Federal election results 2025 as it happened: Parliament to sit in July; New ministers emerge as PM vows to ‘deliver a better nation’; Libs, Nats face duelling leadership battles; Price silent on deputy tilt

Thanks for reading the live news blog. This is where we’ll end today’s coverage, and also, our dedicated live federal election blog. It’s been a pleasure to have you following along.

We’ll return on Monday with our national news blog, where we’ll continue to bring you the latest results of vote counting in key seats, party leadership contests and the formation of the new cabinet.

Here’s a look back at what we covered today:

• Nationals senator Matt Canavan declared he would challenge David Littleproud for the leadership of the junior Coalition partner hours after deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley announced her candidacy for her party’s leadership.
• Angus Taylor also formally announced his bid for the Liberal leadership. The new leader will be elected on Tuesday.
• Labor’s caucus meeting in Canberra confirmed the party’s frontbench, as members defended Ed Husic and Mark Dreyfus’ double axing as a reflection of the democratic caucus process.
• Greens Senator David Shoebridge said party members were gutted by former leader Adam Bandt losing his seat of Melbourne as the party reeled from a decimation in the House of Representatives, but held the balance of power in the Senate. Sarah Hanson-Young and Mehreen Faruqi are firming as frontrunners for the Greens leadership.
• Jacinta Nampijnpa Price has called an Aboriginal activist a “nobody” in the lobby of an Adelaide hotel, after the senator defected from the Nationals to the Liberals.
• Independent Monique Ryan is more than 700 votes ahead of Liberal Amelia Hamer in the Melbourne seat of Kooyong, while Labor is making ground in the seats of Bean in Canberra, Longman in Queensland and Bullwinkel in Western Australia.
• The Liberal Party is polling ahead in the northern Sydney seat of Bradfield and Victorian seat of Flinders, while the Greens have the advantage in the Brisbane seat of Ryan.
• The winners in Monash and Calwell won’t be known for days, or even weeks.

Thanks again for joining us. This is Cassandra Morgan, signing off.

Nearing the end of counting for the day, it’s been a good one for Albanese.

• We called Bendigo, held since 2013 by Labor’s Lisa Chesters, earlier in the day, taking the government’s seats in the House of Representatives to a record 91.
• In three other seats, Labor is making ground. Bean, which covers Canberra’s southern suburbs, has gradually moved towards Labor MP David Smith as the count has progressed. He started 195 votes behind independent Jessie Price and is now just 54 behind thanks to a chunk of absentee votes.
• In the Queensland seat of Longman, the LNP’s Terry Young is 231 votes ahead of Labor’s Rhiannyn Douglas, but we’re now into the absentees, declaration, provisional and late postals. Douglas is doing better than Young across all of these. If that continues, Douglas will catch Young early next week.

The AEC continues to count the votes, with the resolution in some seats still a way off.Credit: AEC

• Over in Western Australia, Labor’s Trish Cook has increased her lead over Liberal Matt Moran in the new seat of Bullwinkel to 635 votes after starting the day 333 to the good. Cook is doing well on the absent votes, but there are 4293 declaration votes that have yet to be processed. These are likely to determine who will be the inaugural member for Bullwinkel.
• Independent Monique Ryan is 709 votes ahead of Liberal Amelia Hamer in the Melbourne seat of Kooyong. We are waiting on the start of the absent vote count here. In 2022, Ryan beat then treasurer Josh Frydenberg 56-44 on the absent vote count (albeit on slightly more favourable boundaries).
• In better news for the Liberal Party, candidate Gisele Kapterian is 256 votes ahead of independent Nicolette Boele for the northern Sydney seat of Bradfield. She started the day 237 ahead. Kapterian is doing better than Boele on the absent votes, but given the tight margin, the winner won’t be clear until we see the 2006 outstanding declaration pre-polls.
• In the Brisbane seat of Ryan, Green Elizabeth Watson-Brown is still just ahead of Labor’s Rebecca Hack in the battle to finish second behind LNP candidate Maggie Forrest. Whoever finishes second on the primary vote will win this seat. The advantage remains with Watson-Brown.
• In Flinders, Liberal MP Zoe McKenzie also remains in front in her three-way fight to retain that seat.
• The other two outstanding seats, Monash and Calwell, still remain a mess that will take days, if not weeks, to determine.

Returning Labor MP Peter Khalil has condemned the intimidation, harassment and violence that he, volunteers and staff faced through his campaign for the seat of Wills.

“It was a very tough campaign,” Khalil told ABC’s Afternoon Briefing.

Wills MP Peter Khalil at Labor’s caucus meeting in Canberra on Friday.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“My volunteers and staff are amazing. Their integrity, their character, their ability to continue to serve the community, even when they had to evacuate the office so many times, even in the last week of the campaign, some protesters occupied our roof.

“The back-office staff had to evacuate. They did it several times.

“They should not be made to feel in danger at their place of work. That is just unacceptable, and even at the pre-poll … talking to voters and having people screaming or being abusive, and throwing disgusting slurs my way while I’m trying to talk to voters, or blocking me from speaking to people – that’s just counterproductive and people reject that.”

Khalil responded to Paul Keating’s claims of “factional thuggery” in Labor, saying while the former prime minister was entitled to his views, the ministry was selected by caucus.

“It is an inherently democratic process,” said Khalil, who had declared victory over the Greens’ Samantha Ratnam.

“People vote in the members of the ministry, which we did, in our caucus, collectively today. And as the [prime minister] said, no one individual is above the collective.”

Khalil said Husic and Dreyfus, who were both axed, had made “terrific” contributions to cabinet.

Read more about the campaign in Wills in our Victoria’s hot seats blog and David Crowe’s analysis of Labor’s caucus cruelty here.

Liberal MP Andrew Wallace says it would be “silly” if his party did not have a “good, stern look” at itself after the election result.

Wallace was asked on ABC Afternoon Briefing about reports of a dramatic drop in women’s support for the Coalition, and where he thought it was going wrong.

Andrew Wallace in November last year.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

“I stood on pre-poll for two weeks. I engaged with nearly 2000 people every day over that time, and I think there was an age demographic issue there,” Wallace said.

“I felt that I was able to engage very, very well with younger men, but not so with younger women. And I think that’s something we need to look at.

“I don’t take that personally, but clearly we’re not speaking to young women in particular. It’s not just young women but, you know, we certainly need to come up with policies that are attractive to them, and we need to listen to them.”

Shoebridge was asked if improving transparency in the National Anti-Corruption Commission would be on the Greens’ list of issues to push the new government on, given the minor party would hold the balance of power in the Senate.

“Of course that should be a priority for us but, you know, I come back to those core elements we talk about – a government that’s transparent, a government with integrity, a government that people can trust – that’s a kind of base we need to build to keep faith in our democracy, but then we need to get on and tackle those issues,” Shoebridge said.

Shoebridge said the Greens would focus on tackling the housing and climate crises.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“We are in a climate crisis. You can’t deny the physics. You can’t politics it away, and we need to address that. Millions of Australians are struggling to keep a roof over their heads. In a country this wealthy, that should not happen.

“Thankfully now … in this second term with Labor, maybe we’ll have the opportunity where we have a government that realises it has political capital.”

Shoebridge said the Greens were happy to spend that capital to address “some of those absolutely fundamental crises”.

“Our door is open to try to make this parliament tackle some of those structural problems in the country. I hope that that’s an invitation that Labor accepts,” he said.

As senators Sarah Hanson-Young and Mehreen Faruqi firm as frontrunners for the Greens leadership, Shoebridge wouldn’t be drawn on who he’d back in the party room contest next week, but confirmed he wouldn’t put up his hand for the top job.

Asked by ABC’s Afternoon Briefing host Patricia Karvelas how the Greens would turn around the Labor narrative they were wreckers who blocked the climate and housing packages, Shoebridge said he’d credit Labor “on a pretty concerted disinformation campaign” from which the minor party would draw lessons.

Max Chandler-Mather, once seen as a possible leader, lost his seat.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

He said Labor had offered “pretend solutions” to Australia’s hosing crisis and credited the ousted Brisbane Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather with pressing Labor to pledge a $3.5 billion investment in public and social housing in the last parliamentary term.

Shoebridge said the Greens had held up the housing legislation to stand up for renters and people with no homes, but Labor “weaponised” this against the minor party.

“We desperately tried to make things better and … I’m proud of the $3.5 billion we got in social and public housing. It wouldn’t have happened but for, you know – one, I want to give Max credit. An incredibly brave first-time MP, delivered billions of dollars, but of course there are lessons to be learnt in that.”

Prominent Lebanese Muslim community leader Jamal Rifi, who campaigned for Labor in the election, has lashed the factional machinations that shunted Husic from cabinet.

“For Ed Husic to pay the price of this thumping majority is very hard to take,” Rifi told ABC’s Afternoon Briefing.

Lebanese Muslim community leader Jamal Rifi.Credit: Steven Siewert

“If [Albanese] wants to reform Australia, he should start by reforming the archaic rules of the Labor Party that dropped a very effective minister from his position.”

Husic, who is Muslim, will not return to a ministry in this government because his faction does not have the numbers to keep his spot.

But Rifi said Albanese should make a captain’s call to save him after members of Sydney’s Muslim community voted for Labor, despite the Muslim Votes Matter-backed candidates taking significant preferences away from the party.

Shoebridge said the Greens had connected with millions of Australians in their stance on Gaza, after the party was criticised over its view, perceived as hardline and leading to voter backlash.

The Greens senator said the party would undertake a review, which was standard after every election, but it would stand by its principles.

“When you see a genocide happening, you don’t have a choice about trying to pretend it’s not, or trying to rewrite it,” he told ABC’s Afternoon Briefing.

Shoebridge has defended the Greens outspoken stance on Gaza.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“What do you do in the face of a genocide? Everything in your power to stop the genocide. And that’s what I think we did as a movement, and we connected with millions of Australians in that work.

“When you see a housing crisis, you don’t pretend that a sort of half-baked gift to the property industry is going to get the millions of Australians homes that we know they desperately need. And when you see a climate crisis, you do everything you can to keep coal and gas in the ground, to stare down the fossil fuel industry and do things to end native logging.”

Shoebridge said Greens could have taken “a more watered-down package to the election”, but it wouldn’t have been honest to the state of the challenges they saw in Australia and the world.

“I know a lot of people want to have a post-truth world and pretend these things aren’t real, but we engage in politics, I think, from a core of principles. And I think when you do that, yeah, you may have a tough election, but you absolutely build a platform of trust with a growing number of Australians, and especially young Australians.”

Circling back to Shoebridge’s interview on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing. Asked to comment on the fact the Greens were left with a sole knife-edge seat in the House of Representatives, the senator said Bandt had done a great job and many factors had influenced the party’s poor election result.

“It turns out that when you take on a structural reform package like we did, where you want to deliver economic justice against the likes of billionaires and for people who can’t afford a home or can’t go to the dentist, when you want to take on the fossil fuel industry because we want to make sure our kids have a safe planet, where you want to take on the property industry so you can ensure people have homes, it turns out you get a bunch of people opposing those kinds of structural reforms,” he said.

Adam Bandt and David Shoebridge.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Shoebridge said that Greens, unlike Labor, took on “vested interests” all at once, which was tough.

“And it turns out that those cashed-up interests are very happy to work in deeply unprincipled ways at different times to attack any party that’s willing to take them on, but of course we need to take on those interests because, you know, climate is not a political game.

“It’s a game about physics and about the future of our planet and I think our package was incredibly well received. It was a bloody hard election to be trying to persuade people for those kinds of changes.”

Butler said it had been a “tough day” for axed ministers Husic and Dreyfus, as he defended the process that had led to their ousting.

Butler said he had a great deal of respect for both ministers.

“It’s a tough day for their staff, their family, for their friends. But we go through a democratic process in the Labor Party. We have for many, many decades,” Butler told ABC’s Afternoon Briefing.

“We had a short time where Kevin Rudd tried a system of selecting the ministry himself. That didn’t really take to the Labor Party, and we’ve returned to the tradition.

“Every person who wants to serve in the ministry, including me, has had, over the last 36 hours, to front up to meetings of their colleagues and seek their support.

“That can have some consequences that are tough, that are painful, and that’s certainly the case for Mark and for Ed, but, you know, what we saw today was an incredibly exciting, energetic caucus.”