Federal election results 2025 as it happened: Albanese gets back to business; Liberals search for new leader

Thank you for tuning in to our live blog today. We’ll be ending our coverage here.

Be sure to check in tomorrow for more updates across the day. Meanwhile, you can check in with the seats that are too close to call here. You can also check out Matthew Knott’s latest analysis here.

Senior Labor senator Murray Watt has praised the leadership of Anthony Albanese and the success of the party in Queensland, as the government is on track to gain at least seven seats in the state.

Labor beat the Greens in the electorates of Brisbane and Griffith, with Stephen Bates and Max Chandler-Mather expected to lose their positions. Challenger Ali France unseated Peter Dutton in his home seat of Dickson too.

“People did really focus on the federal issues and the federal leaders … we recognised that we needed to make a bigger contribution to the federal caucus, and frankly to retain government federally we needed to win seats in Queensland,” Watt said on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing.

Watt compared Labor’s success on Saturday to the 2007 win under Kevin Rudd, saying there are probably even more seats to be added to the government’s majority.

“I think this is the best federal campaign Labor has run since 2007, and it looks like the result might be stronger still than then,” Watt said. “A terrific result. Full credit to the prime minister for his leadership.

“It’s taken a lot of hard work. It hasn’t been an overnight success.”

Victorian Liberal leader Brad Battin has said he is confident that his federal colleagues can rebuild, and he trusts Australian voters to understand the difference between state and federal politics.

“Obviously [Dutton’s] policies weren’t enough to get him over the line. But he was talking about the petrol excise, he was talking about what different things they could do for Victorians and Australians,” Battin said on ABC Radio Melbourne.

Peter Dutton (right) with state Liberal leadership duo Brad Battin (left) and Sam Groth (centre).Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

“[The federal party] have got to go through a process now for selecting a leader, rebuilding, getting their brand back in, and ensuring they can work together as a team for the next three years, which I’m pretty sure they can.”

Battin also said the Victorian Liberal Party was not supportive of nuclear power. When reminded by ABC Drive host Ali Moore that the federal party was yet to dump that particular policy, the state opposition leader said they were now dealing with a clean slate.

“The federal opposition are going through a process for a new leader. They don’t have any policies on the table … Once the election is done, you effectively reset your policies,” Battin said.

Independent MP Kate Chaney has criticised the direction of the federal Liberal Party, doubling-down on comments that not choosing Julie Bishop as leader was a “turning point”.

“If [the Coalition] want to retain their role as being a potential party of government, they are going to need to represent more of those people who are in that moderate centre, and resist ... this pull of populist Trumpian politics,” Chaney said on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing.

“It is hard to know how Australia would have developed differently if it had Julie Bishop as a leader rather than Scott Morrison and subsequently Peter Dutton,” Chaney said.

“But I think there would be a lot of people in my electorate who would see that as being a more accurate reflection of their values in our national political system.”

Chaney also said that independent MPs will continue to have an impact within the incoming parliament, despite Labor holding a significant majority.

“I think having those voices in parliament … that can speak up without being constrained by a party structure means we have richer discussions about the big challenges we’re facing as a country,” she said.

“I don’t think there is any need at this point to become a more formalised voting block. I think the role I can play now is much the same as the role in the last parliament.”

The battle for the north shore electorate of Bradfield has tightened during vote counting on Monday.

Teal candidate Nicolette Boele now leads her Liberal rival Gisele Kapterian by just 501 votes on a two-candidate preferred basis with 83 per cent of the votes counted. Late on Saturday night the independent led by almost 700 votes.

It is the second time Boele has contested Bradfield; in 2022, she narrowly missed out on unseating then-Coalition minister Paul Fletcher.

Bradfield is one of 13 seats yet to be called by this masthead.

Liberal MP Aaron Violi, who successfully defended the seat of Casey in Melbourne’s outer east, has acknowledged there are issues that need to be addressed within the Liberal Party.

“There is no doubt that it is a challenging time for the party, and the results on the weekend speak for themselves,” Violi said on ABC’s Afternoon Briefing.

“We need to honestly slow down, take a deep breath and listen to the feedback that we got from the Australian people … [and] understand why they are not connecting with us as a party, particularly in some of those urban regions.”

Violi said that solutions would need to be discussed privately, including the number of women in seats. He mentioned Amelia Hamer and Zoe McKenzie, two Victorian MPs who are still in the running to win in the seats of Kooyong and Flinders.

But the Casey MP remained tight-lipped on who he would support when it comes to selecting a new opposition leader. Fellow party member Hollie Hughes earlier criticised shadow treasurer Angus Taylor, saying he was not fit to be a leader.

“[Hughes] is entitled to her opinion,” Violi said. “I will not engage in public commentary on what happened in the campaign. I don’t think that’s a positive way to move forward in the short term.

“I’m not going to make any public comments on the leadership.”

At Zoe Daniel’s HQ on Saturday night, the teal MP proudly proclaimed her victory in securing the inner-Melbourne seat of Goldstein.

But less than two days later, Liberal challenger Tim Wilson is hot on her heels in the vote count.

Listen to reporter Cara Waters, who has been following the seat of Goldstein during this campaign, break down what’s happened.

The contest in Calwell, on Melbourne’s north-western fringe, is shaping as one of Victoria’s most fascinating.

Tally Room election analyst Ben Raue says counting there may take another two weeks, as Labor’s primary vote in the Melbourne seat falls.

The Labor candidate in the seat, Basem Abdo, now has about 30 per cent of the primary vote, representing a 14.2 per cent swing against the party.

While Abdo leads that count, Raue said the AEC may need to recalculate the leading two candidates as support for independents soars.

“In Calwell, the two-candidate preferred count between Labor and Liberal is not very interesting, and it’s not what’s relevant,” Raue said. “What’s relevant here is you’ve got two independents, one is on 12 per cent, and the Liberal’s on 16 and Labor on 31.”

Raue said the AEC may need to split the two-party preferred count three ways, or even four ways, in Calwell to see who comes out on top.

“I’ve never seen this before. Literally, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a race like this, where the third and the fourth candidates look like they could win. And I don’t know which of them it is,” he said.

Read more about what’s going on in Calwell in our Victorian Hot Seats blog here.

Retiring senator Linda Reynolds has criticised the Liberal Party as being too male-centric and announced her support of Sussan Ley as a replacement leader.

“There’s no sugar-coating the position the party now finds itself in … you can see through successive reviews in federal and state in terms of where we have taken the wrong turn, but we haven’t comprehensively understood those lessons,” Reynolds said on ABC Radio Perth.

“I don’t think we went into this election, or the last election, with a really clear idea of who we are as Liberals … Our tribe [has become] too important.”

Reynolds said that gender imbalance was an issue she’s been trying to address.

“Ten years ago I was part of a review into gender … and we recommended targets and how to get there without quotas. That’s been the Liberal Party policy for 10 years but it’s just sat on a shelf.

“We do have to have the hard conversations now about how we become more gender-balanced, but also a broader diversity. And how do we then make our party relevant again?”

The outgoing senator also said she would support Sussan Ley in a leadership ballot, calling Ley “a very healing and receptive leader”.

A senior member of Anthony Albanese’s cabinet has celebrated Clive Palmer’s failure to win a single seat, despite the mining magnate’s barrage of election advertising and his millions of intrusive text messages.

Palmer’s Trumpet of Patriots achieved a vote share of less than 2 per cent, despite a reported $50 million election spend.

Senator Murray Watt joined Labor and union members at the Labour Day march in Brisbane.Credit: Cameron Atfield

Following the Trumpets’ poor election showing, Palmer hinted to News Corp he was “getting too old for politics” and the 2025 federal election would probably be his political swansong.

That was welcome news to Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Murray Watt, who said Palmer’s interventions into federal politics would not be missed.

“It’s a good thing to hopefully see the back of Clive Palmer and big money in politics,” the Queensland senator said at today’s Labour Day march in Brisbane.