Federal election results 2025 as it happened: Greens leader Bandt set to lose Melbourne; Dutton silent on Liberal leadership future; Kooyong race tightens

Thanks for joining us for another day of post-election wash-up. Here’s a quick summary of today’s developments:

• Adam Bandt is likely to become the second major-party leader to lose his seat at the election. The Greens are holding out on conceding Bandt’s seat of Melbourne, and remain on track to retain the Queensland seat of Ryan.
• Peter Dutton vowed to undertake a “graceful silence” on the Coalition’s election loss and the Liberal Party’s future as he arrived in Canberra for a heartfelt send-off with staff.
• In further good news for Labor, the party pulled ahead in Bendigo and looked likely to retain Wills.
• While Goldstein’s Zoe Daniel lost her race to Liberal Tim Wilson, fellow Melbourne teal Monique Ryan’s lead over Liberal Amelia Hamer narrowed in Kooyong.
• Two Nationals senators said the party should review its coalition with the Liberals, and Nationals leader David Littleproud doubled down on the nuclear power policy.

We’ll be back early tomorrow to bring you all the latest as votes are counted in key seats.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has joined the Zionist Federation of Australia in linking the Greens’ leader’s demise in the seat of Melbourne to the party’s stance on the Israel-Hamas conflict.

“Jewish law precludes us from celebrating the misfortunes, of others, but the fact that the people of Melbourne decided to purge Adam Bandt from the federal parliament is a good thing,” said Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the council.

Executive Council of Australian Jewry co-chief executive Alex Ryvchin.Credit: James Brickwood

“Bandt led a political party in this country to become institutionally antisemitic,” he said.

Bandt has frequently spoken against antisemitism. After Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, he said: “There is no place for antisemitism or Islamophobia in the push to end the occupation of Palestine and build a lasting peace.”

In June 2024, Bandt reiterated what had become his party’s three-point mantra. “The Greens condemn antisemitism. The Greens condemn Islamophobia. And the Greens condemn the invasion of Gaza.”

The council’s other co-chief, Peter Wertheim, said the electoral backlash against the Greens presented the party with a historic opportunity to change course from the far left to the political centre.

ACT senator David Pocock was re-elected over the weekend, nearly doubling his primary vote.

But if Labor wins 28 Senate seats as expected, it will need only the Greens or the Coalition to pass legislation through the upper house.

Senator David Pocock.Credit: Dominic Lorrimer

On ABC News 24, Pocock said the election was not a vote for the status quo.

“We’ve seen independents across the country gain votes. I would hope that the government of the day is willing to invest in good faith, and I will push hard for things that I’m hearing from Canberrans.

“You take environmental law reform in the last parliament – despite all the promises from the Labor Party, it went backwards. More and more people are seeing that and saying, ‘Hang on, I want a senator or an MP that is actually going to stand up for the things that matter to me and my community.’”

The Greens have issued this statement on their leader Adam Bandt:

“While there are many, many thousands of votes to be counted, we are not conceding Melbourne. While we are ahead on primary votes, there is a chance that One Nation and Liberal preferences will elect the Labor candidate. The count needs to proceed.”

Greens co-founder Drew Hutton has warned that party “group-think” and intolerance of free speech are hampering its electoral success.

“There’s a real lack of preparedness to [allow] free speech in the Greens,” he said.

Drew Hutton in 2013.Credit: Damian White

“They’re very intolerant of anybody speaking outside of the accepted wisdom in the Greens, group-think if you like.

“That’s partly why they can’t communicate with ordinary Australians, because they’re so intolerant of other opinions.”

Hutton said the party had plenty of talent within its ranks and needed to drop the “moralistic tone” used in communicating with voters beyond Generation Z.

With AAP

Circling back to Nationals leader David Littleproud, who is adamant that the Coalition’s nuclear policy is not to blame for the party’s enormous defeat at the election.

“Tim Wilson, who defeated the first teal [Zoe Daniel in Goldstein], supports nuclear energy,” he told the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing.

Nationals Leader David Littleproud (centre) with Peter Dutton (left) during the election campaign.Credit: James Brickwood

“I think that shows it wasn’t a drag on our vote. The reality is we have always had a technology-agnostic approach within the Coalition around our energy needs and an all-renewables approach would not be able to sustain our economy. You need to have a mix, and zero-emissions nuclear technology can achieve that.”

He said Labor’s demonisation of Dutton and an inability to effectively counter this was a key factor behind the result.

Littleproud was asked for his thoughts on claims that Nationals were too influential within the Coalition, and that this was why it was struggling to connect with voters.

“Name the policy that’s done that,” he replied.

“I think we’ve been constructive. The policies that we’ve articulated have been about cost of living, divestiture that I think that I’ve seen polls in some papers that have support for divestiture supermarkets that over 65 per cent agree. We were the first ones to say no to the Voice and let me tell you, 68 per cent of Australians agreed with us in the end, so I don’t think there’s anything that the Nationals have done detrimentally.”

Littleproud said he hadn’t seen any corflutes in east coast capitals with his face on them.

The Zionist Federation of Australia has weighed in on the news that Adam Bandt was poised to lose the seat of Melbourne, saying “the Greens’ extreme and divisive politics has played a role”.

“This result reflects a message from fair-minded Australians; extremism has no place in our democracy,” the federation’s president Jeremy Liebler said in a statement.

He accused Bandt and deputy Mehreen Faruqi of peddling “antisemitic conspiracy theories” and demonising the Jewish community following Hamas’ terrorist attack on October 7, 2023.

He noted the Greens had performed poorly at each election – local, state and federal – since then.

Bandt has repeatedly spoken against antisemitism. After the October 7 attack, he said: “There is no place for antisemitism or Islamophobia in the push to end the occupation of Palestine and build a lasting peace.”

In June 2024, Bandt reiterated what has become his party’s three-point mantra. “The Greens condemn antisemitism. The Greens condemn Islamophobia. And the Greens condemn the invasion of Gaza.”

Earlier on Wednesday, Faruqi said the party’s “strong stance against the genocide” on Gaza had no bearing on the Greens’ fortunes.

Earlier on Wednesday, we noted that Nationals’ candidate for the Victorian seat of Bendigo, Andrew Lethlean, was leading sitting Labor MP Lisa Chesters.

Well, an afternoon can turn counting on its head.

Lisa Chesters has pulled ahead, but the fight for Bendigo is far from over.Credit: Penny Stephens

Around midday, Lethlean was 808 votes ahead of Chesters.

But a series of large booths where a full two-party preferred candidate vote has been carried out has swung that around, with Chesters now in front of Lethlean by 959 votes approaching the end of the day.

There are still a number of booths to be fully counted, so that could change.

Chesters, however, is doing better-than-expected on postal votes (which traditionally favour conservative candidates).

Lethlean is leading Chesters among postal votes 51-49 on a two-party preferred measure.

ALP candidate Sarah Witty’s lead over Bandt has now gone past 2000 votes as the AEC works its way through Melbourne’s booths on a two-party preferred basis.

This afternoon the key booth of Richmond came in, showing a huge swing against Bandt.

Labor won this booth at the 2022 election 51-49.

This time around, Witty has claimed its 1900 votes 61-38, a swing of 10 per cent.

It leaves Bandt in company with Dutton as the two party leaders to have lost their seats in Albanese’s 2025 electoral landside.

There are still thousands of votes to count across Melbourne, including another 4000 postal votes, which Witty is winning 64-36.

Circling back to Greens deputy Mehreen Faruqi, who told the ABC the party didn’t regret commenting regularly and strongly against Israel’s actions in Gaza.

Asked on Afternoon Briefing whether this damaged the Greens’ electability on Saturday, Faruqi said “that narrative doesn’t play out in the numbers”.

“There is a narrative, of course, that people are putting out about the Greens’ strong stance against the genocide, which is a principal and moral stance to take,” she said.

“Across Western Sydney, across south-western Sydney, in booths in Wills, Fraser, Adelaide, we see that multicultural populations are there.

“They really backed us, they are the communities who were so marginalised, and again what we have seen is the people of Australia have rejected the most pro-Israel party, and they have kicked Peter Dutton out of parliament.”

Earlier, Nationals leader Littleproud had called the Greens “extremists” for “bringing the Middle East conflict” to Australia.