Victoria hot seats LIVE results: Wills didn’t fall to the Greens, but its margins have shifted; Ryan’s lead over Hamer in Kooyong grows

Zoe Daniel has yet to concede the seat of Goldstein, even though Liberal Tim Wilson claimed victory on Wednesday.

The teal independent posted a statement to social media on Friday afternoon titled “Goldstein election update”.

“I understand everyone’s desire to rule a line under the election result in Goldstein. I would also prefer it was resolved,” she said.

The independent claimed the seat on election night, but a late flow of postal votes put the Liberal candidate, who held Goldstein from 2016 to 2022, in front

Daniel on Friday said there were still up to 10,000 votes to count, including postals, absentee and pre-poll declaration votes.

“The AEC has not yet declared the seat,” she said. “Please respect the process and voters until a definitive position is clear.”

Postal votes have been trending heavily towards Wilson, but Daniel’s team expects absentee votes will go their way. Looks like we have a way to go until we hear any concession speeches in Goldstein.

Not a huge day in the Kooyong count, but there’s been a small nudge in Monique Ryan’s favour.

After a few adjustments, Ryan has extended her lead over Liberal challenger Amelia Hamer by about 100 votes. She now sits 709 votes ahead on the two-candidate-preferred count: 50.34 per cent to 49.66 per cent.

Monique Ryan (left) remains ahead of Amelia Hamer in the Kooyong count.Credit: The Age

Most of the postal votes are now out of the way, but there are still a few thousand votes left in the pile.

As of Friday night, here’s what’s waiting to be counted:
• 1046 postal votes
• 2526 absentee votes
• 2477 declaration pre-polls.

The Australian Electoral Commission had planned to count 1000 absentee votes and 1000 declaration pre-polls today — but as of 6pm, those numbers haven’t appeared in the tally.

It’s unclear what, if any, counting will happen in Kooyong over the weekend.

Both camps have been silent today.

If there’s any movement over the weekend I’ll update readers here.

Among the sea of faces in Labor’s first caucus meeting since being re-elected were Peter Khalil and Julian Hill.

While Hill has had almost a week for his reelection to sink in – securing a swing of 9 per cent in his favour in Bruce – Khalil faced a tighter contest.

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

Greens candidate Samantha Ratnam conceded Wills yesterday, and Khalil jumped on a plane to Canberra to make today’s meeting.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese received a hero’s welcome from the Labor caucus as he emotionally addressed the room.

“I said in this room a number of times without the media here that I was very confident of achieving a majority government,” Albanese said.

“I was confident because I was out there talking with people and engaging with people and I knew that we had a plan.

“But going forward, we need that same discipline, the same unity and the same sense of purpose, the same making sure there is no overreach. We have a mandate for what we took to the Australian people.”

You can read more about what Albanese said here.

Bruce MP Julian Hill was also in Canberra after securing a swing of 9 per cent in his favour. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

Speaking on ABC radio before the meeting this morning, Khalil rejected the suggestion that Labor’s first term in government was “incremental”.

“There were significant reforms and policies put in place in the first term to help build the foundations, hopefully for the second term,” he said.

“And our Labor government does do that work, and it has done it in the past.

“And I’m very confident the Labor government [in] the second term will deliver for Australian people.”

Zoe Daniel has yet to concede the seat of Goldstein, even though Liberal Tim Wilson claimed victory on Wednesday.

The teal independent posted a statement to social media on Friday afternoon titled “Goldstein election update”.

“I understand everyone’s desire to rule a line under the election result in Goldstein. I would also prefer it was resolved,” she said.

The independent claimed the seat on election night, but a late flow of postal votes put the Liberal candidate, who held Goldstein from 2016 to 2022, in front

Daniel on Friday said there were still up to 10,000 votes to count, including postals, absentee and pre-poll declaration votes.

“The AEC has not yet declared the seat,” she said. “Please respect the process and voters until a definitive position is clear.”

Postal votes have been trending heavily towards Wilson, but Daniel’s team expects absentee votes will go their way. Looks like we have a way to go until we hear any concession speeches in Goldstein.

It didn’t feel like a defining moment at the time. But looking back, it probably was.

As week two of the campaign for Wills drew to a close, Labor’s Peter Khalil stood on an outdoor basketball court in North Fitzroy, announcing $3.7 million to rebuild Linear Park, which includes one of the busiest bike paths in the country.

Once an old rail line, it became green space under former Wills MP and prime minister Bob Hawke. Now, here Khalil was with Yarra Council’s socialist mayor Steve Jolly promising to help rebuild it.

About 100 people were gathered, far more than the few dozen at a debate in Fawkner the day before that Khalil had skipped. But this time, he’d shown up – in the heart of Greens territory, flanked by Boomers who’d ventured out from their multi-million-dollar homes on this sunny Sunday afternoon. Some were familiar from when I covered this area for The Melbourne Times 20 years ago.

The spending pledges didn’t stop at Linear Park: Gillon Oval, Fawkner Netball Club, Merri Creek – all were promised serious money. Khalil was offering a powerful marginal seat message: “I’m in government, I can bring home the goods.”

Former state Labor MP Carlo Carli put it plainly: “This was a masterful campaign based around this idea that ‘A Labor government can deliver, and here I am, ready to deliver’.”

Labor MP Peter Khalil has won re-election in Wills.Credit: Gus McCubbing

It worked in the richer southern end of the electorate, where voters who long ago came over to the Greens could be persuaded back to Labor with two key messages: don’t risk Dutton, and keep the good stuff flowing.

But in the north of the seat – where many voters are Muslim, rent, or have grown tired of Labor taking them for granted – it was a different story.

Here, Greens candidate Samantha Ratnam – who quit state parliament to run for the federal seat – made a strong pitch, promising to address rent hikes, the climate catastrophe, soaring costs and Gaza.

In a campaign where three Greens including leader Adam Bandt – and even Liberal leader Peter Dutton – were swept aside by Labor, Ratnam drove a 7 per cent swing against the party, pushing this once-safe seat to the brink. Against the national tide and a flat Labor incumbent, she turned Wills into a key contest.

For months, alongside her campaign, a group called Muslim Votes Matter had been urging voters to punish Labor explicitly over Gaza – at mosques, markets and community events.

Greens candidate Samantha Ratnam, pictured with outgoing Greens leader Adam Bandt, at Brunswick East Primary School during the campaign.Credit: Getty

Their effort boiled over in week one of pre-polling, when a Labor staffer and a Palestinian activist clashed over a protest sign. Police were called.

The Greens picked up big swings in the Muslim-majority north. They even won a booth – John Fawkner Secondary College – for the first time, with a stunning 28 per cent swing on the two-party vote.

Was it Gaza? Was it housing affordability pushing younger Greens voters into the outer north? Was it climate inaction? Probably all three and more. And yet, it wasn’t enough. Like all the times before that the Greens said they might win it, Wills didn’t flip.

Labor’s showing in Wills though was notably weak compared to neighbouring Melbourne where the party notched a nine per cent swing and toppled Bandt. In Wills, Labor hung on by its fingernails, relying on incumbency, funding promises and fear of Peter Dutton to scrape over the line.

One of the most insightful interviews of this campaign was with Phil Cleary, who knows Wills as well as anyone. He believed Gaza could influence the vote. The former independent MP and Coburg football legend held the seat from 1992 to 1996 after Hawke resigned. He remains the only non-Labor MP ever to do so.

Khalil, Cleary said, “is a victim of a party that won’t use words like genocide and won’t talk strongly about the killing of women and children in Gaza”. But Cleary wasn’t sure it would cost Labor the seat; he lost to the machine himself and knows how ruthless and effective ALP campaigning can be.

Former independent MP for Wills Phil Cleary.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

By the final week, Labor’s message came into focus as it used its financial might to blitz the seat with letterboxing and direct mail. One penned by Julia Gillard stuck tightly to the script: every seat lost helped Dutton become PM. Khalil still had PTSD from 2019, he said, when the ALP expected to win government and was beaten by Scott Morrison and his “miracle”.

Pre-polling was relentless. I was at the Brunswick booth every day bar one, and Khalil and Ratnam were both there each day that I visited.

And while pre-poll in Brunswick was always a theatre of democracy, sometimes it was also farce.

Take Romeo – a One Nation volunteer whose surname I never learned – wandering the line with an Australian flag and sometimes, inexplicably, an Italian one too.

He would chant “One flag, One Nation”. Could there be a suburb in Australia less welcoming to such sentiment than Brunswick? A man in a Collingwood jumper – notably Indigenous player Bobby Hill’s number 23 – pelted him with eggs.

Romeo shrugged it off, but a couple of days later when he told me someone had threatened to shoot him, he went home, fashioned two metal plates into an ad hoc bulletproof jacket he placed over his shirt, then returned to the booth.

One Nation volunteer, Romeo, with his armour.

One Nation’s candidate got a 1 per cent swing, reaching 3.5 per cent of the primary vote. So it appears there’s room for everyone in Australian democracy it seems – even in Brunswick.

This is the third time I’ve covered one seat for an entire campaign like this. By the final days, it gives you clarity you don’t expect when you start. You come to understand the jostling, the ground game, and how broader issues – war, climate, housing, the cost of a cup of coffee – land differently from one suburb to the next.

In the end, that moment in North Fitzroy – a Labor MP promising money for a bike path – was more than a local funding pledge. It was a case study in how politics still works here: tangible, transactional, and attentive to who turns up.

The Greens harnessed fury over Gaza. They tapped disillusionment on climate. They tried to create a wave to surf home – only to find Labor knew Dutton was a tsunami. And Labor, when threatened, can still marshall money, endorsements and machine-like discipline.

Wills didn’t fall. But it shifted. Gaza cracked something open in the north where Labor’s hold can no longer be assumed. The Greens are now within 2 per cent of taking this seat. If their candidate in the next election is weaker, maybe the margin returns to Labor. But in a seat named after a failed explorer, I suspect this electorate is ready to chart a new course – even if, this time, it decided to wait a little longer.

The second batch of postal votes has just dropped — and if you were Monique Ryan, you’d be feeling a little more relaxed right now.

This latest lot has pushed the gap between Ryan and Liberal challenger Amelia Hamer back out to 724 votes (up from around 600), shifting the two-candidate-preferred margin ever so slightly in Ryan’s favour: now sitting at 50.35 to 49.65 — a 0.05 per cent bump her way.

It also means the AEC is nearly through the pile of postals. Just 961 remain to be counted, down from a total of 25,306 issued, with 21,356 already returned.

While there’s still another week for late postals to trickle in, most of the votes are now in and counted.

Psephologist Dr Kevin Bonham says it’s looking “very likely now” that Ryan will hold on — but he’s still watching one large pre-poll booth that hasn’t been rechecked. Remember, it was the rechecks of Kew and Ashburton last night that caused a big correction in Ryan’s favour.

Monique Ryan (left) is ahead of Amelia Hamer.Credit: The Age

But it’s not a great booth for Ryan (as we noted in this post from last night that looked at the booths in the new parts of Kooyong), so it’s unlikely any error would go against her, according to Bonham.

Still to come: 2,526 absentee votes and 2,477 declaration pre-polls. The AEC plans to get into both of those piles tomorrow, aiming to knock over at least 1000 of each.

We’re nearly a week on from election day — and edging ever closer to a result in the ’Yong.

Another result we came to expect has seemingly been decided, with Liberal MP Keith Wolahan conceding the seat of Menzies to Labor challenger Gabriel Ng.

With nearly 87% of votes counted Ng leads by 300 votes two-candidate preferred, a swing of 0.22 per cent towards Labor.

In this ultra-marginal outer Melbourne seat, that’s enough to get him over the line.

Wolahan, holding the seat named after Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies, was himself touted as future leadership material.

Keith Wolahan has conceded defeat in Menzies.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“Gratitude and hope have always sustained me, and they always will. The votes are in, and I didn’t quite get there. I want to congratulate Gabriel Ng on his election,” he said on Facebook earlier tonight.

“The Liberal Party is an institution of democracy, founded on values worth fighting for. It will recover, and I will be there to help.”

Quick Kooyong update: we started the day with 4960 postal votes still to count.

The Australian Electoral Commission told me to expect two batches of around 2000 each today.

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 617 votes (down from 723 this morning), sitting on 50.3 per cent to Hamer’s 49.7 per cent.

In a confirmation of the theory he floated earlier today, Psephologist Dr Kevin Bonham says the latest batch of postal votes is less favourable to Hamer than previous batches – with just 52.5 per cent of the most recent batch going to the Liberal party.

Stay tuned for the second batch - we’ll have the results here as soon as they land.

The Greens candidate for Wills, former Victorian state leader Samantha Ratnam, has called Labor’s Peter Khalil to concede defeat on Thursday afternoon.

With 81 per cent of the vote in the seat counted by the Australian Electoral Commission, Khalil had established an unassailable lead of more than 4000 votes.

The former Greens state parliamentary leader posted not long ago to social media saying she had conceded the tight-run campaign.

“Unfortunately, we couldn’t get over the line this time, but we got very, very close,” she said.

Leaning on a stack of books – Nelson Mandela’s Long Walk to Freedom, Christine Milne’s An Activist Life and Bob Brown’s Optimism – she thanked her campaign team and told people who had helped her fight for the seat not to give up.

“It’s sometimes hard to hold on to hope, but I’m holding on to hope,” she said, “because we don’t have the luxury of giving up” and she vowed to continue fighting for refugees, the environment, and for Palestine.

She said she intended to go back to being a social worker and spending more time with her daughter.

And she said she wanted to be “on the front lines of stopping the demolition and privatisation of public housing here in Victoria, which the Allan Labor government plans to do, and I’ll be on the front lines of stopping new coal and gas projects in the midst of a climate crisis”.

“So hold on to hope everyone. We’ve achieved something historic that’s not going anywhere. It’s not the end, it’s just the beginning of this next chapter. And there’s one thing that I promise you is that I’ll be back,” she said.

Khalil issued a statement an hour later, thanking the people of Wills and noting the redistribution last year, that introduced North Carlton and North Fitzroy into the electorate, had made retaining the seat tough. The Labor MP while holding on to the seat had a seven per cent swing against him.

“My team and I worked hard to not only introduce myself to new parts of the electorate, but to share Labor’s message with the existing suburbs,” he said.

He said his campaign committed to open a new Medicare Urgent Care Clinic in Coburg, to make the Linear Parklands in North Fitzroy, North Carlton and Princes Hill a more accessible space, and to upgrade sporting facilities at Fawkner Netball Courts and Gillon Oval in Brunswick.

Khalil thanked his staff, and said they had worked under “immense pressure”.

“Even in the final days of the election campaign, when our office was closed due to dangerous protest activity, my staff set up with camping chairs at an early voting centre and continued to take constituent enquiries,” he said.

He wished Ratnam well and said it “took courage to leave state parliament as leader of the Greens to run for federal parliament”.

Ratnam conceded shortly after Greens leader Adam Bandt did the same in his seat of Melbourne.

In Wills, Ratnam’s team had hoped that counting of absentee and other special votes would be enough to haul in Khalil’s lead but eventually the margin – which stood at 4193 at the latest update – was too great.

Greens leader Adam Bandt has thanked the Melbourne community, his family and party colleagues after conceding defeat on Thursday afternoon, saying he was proud of the things his party has achieved.

“To win in Melbourne, we needed to overcome Liberal, Labor and One Nation combined, and it’s an Everest we’ve climbed a few times now, but this time we fell just short,” he said at a press conference in Melbourne, surrounded by his wife and colleagues.

Adam Bandt concedes defeat in the seat of Melbourne.Credit: Nine

“Thank you for the last 15 years and the chance to do some amazing things together.

“Together we’ve been powerful. As a community, we’ve been a progressive beacon for the nation. We’ve stood for justice, for compassion, and we’ve led the way on the national stage.”

Bandt went on to say there were multiple reasons he lost Melbourne, including boundaries being redrawn, a section of votes “massively swung from Liberal to Labor”, and people wanting to vote Labor to get rid of Liberal leader Peter Dutton.

“People in Melbourne hate Peter Dutton with a very good reason,” he said.

In a statement released minutes earlier, Bandt conceded defeat in the seat he has held since 2010, after Melbourne was called for Labor’s Sarah Witty.

“A short time ago I called the Labor candidate for Melbourne, Sarah Witty, to concede, congratulate her and wish her all the best as the next member for Melbourne,” he said in his statement.

“The Greens got the highest vote in Melbourne, but One Nation and Liberal preferences will get Labor over the line.”

The Greens, like the Liberals whose leader Dutton lost his seat this election, now face the task of appointing a new leader.

Read more here.

Zoe Daniel may not have conceded Goldstein yet but Liberal Tim Wilson, who claimed victory yesterday, is looking ahead, fielding questions about the Liberal leadership on morning radio.

Wilson told 3AW that the Liberal party room is still mulling its options for the leadership, after Peter Dutton lost his seat, adding he will back the candidate who can succinctly project a vision for the nation’s future under the Coalition.

Tim Wilson has claimed victory in Goldstein.Credit: Paul Jeffers

Wilson – dubbed the “teal slayer” on social media – declared victory in Goldstein yesterday after a dramatic contest against Daniel, who initially claimed victory on Saturday night before the flow of postal votes shifted the count in Wilson’s favour. Wilson held Goldstein from 2016 to 2022, before losing the seat to the teal candidate.

Wilson said he had spoken to two or three colleagues about the Liberal leadership, and was considering his best course of action before returning to Canberra.

“I haven’t spoken to all of the candidates, and [I’m] weighing up my options, but I don’t think anyone has perfect clarity yet,” Wilson said.

“What I’m looking for is somebody who’s going to project where we’re going to go as a country because that’s the basis that we’re going to persuade voters ... if you can’t do that, I’ll be left scratching my head about any candidate.”

Sussan Ley and Angus Taylor are the frontrunners for the leadership.

Read more here.