Victoria hot seats LIVE results: The Victorian seats yet to be called; Tim Wilson’s lead in Goldstein narrows and Daniel yet to concede; Ryan holds Kooyong

When I started covering the electorate of Bruce for The Age’s hot seats blog, I posted messages across each of the local community Facebook groups.

I asked voters to get in touch, to share their views on what they thought the most important issues were in this election.

Voters did reach out, but so did a Liberal insider with a prescient message.

The insider, who could not be named because they were discussing internal matters, said there was a “naive optimism” brewing within the upper ranks of the party.

Liberal candidate Zahid Safi voting in Bruce on election day.Credit: Charlotte Grieve

This conversation takes new weight now, with the vote count showing Bruce having one of the most significant swings towards Labor.

“It’s an embarrassment for the party,” another Liberal member told me after the May 3 vote.

But the warning signs emerged in that early conversation weeks ago, when the Liberal insider said the strategy was all wrong from the start.

The party threw more money at Bruce than ever before, under the mantra of “win Bruce, win [the] election”, with Liberal candidate Zahid Safi treated as the “anointed one” and promoted heavily by Liberal MP Jason Wood, the member for the neighbouring electorate of La Trobe.

In pre-selecting Safi, born in Afghanistan, the Liberals thought they could pick up the 5 per cent of Bruce voters born in the same country and sail to victory.

“But he’s kind of the wrong Afghan,” the Liberal insider said.

Safi is of Pashtun ethnicity, while the majority of Afghanistan-born voters in Bruce are Hazara.

“It’s a very polarising choice,” the insider said. “You’re choosing a candidate that’s going to piss off a large portion of your demographic.”

The source said the Liberal Party simply hadn’t done its research on the ethnic tensions at play, and patronisingly took the view that migrants would blindly vote for someone like them.

“An Afghan is an Afghan in some peoples’ eyes,” the source said. “The Liberals’ plain thinking, simple thinking is there’s an Afghan, they should back him. That’s not the case at all.”

Peter Dutton campaigning with Safi and Liberal MP Jason Wood on April 1.Credit: James Brickwood

When volunteers went letter-boxing in Dandenong, the reception was terrible – but if voters said they cared about cost of living and crime – this was reported to HQ as a positive.

“We operate in an echo chamber,” the Liberal insider said. “We report the positives up the chain, not the negatives. The true story comes when you’re talking with friends, and they can’t stand Safi.”

The boundary re-distribution that was supposed to pour Liberal voters into the seat only fuelled the party’s unfounded sense of optimism further.

So confident were the Liberals in Bruce, they isolated Safi from the media.

In week one, I turned up to the launch party, expecting an underdog campaign to welcome media coverage, but was asked to wait outside then rudely told to leave.

Not even the Australian Federal Police officer there could believe they were turning away the only journalist who rocked up.

As the weeks passed, I repeatedly asked the Liberal Party for Safi’s diary, so, like with Labor candidate MP Julian Hill, I could see how he engaged with the community and learn more about his backstory. These requests were ignored, or met with aggression.

The people advising Safi only made things worse. His first campaign manager was long-time member Andrew McNabb, who openly posted sexist and other offensive commentary on social media.

Andrew McNabb at Zahid Safi’s campaign launch.Credit: Charlotte Grieve

McNabb’s offensive posts were an open secret in the party, but it was only after this blog published screenshots from his publicly accessible social media account that I was told he was no longer the campaign manager.

“I think you’ve done the party a favour,” one Liberal source texted me at the time.

Despite the party assuring me McNabb was no longer involved, Liberals on the ground told me McNabb had privately boasted that he remained working on the campaign behind the scenes.

Eventually, McNabb resigned his party membership, but members still called for him to be expelled to close the door on his return. Candidates come and go, but local powerbrokers like McNabb can set the tone for years to come.

Next came Safi’s businesses. The Liberal Party branded Safi as a “businessman” but failed to provide details, or mention that his primary business was an NDIS provider.

After we revealed some of Safi’s family businesses used outdated addresses and fake reviews, I was contacted by the mother of a man who lived in Safi’s disability accommodations until last year.

The mother – who didn’t want to be identified to protect her son, who lives with multiple disabilities – had seen Safi’s face plastered on corflutes around the electorate, and couldn’t believe her eyes.

She was so concerned about her son’s welfare while living at Willow Support Services’ Narre Warren South accommodation that last year, she made a complaint to the Victorian Disability Workers Commission and NDIS Commission.

The regulators decided to take no action, but she was told her complaints would be used in future probes.

A day before the election, the mother was contacted by the NDIS Commission after inquiries by this masthead, and asked to resubmit her complaint, as well as another complaint made by her son’s independent support worker.

All this raises questions about the thoroughness of the Liberal Party’s vetting process. How did these issues not come up?

A Senate submission about the war in Afghanistan Safi co-wrote that was critical of the Hazara community mobilised a whole new generation of voters against the Liberal Party, and only raised more questions about the Liberals’ vetting process.

As these major problems sowed anger in the community, against Safi and against the Liberal Party, there was no strategy to handle it beyond dodging questions and hiding the candidate.

Over my five weeks on the ground in Bruce, I repeatedly heard genuine concerns about the economy and cost of living being the primary issues that were driving votes.

I met for coffees with voters, and had lengthy conversations about those issues and how the candidates were viewed.

Among Bruce’s large migrant population, many felt Safi simply lacked the experience to hold public office. Many Australian-born voters were openly racist about his name.

At a policy level, the Liberals’ signature fuel savings policy did not cut the mustard with voters, who were hurting badly from rising prices and needed more than savings of 25¢ per litre of petrol to improve their lives.

At a leadership level, Peter Dutton did more harm than good in Melbourne’s south-east. Doorknocking one day, I heard voters bemoaning the then opposition leader’s crackdown on working from home (a policy he later backtracked on).

For people in the suburbs, flexible work is life-changing. Avoiding the commute means saving money on fuel, tolls, childcare and precious time with family.

I drove hundreds of kilometres around the vast Bruce electorate, from the leafy estates of Narre Warren South to the crammed rentals of Eumemmerring. I dined on everything from spicy curries to charcoal meats, where tradies and women in hijabs dined side-by-side in kebab stores.

While political literacy remains low throughout the electorate, I spoke with people who were afraid for the future and wanted the government to do better, on everything from painful visa delays to soaring property prices. As the campaign went on, The Age’s coverage in Bruce grew fans from across the political spectrum, from One Nation volunteers to strangers at public events, who appreciated mainstream media coverage of a seat that too often flies under the radar.

Labor MP Julian Hill at a caucus meeting in Canberra on Friday. He gained a 9 per cent swing in Bruce.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

As the scandals around Safi’s campaign increased, Liberal Party HQ still projected confidence, and briefed journalists at The Australian in late April that the seat had entered into “surprise contention”.

“Bruce is definitely shaping as an outlier,” a “Liberal” told the newspaper. “Campaigners have picked strong support out there, so don’t be surprised if this moves.”

But on pre-polling booths, Safi was grilled by voters about his qualifications (on LinkedIn, he promoted a master’s degree he never completed) and volunteers were faced with criticism of the party’s policies.

Labor, meanwhile, was facing attacks on multiple fronts – from the Greens, Muslim Votes Matters, being linked to an unpopular state government, and a persistent perception that Labor governments waste taxpayer money. The Labor Party was nervous to the very end, and even tried to usher me out of its election party.

Ultimately, the 9 per cent swing to Labor in Bruce was historic and widespread. Support for Labor stretched across the diverse electorate. The election party was held in a community hall in the quiet streets of Doveton, and was packed with fewer red-shirt volunteers than everyday people working blue-collar jobs. There were outbursts of joy, and raucous applause, as Labor members grabbed their faces in disbelief as the numbers rolled in.

Greens candidate Rhonda Garad is well known in Dandenong, a councillor and resident of more than 30 years. Booth numbers showed big swings towards her in Greater Dandenong Council areas, and a rising primary vote across the electorate. While pleased with the numbers, Garad said the fear of Safi being elected drove people to Labor.

“People were so terrified, particularly the Hazara, that he would be elected. So they turned to the safety of Labor. Had they [Liberals] put up a decent candidate, things might have been different,” Garad said.

Liberals I’m speaking with are shocked but not surprised by the result. “You’re better off voting for the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” one said. “The right person probably won in the end ... How did they manage to get this guy [Safi] across the line?”

Home to some of the most disadvantaged communities in Victoria, the people of Bruce deserved a real contest.

But it was the sloppy, arrogant approach towards voters and the media that led to the Liberals losing not just Bruce, but seats across the country.

The voters in the seat of Flinders, south-east of Melbourne, are among hundreds of thousands nationwide still waiting to see who will be their new MP.

Sitting Liberal MP Zoe McKenzie has provided this update on Facebook: “The count in Flinders continues, with fierce jostling in the numbers between second and third. I was asked to join the [Liberal] party room today while results are still pending, and I was proud to do so.”

Flinders Liberal MP Zoe McKenzieCredit: Alex Ellinghausen

McKenzie faced strong challenges from Labor’s Sarah Race and Climate 200-funded independent Ben Smith.

Smith provided some extra context on his own Facebook page.

“Through to today, the AEC have been undertaking a complex count on a three-candidate preferred basis (between Labor, Liberal and Independent),” he wrote.

“The AEC have this afternoon declared they are now moving forward with a two-candidate-preferred count between myself and the Liberal Party to determine the outcome – so just a little more waiting to go folks.”

Elsewhere, Calwell in northern Melbourne is also a tight-run race. With 81 per cent of the vote counted, there’s still no two-candidate preferred data available.

Liberal Tim Wilson’s lead over Zoe Daniel has narrowed in Goldstein as counting continues, but he should still hang on to win the seat.

Wilson claimed victory in the seat last week, but Daniel has not yet conceded. On Friday she called those watching on to “respect the process” until a “definitive position” was clear.

The Liberal candidate is only 664 votes ahead of Daniel on the latest count, leading with a 50.3 per cent margin over Daniel’s 49.7 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis.

The Australian Electoral Commission still has 3426 votes to count, the majority of which are declaration pre-poll votes and absentee votes.

However, analyst Ben Raue of The Tally Room said the late surge to Daniel in the count was unlikely to get her over the line.

“I suspect she will probably do a bit better on absentee and pre-polls than she was on the postals, but I suspect it is probably too late,” he said.

“I suspect nothing is going to change in Goldstein. I think it is probably not enough.”

Here are the details of votes still to be counted:

• 571 postal votes are still waiting to be counted with more set to arrive during the week until the deadline on Friday. A total of 24,299 postal votes were issued with 21,053 returned. Some will never be returned.
• 1625 declaration pre-poll votes: These were cast at pre-poll centres outside a voter’s home division and need to be verified before they can be counted. 2068 declaration pre-poll votes have already been counted.
• 1035 absentee votes: Cast on election day by people voting outside their enrolled electorate, these are verified and sent back to the correct division. 3000 absentee votes have already been counted.
• 195 provisional votes: These are from voters whose eligibility wasn’t certain at the time of voting. They’re only counted if the voter is later confirmed to be eligible. About half of these have been counted but the other half remain.

That brings us to a total of 3426 votes still outstanding as of 3.30pm Tuesday.

When I started covering the electorate of Bruce for The Age’s hot seats blog, I posted messages across each of the local community Facebook groups.

I asked voters to get in touch, to share their views on what they thought the most important issues were in this election.

Voters did reach out, but so did a Liberal insider with a prescient message.

The insider, who could not be named because they were discussing internal matters, said there was a “naive optimism” brewing within the upper ranks of the party.

Liberal candidate Zahid Safi voting in Bruce on election day.Credit: Charlotte Grieve

This conversation takes new weight now, with the vote count showing Bruce having one of the most significant swings towards Labor.

“It’s an embarrassment for the party,” another Liberal member told me after the May 3 vote.

But the warning signs emerged in that early conversation weeks ago, when the Liberal insider said the strategy was all wrong from the start.

The party threw more money at Bruce than ever before, under the mantra of “win Bruce, win [the] election”, with Liberal candidate Zahid Safi treated as the “anointed one” and promoted heavily by Liberal MP Jason Wood, the member for the neighbouring electorate of La Trobe.

In pre-selecting Safi, born in Afghanistan, the Liberals thought they could pick up the 5 per cent of Bruce voters born in the same country and sail to victory.

“But he’s kind of the wrong Afghan,” the Liberal insider said.

Safi is of Pashtun ethnicity, while the majority of Afghanistan-born voters in Bruce are Hazara.

“It’s a very polarising choice,” the insider said. “You’re choosing a candidate that’s going to piss off a large portion of your demographic.”

The source said the Liberal Party simply hadn’t done its research on the ethnic tensions at play, and patronisingly took the view that migrants would blindly vote for someone like them.

“An Afghan is an Afghan in some peoples’ eyes,” the source said. “The Liberals’ plain thinking, simple thinking is there’s an Afghan, they should back him. That’s not the case at all.”

Peter Dutton campaigning with Safi and Liberal MP Jason Wood on April 1.Credit: James Brickwood

When volunteers went letter-boxing in Dandenong, the reception was terrible – but if voters said they cared about cost of living and crime – this was reported to HQ as a positive.

“We operate in an echo chamber,” the Liberal insider said. “We report the positives up the chain, not the negatives. The true story comes when you’re talking with friends, and they can’t stand Safi.”

The boundary re-distribution that was supposed to pour Liberal voters into the seat only fuelled the party’s unfounded sense of optimism further.

So confident were the Liberals in Bruce, they isolated Safi from the media.

In week one, I turned up to the launch party, expecting an underdog campaign to welcome media coverage, but was asked to wait outside then rudely told to leave.

Not even the Australian Federal Police officer there could believe they were turning away the only journalist who rocked up.

As the weeks passed, I repeatedly asked the Liberal Party for Safi’s diary, so, like with Labor candidate MP Julian Hill, I could see how he engaged with the community and learn more about his backstory. These requests were ignored, or met with aggression.

The people advising Safi only made things worse. His first campaign manager was long-time member Andrew McNabb, who openly posted sexist and other offensive commentary on social media.

Andrew McNabb at Zahid Safi’s campaign launch.Credit: Charlotte Grieve

McNabb’s offensive posts were an open secret in the party, but it was only after this blog published screenshots from his publicly accessible social media account that I was told he was no longer the campaign manager.

“I think you’ve done the party a favour,” one Liberal source texted me at the time.

Despite the party assuring me McNabb was no longer involved, Liberals on the ground told me McNabb had privately boasted that he remained working on the campaign behind the scenes.

Eventually, McNabb resigned his party membership, but members still called for him to be expelled to close the door on his return. Candidates come and go, but local powerbrokers like McNabb can set the tone for years to come.

Next came Safi’s businesses. The Liberal Party branded Safi as a “businessman” but failed to provide details, or mention that his primary business was an NDIS provider.

After we revealed some of Safi’s family businesses used outdated addresses and fake reviews, I was contacted by the mother of a man who lived in Safi’s disability accommodations until last year.

The mother – who didn’t want to be identified to protect her son, who lives with multiple disabilities – had seen Safi’s face plastered on corflutes around the electorate, and couldn’t believe her eyes.

She was so concerned about her son’s welfare while living at Willow Support Services’ Narre Warren South accommodation that last year, she made a complaint to the Victorian Disability Workers Commission and NDIS Commission.

The regulators decided to take no action, but she was told her complaints would be used in future probes.

A day before the election, the mother was contacted by the NDIS Commission after inquiries by this masthead, and asked to resubmit her complaint, as well as another complaint made by her son’s independent support worker.

All this raises questions about the thoroughness of the Liberal Party’s vetting process. How did these issues not come up?

A Senate submission about the war in Afghanistan Safi co-wrote that was critical of the Hazara community mobilised a whole new generation of voters against the Liberal Party, and only raised more questions about the Liberals’ vetting process.

As these major problems sowed anger in the community, against Safi and against the Liberal Party, there was no strategy to handle it beyond dodging questions and hiding the candidate.

Over my five weeks on the ground in Bruce, I repeatedly heard genuine concerns about the economy and cost of living being the primary issues that were driving votes.

I met for coffees with voters, and had lengthy conversations about those issues and how the candidates were viewed.

Among Bruce’s large migrant population, many felt Safi simply lacked the experience to hold public office. Many Australian-born voters were openly racist about his name.

At a policy level, the Liberals’ signature fuel savings policy did not cut the mustard with voters, who were hurting badly from rising prices and needed more than savings of 25¢ per litre of petrol to improve their lives.

At a leadership level, Peter Dutton did more harm than good in Melbourne’s south-east. Doorknocking one day, I heard voters bemoaning the then opposition leader’s crackdown on working from home (a policy he later backtracked on).

For people in the suburbs, flexible work is life-changing. Avoiding the commute means saving money on fuel, tolls, childcare and precious time with family.

I drove hundreds of kilometres around the vast Bruce electorate, from the leafy estates of Narre Warren South to the crammed rentals of Eumemmerring. I dined on everything from spicy curries to charcoal meats, where tradies and women in hijabs dined side-by-side in kebab stores.

While political literacy remains low throughout the electorate, I spoke with people who were afraid for the future and wanted the government to do better, on everything from painful visa delays to soaring property prices. As the campaign went on, The Age’s coverage in Bruce grew fans from across the political spectrum, from One Nation volunteers to strangers at public events, who appreciated mainstream media coverage of a seat that too often flies under the radar.

Labor MP Julian Hill at a caucus meeting in Canberra on Friday. He gained a 9 per cent swing in Bruce.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

As the scandals around Safi’s campaign increased, Liberal Party HQ still projected confidence, and briefed journalists at The Australian in late April that the seat had entered into “surprise contention”.

“Bruce is definitely shaping as an outlier,” a “Liberal” told the newspaper. “Campaigners have picked strong support out there, so don’t be surprised if this moves.”

But on pre-polling booths, Safi was grilled by voters about his qualifications (on LinkedIn, he promoted a master’s degree he never completed) and volunteers were faced with criticism of the party’s policies.

Labor, meanwhile, was facing attacks on multiple fronts – from the Greens, Muslim Votes Matters, being linked to an unpopular state government, and a persistent perception that Labor governments waste taxpayer money. The Labor Party was nervous to the very end, and even tried to usher me out of its election party.

Ultimately, the 9 per cent swing to Labor in Bruce was historic and widespread. Support for Labor stretched across the diverse electorate. The election party was held in a community hall in the quiet streets of Doveton, and was packed with fewer red-shirt volunteers than everyday people working blue-collar jobs. There were outbursts of joy, and raucous applause, as Labor members grabbed their faces in disbelief as the numbers rolled in.

Greens candidate Rhonda Garad is well known in Dandenong, a councillor and resident of more than 30 years. Booth numbers showed big swings towards her in Greater Dandenong Council areas, and a rising primary vote across the electorate. While pleased with the numbers, Garad said the fear of Safi being elected drove people to Labor.

“People were so terrified, particularly the Hazara, that he would be elected. So they turned to the safety of Labor. Had they [Liberals] put up a decent candidate, things might have been different,” Garad said.

Liberals I’m speaking with are shocked but not surprised by the result. “You’re better off voting for the devil you know than the devil you don’t,” one said. “The right person probably won in the end ... How did they manage to get this guy [Safi] across the line?”

Home to some of the most disadvantaged communities in Victoria, the people of Bruce deserved a real contest.

But it was the sloppy, arrogant approach towards voters and the media that led to the Liberals losing not just Bruce, but seats across the country.

Stepping away from our hot seats, and another of the “too close to call” seats in Victoria has been called.

Mary Aldred has claimed victory for the Liberal Party in the Gippsland seat of Monash more than a week after the election after a complicated count.

Mary Aldred, pictured in 2019, defeated Russell Broadbent in the Liberal preselection challenge for the seat of Monash.Credit: Arsineh Houspian

Aldred was up against former Liberal member turned independent Russell Broadbent, Labor’s Tully Fletcher and independent Deb Leonard.

The final count was ultimately between Aldred and Fletcher from Labor, who conceded late last night.

Aldred is a respected professional, having formerly been Asia Pacific head of government relations at Fujitsu and chief executive of the Committee for Gippsland.

Aldred, who is viewed as a moderate and adds another woman MP to the weakened Liberal party room, had some advice for the party after the wipeout result.

“The Liberal Party has an enormous task ahead. But it is not insurmountable,” she said in a statement late on Monday.

“In my view, that job includes recrafting our economic message to be the Liberal Party’s central offering of aspiration and opportunity to all Australians. To focus on growth and productivity. To be the party that takes the policy lead on the adaptation of new technology. To enliven the belief that small and family businesses are the drivers of innovation and entrepreneurship in this country. Our message needs to better reach young people, professional women and diverse communities – that we seek to represent your aspirations for a better future.

“To the people of Monash: I will work my heart out for you.”

Aldred received 32.08 per cent of primary votes but pulled ahead after the distribution of preferences, ultimately gaining a small 1.41 per cent swing on a two-party-preferred basis – she was at 54.3 per cent by Tuesday morning.

Just over 20 per cent of primary votes went to Fletcher, ahead of Leonard on 17.23 per cent and Broadbent with 10.28 per cent.

Aldred thanked her volunteers, family, and the Victorian Liberal Party “family”. She also thanked Broadbent for his service and Fletcher for his “gracious phone call and warm words”.

Fletcher, in a statement late on Monday, said it was an honour to stand in Monash.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to deliver the result we wanted this time,” he said.

“I fought this election because Monash has been taken for granted by Liberals for 20 years and that’s long enough.”

He said the campaign had been fair and respectful and acknowledged Aldred as a formidable opponent.

“That said, while Mary is a good person, her election is not good for Monash,” Fletcher said.

He claimed the Liberal Party was out of touch, unpopular and “hard right”.

“Thank you again for all your support. We’ll be back.”

Broadbent, who contested as an independent after losing the Liberal preselection to Aldred in 2023, last week farewelled the seat.

“It has been an honour serving you as the Member for Monash for the past 20 years,” he said last week.

Leonard yesterday said the fact counting had taken more than a week showed Monash couldn’t be taken for granted and that her campaign as a Climate 200-backed independent had been a success.

“We can’t be taken for granted as just a safe Liberal seat any more.”

Independent MP Monique Ryan has accused the Liberal Party of running an aggressive and excessive campaign to try to win back the seat of Kooyong – including taking the local council to court over election signage and deploying what she described as “conscripted” campaigners from religious groups.

While Ryan was gracious in her remarks about Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer, describing her as a “young person who has a huge career ahead of her”, she tore into the tactics used by the party and its allies.

“The Liberal Party – I’m going to say it – spent a huge amount of money in this electorate trying to win it back,” Ryan said. “We also found ourselves up against other groups funded by the coal and gas lobby, funded by Advance Australia, funded by other right-wing groups.”

She singled out one particularly controversial tactic: a push by the Liberals to challenge council rules over signage limits. “When we had the Liberal Party taking the local council to court so that it could put up more signs for a single day in a site where, realistically, there were already far too many signs,” she said.

The Supreme Court ultimately ruled in favour of the Liberal Party in Boroondara for the final 24 hours of pre-polling after it found that the council’s permit regime unduly fettered political expression.

Corflutes for Kooyong Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer at pre-polling in High Street, Kew on April 29.Credit: Chris Hopkins

Ryan also said her team had encountered dozens of campaigners from a “religious group that doesn’t allow its own members to vote” but who turned out to campaign for the Liberals – a presence she described as unsettling for some voters and volunteers. “Many people at pre-poll and polling booths found that to be a difficult experience.”

Ryan said the atmosphere on the ground had raised serious questions about the health of Australia’s democratic process. “I don’t know that it’s always a pleasant experience these days for the voter, and we need to ensure that it is safe and pleasant for all people who are involved,” she said.

Ryan used the opportunity to renew her call for truth-in-political-advertising legislation, warning of a growing threat posed by unregulated third-party groups spreading what she called false information. “When you have a third-party group that can show up outside of pre-poll, wearing its T-shirts and with advertising which is utterly untrue – in some cases, almost defamatory – and which promotes disinformation … then we have a problem with our process,” she said.

Ryan said she would raise her concerns with the Australian Electoral Commission and push for changes before the next election.

Returning Goldstein MP Tim Wilson confirmed on Monday night that he will not seek his party’s leadership when the ballot takes place on Tuesday.

“I won’t be a candidate for leader tomorrow – it’s not my time. But I will be giving all my energies to whoever wins, to replicate what we did in Goldstein across our party,” he said on Facebook about 6pm.

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

“Nationally, I have the firm belief that we can win in three years. Not six. Three ... Now is the time to listen, support each other, rebuild and ultimately campaign on the economic issues that matter.”

Wilson has declared victory in Goldstein, but incumbent teal MP Zoe Daniel has not yet conceded defeat, with thousands of votes still left to count.

When I sat down for coffee with Monique Ryan more than six weeks ago, she told me she believed the race for Kooyong could come down to as few as 200 votes.

On Monday, as the count finally tilted her way after more than a week of tension, she was shown to be not too wide off the mark.

The final result won’t be bedded down until after this coming weekend, but as it stands, there is only about 1000 votes separating Ryan and Hamer – and while it’s not 200 votes, it is an incredibly narrow result for one of the most-watched seats in the country.

It was a drastically tighter result than her first election in 2022, when Ryan’s ultimate margin over then Treasurer Josh Frydenberg was 6035 votes – or 52.94 per cent to Frydenberg’s 47.06 per cent.

Ryan said she always knew it would be tight, especially after a major redistribution in late 2024 shifted Kooyong’s boundaries and brought in unfamiliar suburbs from the former seat of Higgins, including Toorak, Armadale and Malvern.

“I think it was clear from the time that we had the redistribution at the start of October 2024 … that from that point in time, it was always going to be a challenging election,” she said.

She noted that roughly a third of voters in the seat this time hadn’t voted in Kooyong in 2022.

“There’s a huge amount of churn there,” she said.

“So there was always going to be a lot of work to do, and it was always going to be a very tight contest between myself and Amelia Hamer.

“While the closeness of the race created plenty of anxiety for candidates and volunteers, Ryan said it had meant a decent competition in Kooyong for voters.

“It had been really competitive,” she said.

“I think the electorate had a good opportunity to engage with both of us at significant length … and that’s not a bad thing for democracy.”

Independent MP Monique Ryan has officially claimed victory in Kooyong (for a second time), after receiving a concession call from Liberal challenger Amelia Hamer this afternoon.

“I guess I can again, having done it about 10 days ago – but, again, it looks like I’ve been successful in holding the seat of Kooyong at this election,” she laughed sheepishly speaking to The Age and Nine News outside her electoral office.

Monique Ryan claims the seat of Kooyong outside her office on Monday afternoon.Credit: Eddie Jim

“Obviously, on election night, the seat of Kooyong and Goldstein were both called by the ABC and The Age relatively early,” she said.

“And what we’ve seen is that probably the demographics and voting patterns in those electorates have changed a bit, a far higher proportion of postal votes, for example, than we’ve seen in previous elections.

“Perhaps those calls were a bit premature and Zoe Daniel and I probably made those calls a bit prematurely on the evening.”

Ryan said Hamer was gracious in her concession and acknowledged the competitiveness of the campaign.

“She said congratulations, and I thanked her for that,” Ryan said. “She’s a young person who has a huge career ahead of her ... and I wished her all the very, very best.”

Ryan also thanked Labor’s Clive Crosby and Jackie Carter from the Greens for what she called a hard-fought contest.

The Teal incumbent said the closeness of the race reflected major shifts in voter behaviour and the impact of last year’s redistribution.

She said about a third of Kooyong voters had not cast a ballot in the seat in 2022, and that the high volume of postal votes caught commentators – and candidates – off guard.

“Maybe we all do need to be a bit more judicious when making those calls on election night,” she said.

Liberal Party candidate for Kooyong Amelia Hamer has conceded the contest for that seat to incumbent independent Monique Ryan.

In a post to social media on Monday afternoon, Hamer said she had phoned Ryan to congratulate the former doctor on her win.

“Whilst counting continues, it is now clear that the remaining ballots will not deliver us the majority that we need to win the seat,” she said.

Several media outlets called the seat for Ryan on election night before a surge of postal votes, counted over the following days, fell in Hamer’s favour and narrowed the contest to a few hundred votes.

Hamer thanks her volunteers and the people in Kooyong who voted for her.

Credit: Matt Golding

“To those who took the time to speak with me and share your perspectives, values, and ideas, thank you,” she said.

“We are so lucky to have a beautiful local community, a fair democracy, and a wonderful country. I hope to play my small part in making it a better place, now and into the future.”

Ryan is due to speak very shortly and we will bring you details as soon as we can of what she has to say.

Tim Wilson returned to Canberra this week and is being touted as a potential Liberal Party leader, but counting continues in Goldstein with Zoe Daniel not yet conceding the seat.

The Australian Electoral Commission has gone through all the postal votes on hand, which have been favouring Wilson, and the mandatory second count of all votes has been done.

Tim Wilson has claimed victory in the seat of Goldstein.Credit: Wayne Taylor

Wilson has a lead of 1257 votes, with 50.58 per cent of the vote, ahead of Daniel on 49.42 per cent on a two-candidate-preferred basis.

However, Daniel is yet to concede the seat and is hoping that absentee votes will swing her way.

The AEC tells me that there are two new counts likely to take place today. A count of 1000 of the declaration pre-poll votes is happening now so we should get results of that this afternoon.
A count of 2000 of the absentee votes is also planned for this afternoon, so we should see those results later in the day.

Here’s where the count sits:

545 uncounted postal votes – More will continue to arrive during the week until the deadline this Friday. A total of 24,299 postal votes were issued. So far, 20,988 have been returned, but some will never be returned.

3092 declaration pre-poll votes – These were cast at pre-poll centres outside a voter’s home division and need to be verified before they can be counted. Twelve of these have been rejected at preliminary scrutiny, but otherwise this pile has not been counted yet.

4035 absentee votes – There were cast on election day by people voting outside their enrolled electorate. These are verified and sent back to the correct division. These have not been counted yet.

195 provisional votes – These are from voters whose eligibility wasn’t certain at the time of voting. They’re only counted if the voter is later confirmed to be eligible. About half of these have been counted.

That brings us to a total of 7867 votes still outstanding at 3pm on Monday.