazi agitators hijacked the conversation.

Josh Roose, a Deakin University academic who specialises in extremism, said it demonstrated the latest tactics of far-right extremists, who are seeking to appropriate “anti-woke” talking points for their own ends as they stage attention-seeking stunts during this year’s election campaign.

Read the full analysis here.

Kooyong Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer agreed to an on-camera chat with our colleague Rachael Dexter at the pre-polling booth in Malvern earlier this week, and she covered everything from cost-of-living to jiu-jitsu.

One of the more contentious issues in focus so far has been Hamer’s property portfolio, which Dexter revealed a few weeks ago.

At 31, Hamer owns homes in both Canberra and London, a fact not disclosed earlier in her campaign when she was highlighting her status as a renter in Hawthorn. Her main rival, incumbent independent MP Monique Ryan, has accused her of misleading voters.

Dexter asked Hamer a few different ways whether she regretted not declaring those properties sooner. She didn’t directly say “yes” or “no”.

“Sometimes, as a younger politician in the Liberal Party, it’s probably more interesting to people that I rent,” she said. “I’ve talked about being a home owner. I’ve talked about being a renter.”

Read more from Kooyong and other key electorates in our Victoria’s hot seats blog here.

An Indigenous elder who frequently gives Welcome to Country addresses says the neo-Nazis and far-right agitators who disrupted Melbourne’s flagship Anzac Day memorial service at the Shrine of Remembrance have made her even more determined to stand proudly at such events.

Aunty Joy Murphy, a Wurundjeri elder who has long performed the Welcome to Country at Melbourne events, said heckling at the shrine on Friday would not deter her. If anything, she is more defiant.

“It’d take more than that for me not to do the welcome,” she said. “It makes me want to hold my head up higher than ever. We know what it’s like to be insulted, and we have to stand strong and be brave. We’re proud to be who we are.”

Aunty Joy Murphy performs a Welcome to Country ceremony at the Australian Open in January .Credit: Getty Images

Aunty Joy said the ceremony was particularly important on Anzac Day to recognise Indigenous soldiers like her father, Jarlo Wandoon, who fought for Australia.

As this masthead reported in 2003, Wandoon initially tried to enlist for World War I as an Aboriginal Australian but was rejected. Family legend has it that he was accepted as an African American.
He was commemorated on the Healesville RSL honour roll as James Wandin.

“I don’t think people should disrespect anything that happens on Anzac Day,” Aunty Joy said.

The men at the Shrine of Remembrance today claimed to be protesting against the Welcome to Country ceremonies on a day they said should be dedicated to Australian war veterans.

Indigenous soldiers have served in every conflict involving Australian defence contingents since 1901, according to the Australian War Memorial, including at least 70 who fought at Gallipoli.

Read the full story here.

AFL legend Eddie Betts delighted Anzac Day crowds in Melbourne’s north, joining the Fitzroy Stars for a local footy comeback.

Speaking in the clubroom after Fitzroy secured a massive 21-goal victory over Old Eltham, Betts revelled in the spirit of the local community, who cheered him on from the sidelines.

Betts’ Fitzroy Stars outshone rivals Old Eltham.Credit: Justin McManus

“It was great, especially coming down to the Fitzroy Stars, an Indigenous side here in Victoria. It feels safe, it’s a great environment,” Betts told this masthead.

“I haven’t played a game or trained since I was in Wangaratta last year, so I’m absolutely stuffed.”

Learning of the neo-Nazi interruption at the Shrine of Remembrance’s dawn service, Betts said he was yet to see footage of the incident.

“It’s disappointing,” he said. “[It shouldn’t happen] in this day and age. But we’ll continue to educate, [we’ll] continue to speak out.”

Betts donned number 19 for the Fitzroy Stars in suburban Thornbury, earning cheers from locals yelling, “go Eddie!”

Former Fitzroy Stars Football and Netball Club president Troy Austin said it was a great day for the community to come together.

Betts’ goals earned the loudest cheers from the crowd.

“Both sides are mingling today and enjoying the day out,” Austin said.

Eddie Betts Betts donned number 19 for the Fitzroy Stars on Friday.Credit: Justin McManus

Veteran and reserves coach Uncle Ricky Morris addressed Fitzroy players before the Anzac Day game, speaking about his time in Afghanistan and East Timor, and the importance of remembering those who have served for Australia.

He said the dawn service interruption was disappointing on what was meant to be a day of respect for the entire community.

“The Fitzroy Stars and the football club has got a proud history of an Aboriginal football team, which dates back 50 years now,” Uncle Morris said.

“Today is unique being Anzac Day … where a lot of our ancestors and descendants fought for our country, and when they came back home from service, they were treated differently.

“[The people who disrupted Friday’s welcome to country] need to go back and have a good hard look at themselves because it’s not OK, and it’s very disrespectful, not only for my people, Aboriginal people, but also many other [people in the] Australian community that have served this country.”

Thousands of people have attended the dawn service in Sydney’s Martin Place and watched the Anzac Day parade. Many more turned out for services across the city. Here is a selection of the images our photographers have captured.

Anzac Day is a day for solemn remembrance, but if you are hoping to be elected (or re-elected) as a member of parliament, it is also a day for crisscrossing the electorate, trying to fit in as many Anzac Day services as possible.

Teal Zoe Daniel and Liberal Tim Wilson kept our reporter Cara Waters on her toes as they zipped around the closely contested seat of Goldstein, in Melbourne’s south-east.

Zoe Daniel at the Elwood Sailing Club Anzac Day ceremony.Credit: Wayne Taylor

For both candidates, the day started at 5.30am at the dawn service at the Hampton RSL.

Daniel had pride of place in the seating on the stage as the incumbent MP and was called on to lay the first wreath.

Then it was on to local primary schools and scout groups to lay wreaths. At one service, Wilson, after laying a wreath, quickly exited the service while it was still going to get to the next one at 6.30am in Caulfield.

Read more on our Victoria’s hot seats blog here.

Peter Curtin celebrated his 20th birthday on March 29, 1967.

Like other Australian men of his age in those Vietnam War days, he was subjected to a supposedly random birthday ballot to decide whether he would be called up for compulsory national military service.

When the marbles were drawn from a barrel in the secret National Service Scheme lottery, his birthday was not chosen.

Peter Curtin, wrongly drafted into the army, is still waiting for justice 56 years later.Credit: Simon Schluter

This meant Curtin was – or should have been – freed from being conscripted into national service.
But he wouldn’t know that for another two decades.

By a bureaucratic catch 22, still unexplained more than half a century later, he received a letter ordering him to present himself for a medical examination, after which he was drafted into the army.

He was bussed into Puckapunyal army base near Seymour, 109 kilometres north of Melbourne, for basic training on April 23, 1969.

“Prior to my army service, I was a happy, carefree man, [I] loved life. But 11 months in the army destroyed my endeavour to live my dreams,” he says.

Now aged 78, Curtin, from Mornington in Melbourne’s south-east, is pursuing compensation from the federal government for what he considers his stolen youth and for his PTSD diagnosis.

An investigation into his case reveals that the results of the first 11 of the 16 national service ballots – between 1964 and 1970 – were a closely guarded secret.

Read the full story here.

We’re almost at the end of the race to the election.

Pope Francis’ death and Anzac Day effectively suspended campaigning for two days, but Albanese and Dutton still found plenty of time to get potshots into an action-packed week that, for once, was not dominated by Donald Trump.

Through all the chaos, there was one anchor upon which punters could rely: Albanese and Dutton accusing each other of being “just not fair dinkum” and “loose with the truth”. So, are they?

Here’s week four on the campaign trail, fact-checked.

Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese during their third debate.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

While the election campaign is paused for Anzac Day, more than 10 per cent of all Australians have cast their ballot eight days out from official polling day.

Figures from the Australian Electoral Commission show 1.8 million people have been to a pre-poll centre. There are 18.1 million people on the roll, of which about 90 per cent will eventually vote in the election.

The Sydney seat of Fowler, held by independent Dai Le, has one of the highest pre-poll rates, with 16.3 per cent of her seat’s 120,000 voters having already done their service to democracy.

Many Australian voters have cast their ballots already.Credit: Jason South

The Queensland seat of Fisher continues to have one of the highest pre-poll rates, with almost 22,000 votes cast by close of business on Thursday. That’s more than 15 per cent of the 139,123 people on the Fisher roll.

In the Victorian coastal seat of Gippsland, 15.2 per cent of the electorate or more than 18,000 people have already voted.
Other seats with high pre-poll rates include Wentworth in Sydney (12 per cent), Whitlam (13.3 per cent), Richmond (13.3 per cent) and Canning (14.7 per cent).

Experts believe by May 2, more than 50 per cent of the population will have already voted.