Federal election results 2025 as it happened: Greens leader Adam Bandt concedes Melbourne seat; Ed Husic, Mark Dreyfus axed; Jacinta Price leaves Nationals; Kooyong race tightens

Thanks for reading the live news blog. This is where we’ll end today’s coverage.

To conclude, here’s a look back at what we’ve covered:

• Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price defected to the Liberal Party to join Angus Taylor’s leadership team, as he battles Sussan Ley.
• Adam Bandt conceded defeat in the seat of Melbourne after his electorate was called for Labor’s Sarah Witty, opening up a vacancy for the leadership of the Greens.
• Labor faction leaders have cut down two cabinet ministers in a brutal display of caucus power, forcing out Industry Minister Ed Husic and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus and sparking anger from MPs at the “chaos and disunity” days after the federal election.
• In the closely watched seat of Kooyong, the race is tightening, with Monique Ryan more than 600 votes ahead of Liberal Amelia Hamer.
• Outside of Kooyong, several other seats are still too close to call, including Flinders, Bendigo, Bradfield, Bullwinkel, Longman and Monash. The count in some seats could take weeks, the AEC says.
• The Greens candidate for Wills, former Victorian state leader Samantha Ratnam, called Labor’s Peter Khalil today to concede defeat.
• Albanese shared “tentative” plans for his new ministry to be sworn in on Tuesday morning, following a caucus meeting on Friday.

Thanks again for joining us. We’ll be back early tomorrow with more fallout from the federal election.

This is Cassandra Morgan, signing off.

Labor faction leaders have cut down two cabinet ministers in a brutal display of caucus power, forcing out Industry Minister Ed Husic and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus and sparking anger from MPs at the “chaos and disunity” days after the federal election.

Albanese has accepted the outcome despite promising stability at the election, but caucus members were dismayed.

Ed Husic and Mark Dreyfus will lose their ministries due to factional aggression.Credit: Michael Howard

Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles, the most senior member of the Right, led a push from Victorian colleagues to gain more sway at the top of the government and promote younger members aligned with his faction.

You can read more from Paul Sakkal and David Crowe here.

We’re approaching the end of the vote counting day, so here’s a recap of how things stand.

Labor is getting very close to securing two seats in Victoria – Menzies in the north-eastern suburbs of Melbourne and Bendigo in the state’s goldfields region.

• At the start of the day, Labor’s Lisa Chesters was 1009 votes in front of Nationals’ Andrew Lethlean in Bendigo. During a slow count today, Chesters lead is now out to 1441.
• In Menzies, Labor’s Gabriel Ng was 1145 to the good of Liberal incumbent Keith Wolahan. Ng’s lead is now 1287.
• In the closely watched seat of Kooyong, Monique Ryan is 617 votes ahead of Liberal Amelia Hamer after starting the day 723 to the good.

The count is not over in many seats.

• The seats of Flinders, Monash and Calwell are all too close to call. The Australian Electoral Commission warned earlier on Thursday that it could take weeks to decide Calwell where there are 13 candidates, with several capturing at least 10 per cent of the primary vote.
• Labor’s David Smith, who holds the seat of Bean, is in real trouble against independent Jessie Price. He started 429 votes in front, but ends it almost 200 behind.
• Liberal Gisele Kapterian was 215 ahead of independent Nicolette Boele in the northern Sydney seat of Bradfield when counting restarted today. She is now ahead by 195.
• Up in Brisbane, the seat of Ryan is still in play, but it appears Greens MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown has her nose ahead of her Liberal and Labor opponents. The AEC has started processing absentee votes here with a slight shift towards Labor’s Rebecca Hack.
• Also in Queensland, in the seat of Longman, the local LNP member Terry Young started the day with a 471-vote lead over Labor’s Rhiannyn Douglas. That’s now narrowed to 289.
  Again, absentee votes will be important here, with Douglas shading Young on these 57-43. There are 940 absentee votes to count.
• Over in Western Australia, the new seat of Bullwinkel is still line-ball. Labor’s Trish Cook has widened her lead through the day from 86 to 231 votes, but there are almost 6000 postal votes, absentee and declaration votes to count.

  It all means that Albanese has 90 seats at this stage, with the Coalition on 40.

Nationals Senator Bridget Mckenzie was just on Sky News, describing Price’s defection as “a devastating loss” to the party, the Senate party room and to constituents in the Northern Territory.

“We’re a tight team. We’re a close-knit team. We fought many battles together, and whilst we’re strong coalitionists, we are very, very separate parties. And so it’s very disappointing news that Jacinta has decided to head over to the Liberals,” McKenzie said.

Bridget McKenzie with Peter Dutton during the election campaign.Credit: James Brickwood

Asked about her own leadership ambitions within the Liberals, McKenzie said she preferred to conduct those discussions “away from the cameras”.

Asked if the two parties should merge, McKenzie laughed and said “over my dead body”.

Bandt spoke on ABC Radio Melbourne this afternoon, where he spent most of his 15 minutes defending his legacy and sidestepping questions about whether there were lessons for the Greens to take from the 2025 election.

Host Ali Moore asked: “You basically accused both the prime minister and the opposition leader of being complicit in genocide [in Gaza]. Did you go too far?”

Adam Bandt defended the Greens’ stance on Israel.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Bandt replied: “I don’t think so”.

“We see now, for example, [Israeli PM Benjamin Netanyahu] really flexes a Trump-like figure now saying that they’re going to take over the whole of Gaza,” he said.

“And so, like we were saying, really, really clearly – look, our government should do something about this in same way that we do in the Russian invasion of Ukraine, it’s time for us to take action. And the government adopted a different approach.”

In the past 24 hours, Dutton, Littleproud and two Jewish groups have linked the Greens’ stance on Israel to Bandt’s loss.

But Bandt repeated his line that “purples” had a bigger impact on the result.

“We’ve now got these, a number of Labor members who are only holding off the Greens by Liberal support.”

Chinese Australians volunteering in Sally Sitou’s election campaign said they were “scared” to take part after Senator Jane Hume’s “Chinese spies” comments, the Labor MP says.

Sitou, whose parents are of Chinese heritage, said she had some “incredible people of Chinese background volunteer” in her campaign.

Reid MP Sally Sitou (left) on the campaign trail with Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his fiancee Jodie Haydon.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“A few of them, when Senator Hume made those comments … actually came up to me and said that they felt scared about volunteering at an election,” Sitou told ABC’s Afternoon Briefing.

“I was so disappointed by, first, her comments but also how it made a lot of Chinese Australians feel – that their loyalty was being questioned, and that they shouldn’t be taking part in our democratic system.

“I hope that we can change that conversation, that we can again welcome Chinese Australians to take part, and that this is their right and responsibility to be part of it, to vote and volunteer, to put their hand up to stand.”

A Labor video highlighting Hume’s warning of “Chinese spies” spread like wildfire through Australia’s Chinese diaspora on the eve of the election.

Last week, appearing on Channel Seven’s Sunrise, Hume said this to Housing Minister Clare O’Neil, with no evidence for her claim: “There might be Chinese spies that are, you know, handing out for you.

“But for us, there’s dozens, thousands, hundreds of young people that are out there handing out how-to-vote cards for the Liberal Party because they want a better life.”

Nationals Leader David Littleproud has just released a statement about Price’s decision to sit with the Liberals as part of the team hoping to make Angus Taylor the next opposition leader.

He is not best pleased.

Nationals Leader David Littleproud at the Coalition campaign launch in April.Credit: James Brickwood

“As leader of the Nationals, I am disappointed CLP Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has opted to sit with the Liberals this term. The Nationals negotiated an extra position in shadow cabinet before the election, to give Senator Nampijinpa Price a promotion and shadow ministerial opportunity,” he said.

“The Nationals were the first to lead the ‘No’ case in relation to the Voice, backing Senator Nampijinpa Price early and before anyone else did. Our strong stance led to an overwhelming majority of Australians voting ‘No’.

“I appreciate Senator Nampijinpa Price has ambition that extends beyond the possibilities of the Nationals and I wish her well. The Liberals will need to rebuild after Saturday’s election and Senator Nampijinpa Price will play a key role in that recovery, while The Nationals are proud to have kept all of our lower house seats.”

In the key Melbourne seat of Kooyong, we started the day with 4960 postal votes still to count.

The Australian Electoral Commission told us to expect two batches of about 2000 votes each on Thursday.

It looks like the first has just dropped — and it’s slightly narrowed the margin after that major overnight correction doubled independent MP Monique Ryan’s lead over Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer.

The current two-candidate preferred count has Ryan ahead by 609 votes (down from 723 this morning), sitting on 50.3 per cent to Hamer’s 49.7 per cent.

We’ll bring you the results of the second batch of votes as soon as they land.

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

Dutton has condemned Bandt after the former Greens leader conceded the seat of Melbourne, saying no spin could change the reality he and others in the party lost their seats because of their “appalling treatment of the Jewish community”.

“Australians were rightly disgusted at their behaviour,” Dutton wrote on X.

“We were proud to preference the Greens last, helping to ensure Adam Bandt’s loss.”

Nationals MP Kevin Hogan says his party will look to form a Coalition agreement with the Liberals next week, despite speculation swirling about the parties’ relationship – however, it is not a “done deal”.

On the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing this afternoon, suggestions the parties could merge, or the Coalition could split were put to Hogan.

Asked whether the relationship between the Liberals and Nationals were working, Hogan suggested he wanted the parties to stay separate entities.

“My starting point is, we go into any negotiation for a Coalition agreement in good faith,” he said.

“I want the Liberal Party to do well, and I want them to do much better into the future.

“We are happy to work with them on that, and we will go into a negotiation with them next week with their new leadership team, in my opinion, looking to form a Coalition agreement.

“But, that being said, it’s not a done deal, and we won’t just do it at any cost, we will do it with the different things that are important to us and all that will be on the table.”