Greens leader Adam Bandt set to lose seat of Melbourne

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Greens leader Adam Bandt is set to lose the seat of Melbourne in a shock defeat that leaves the party in disarray after a series of extraordinary setbacks at the election.

Labor claimed victory for its candidate, charity chief Sarah Witty, in the tight contest on Wednesday after gaining more than 53 per cent of the vote so far, but Bandt has not conceded.

Greens leader Adam Bandt with Senator Steph Hodgins-May in Melbourne’s Treasury Gardens on Monday.Credit: Penny Stephens

The Australian Electoral Commission extended its booth-by-booth, two-party preferred count of the seat showing substantial swings to Witty, who was leading against Bandt by more than 2000 votes late on Wednesday afternoon.

In the key booth of Richmond, which Labor won 51-49 at the 2022 election, Witty won 61-38. In the nearby Cremorne booth, Witty enjoyed a 15 per cent swing while in Fitzroy - a Greens’ stronghold - she was boosted by a near 9 per cent swing.

ABC election analyst Anthony Green said on Wednesday afternoon that based on current voting trends, Bandt would lose the seat.

Greens observers said there were as many as 15,000 absentee and declaration votes still to be counted, which meant they were not conceding the seat. Among those outstanding votes are 4000 postal ballots, which Witty is winning 64-36.

A key factor in the voting so far was the way Labor gained ground across the board in terms of core support, increasing its primary vote in Melbourne by almost 6 per cent and taking second place to Bandt with these votes.

The stronger primary vote put Labor in a winning position on Wednesday afternoon because it gained support from voters who had selected Witty ahead of Bandt with their second and later preferences, highlighting the stronger support for Labor over alternatives, including the Liberals.

One Labor observer said most of the voters who chose the Liberals with their primary votes gave their preferences to Witty rather than Bandt, saying this reflected on the Greens’ policies and campaign.

Sarah Witty is set to become the new Labor member for Melbourne.

Another Labor source said Bandt was receiving only 24 per cent of the preferences, but needed 33 per cent to win.

“He just needed more preferences to flow back to him,” he said.

A Greens spokesperson said the count had to proceed.

“While there are many, many thousands of votes to be counted, we are not conceding Melbourne,” the spokesperson said.

Witty is a housing advocate and chief executive of the Nappy Collective, which provides free nappies to families in crisis.

The count has taken several days because the Australian Electoral Commission did the first count assuming that the final two-candidate outcome was likely to pit the Greens against the Liberals, based on the last election. A second count was conducted when it became clear the final phase would pit the Greens against Labor. This count has not been completed.

Bandt achieved one of the greatest victories for the Greens when he won Melbourne from Labor in 2010 and became the first of his party to win a seat in the House of Representatives at a full federal election, beginning a period of growth that led to three other Greens MPs joining him in 2022.

His likely defeat is a devastating blow for the party after the loss of Greens housing spokesman Max Chandler-Mather in the Queensland seat of Griffith on Saturday night and the defeat of Greens MP Stephen Bates in the neighbouring seat of Brisbane.

The outcome may leave a sole Greens member, Elizabeth Watson-Brown, in the lower house, but she is also in danger of losing her Brisbane seat of Ryan.

The party will maintain its strong presence in the Senate, however, with the election results likely to make the Greens even more important because they will hold the balance of power in their own right in the upper house. The government will be able to pass legislation with support from the Greens, without requiring support from other crossbenchers or the Coalition.

Labor could overcome objections from the Greens on any law, however, by seeking a negotiation with the Liberals and Nationals.

Bandt had predicted the party would win one to four more lower house seats than the four it already held.

He pushed back on Monday when asked whether the Greens had focused too much on Australia’s response to the Israel-Gaza war rather than core issues like climate change.

“We were the only ones talking about real action on climate change and calling on the government to stop opening new coal and gas mines,” he said.

On Gaza, he added: “We wanted to see an end to the invasion and ... an end to the bombs being dropped on children.”

Labor MPs said the Greens had focused too much on the Middle East with an argument that claimed the Australian government was complicit in the deaths in Gaza, something most Australians did not accept.

“It was just nonsense,” said one Labor MP of the Greens’ claims about the Middle East. “Regardless of what people thought should happen in Gaza, the notion of our agency in it was just wrong.”

Senators Sarah Hanson-Young, David Shoebridge and Mehreen Faruqi are likely contenders to be the next Greens leader in the event of Bandt’s loss being confirmed.

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