Follow today’s live news and reaction to the 2025 Australian federal election
Liberal Tim Wilson has overtaken independent Zoe Daniel in the seat of Goldstein according to the current tracking of two-party-preferred count, with a 348-vote lead.
It flipped from Daniel having a 95-vote lead early this afternoon. The counting is ongoing.
More on Tim Wilson now leading in Goldstein
Just a bit more on Liberal candidate Tim Wilson being now ahead of independent Zoe Daniel in Goldstein, with a two-candidate preferred margin of 348 votes.
There’s still quite a few postal, absent and declaration votes to be counted, with at least 8,589 listed as waiting to be processed by the AEC. The postal votes so far are very strongly in favour of the Liberals, with 64.5% Liberal to 35.5% independent on the two-candidate preferred count.
It would take quite a margin in Daniel’s favour in the other non-booth votes waiting to be counted for her to regain the lead.
AEC admit to error in transcription of original count in Menzies
The Australian Electoral Commission has admitted there was an “error in the transcription of the original count” in the tightly contested Victorian seat of Menzies on election night.
Sitting Liberal MP Keith Wolahan is currently trailing Labor’s Gabriel Ng by about 1,300 votes in the count for the seat in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.
But his scrutineers are concerned about a big change in votes at a booth in Doncaster East. They say on election night, he had 8,817 first-preference votes in the booth but during a recount on Sunday it was reduced to 6,966 – a difference of about 1,800 votes.
In a statement, the AEC said it was “not unusual” to make corrections during the counting process.
They blamed the discrepancy in Menzies on an “error in the transcription of the original count”, which was “detected and quickly rectified during scrutiny on Sunday”.
They said scrutineers were present for this process. The AEC statement went on:
Election night counts are conducted by our temporary election workforce at the end of the polling day. The ‘fresh scrutiny’ currently being conducted is a re-check of all ordinary ballot papers received from every polling place, pre-poll voting centre and mobile polling team in a division, and is required by the Electoral Act to further ensure the accuracy of the counting process.
A spokesperson for the Liberal party said it would continue to watch the count in the seat:
We are closely watching the Menzies count as postal votes continue to be received. We are aware of some inconsistency in reported figures on Saturday night and are making inquiries to the AEC about those matters.
Wolahan’s defeat has been regarded as a huge loss for the Liberals and with the neighbouring seat of Deakin also set to turn red, leaves the party without a seat in Melbourne.
Continued from previous post
This is another seat where the two-candidate preferred count has been delayed, as the initial pairing decided by the AEC (Greens v Liberal) was not the pairing that eventuated on the night. So we’re going to have to wait a while to see how the preferences flow with the new Greens v Labor pairing. At the time of writing, the AEC shows Labor with 55.6% of the two-candidate-preferred vote, and the preference flows are going very strongly to Labor, which is not a good sign for Bandt.
That said, this re-count is so far based only on six regular booths and a pre-poll centre, with the counting only 15% complete. Further, election analyst Kevin Bonham suggests that the early preference flows were based on a vote sample that was uncharacteristically bad for the Greens, and that Bandt will likely win narrowly once more booths go through the re-count process.
The ABC’s chief election analyst, Antony Green, also said on 7:30 Monday night that he doesn’t think the rest of the preferences will flow to Labor as strongly, and so Bandt may hold on.
In Ryan, we have another three-cornered contest and at the moment it looks like the Greens have beaten Labor for second place on the primary vote by 661 votes. If this position holds, the Greens should win the seat against the LNP off Labor preferences. However, it’s possible that absent, postal and other pre-poll votes could make a difference in the final order, so we’ll have to wait for counting to continue.
Is Adam Bandt going to lose his seat?
In this update, we’ll take a closer look at the count unfolding in the seats of Melbourne and Ryan.
Probably the biggest question at the moment is whether or not Greens leader Adam Bandt is likely to lose his seat. On election night, the Green’s national vote looked steady compared with 2022, however with more of the vote counted their overall primary vote is down by almost half a percentage point.
Their bad result in Griffith and Brisbane was in part due to the nature of those seats - both are three-cornered contests, where the order of parties in the primary vote (and subsequent preference rounds) matters a lot. The swing to Labor flipped the order in these seats compared with 2022, and so in Brisbane, rather than Greens and LNP in the final two, as it was in 2022, it ended up as Labor v LNP, which Labor won with strong preference flows.
In Griffith, the final two were Labor and Greens, rather than Greens and LNP as in 2022, and Labor won again with strong preference flows.
But what is happening in Melbourne?
The Greens’ margin in the seat of Melbourne has declined compared with 2022 due to boundary redistributions, which resulted in the electorate losing some strong Greens-voting areas in the north of the seat, and gaining areas in South Yarra where the Liberal vote is higher. This redistribution is likely responsible for at least some of the swing against the Greens.
Continued in next post.
While we are looking at the teal contests, the Liberal candidate in the Sydney seat of Bradfield, Gisele Kapterian has also overtaken independent candidate Nicole Boele by 44 votes on a two-party basis.
Liberal Tim Wilson has overtaken independent Zoe Daniel in the seat of Goldstein according to the current tracking of two-party-preferred count, with a 348-vote lead.
It flipped from Daniel having a 95-vote lead early this afternoon. The counting is ongoing.
Workplace bullying and sexual harassment reported in Tasmania’s fire and State Emergency Service
More than one in five (23%) at the Tasmanian Fire Service and State Emergency Service have reported workplace bullying in the past five years, and nearly one in six (15%) have reported sexual harassment, according to a new report released by the State Fire Commission.
Tasmanian Fire and Emergency Services commissioner, Jeremy Smith, said the behaviour was unacceptable.
To employees and volunteers who have been harmed by these behaviours – I am deeply sorry for the hurt you experienced.
I am committed, along with the SFC and the TFS and SES Executive, to building safe and respectful workplaces.
He said the executive had signed a statement of commitment to act on the findings of the report, which heard from employees and volunteers on harmful workplace behaviours.
The TFS-SES Culture Review Report outlines the deep sense of pride and commitment of employees and volunteers to the TFS and SES and in serving the community, and strong bonds particularly in times of emergency response.
We can build on these positive experiences and cultures.
There were 26 recommendations in the report, and Smith said a framework on how to drive change will be implemented by October.
New Zealand looks to adopt Australian-style social media ban
An Australia-style legislative ban on social media for under-16s is being proposed by New Zealand’s governing National party, AAP reports.
The prime minister, Chris Luxon, has announced his party will back a private member’s bill which will require social media companies verify a user’s age as above 16 before they can access certain platforms.
The bill, to be introduced by backbench MP Catherine Wedd, does not list which platforms will be included, but includes maximum fines for noncompliance at $NZ2m ($A1.8m).
Wedd said the “bill closely mirrors the approach taken in Australia”.
As a mother of four children I feel very strongly that families and parents should be better supported when it comes to overseeing their children’s online exposure.
Centre-left opposition Labour is warming to the idea but it’s not over the line, with leader Chris Hipkins saying it is a “debate we need to have”.
National’s coalition partner New Zealand First holds a similar view, while the third coalition partner ACT, a libertarian party, won’t offer support.
“Social media is doing enormous harm to young people [but] for every problem there is a solution that is simple, neat – and wrong,” ACT leader David Seymour said.
ACT opposes National’s bill banning under-16s from social media because it is not workable.
We would be better to learn from the Aussies’ mistakes than make the same mistakes at the same time as them.
Without support from Labour, National’s bill would require either the support of the Greens, or both NZ First and the Maori party to become law.
Median weekly share house rent in Australia hits $243 per week
The median cost to rent a share house has hit $1,055.89 per month, or $243 per week, according to rent.com.au’s April snapshot.
The national median rent for all properties has increased $5 to $630 per week in April, the last increase in this median was in January 2025 when there was also an uplift of $5.
Since April 2024, the median apartment rent has increased 3.3% (+$20 to $620) and 4.1% (+$25 to $635) for houses. This remains just above inflation, but is a moderation on the level of annual increases we saw through most of 2024.
Along with the slight median rent increase, the national weekly price per room also rose slightly – up $3 to $243. This was influenced by the median apartment price per room which also lifted $3 to $363, while the median price per room continues to be stable at $200.
Household spending falls after five months of growth
Households cut their spending in March after increasing it for five months in a row, in a surprise fall that further supports predictions of an RBA rate cut.
Spending fell by 0.3% from February, Australian Bureau of Statistics data showed, the first fall since September and the biggest cutback since December 2023.
Alcohol and tobacco purchases have fallen for three months in a row, and we’re spending less on hotels, cafes and restaurants than we were at the end of 2024.
Queensland cut back the most, especially on transport and health spending, amid ex-Tropical Cyclone Alfred, but the state paid more for one type of good, according to Robert Ewing, ABS head of business statistics:
Food spending in Queensland rose 2.9% as households stockpiled before the cyclone made landfall.
Banks and markets had expected the national figure to keep rising in March and deliver a total annual increase of nearly 4% but the fall implied spending rose only 3.5% over the year.
Customers also bought about the same amount of stuff in the first three months of 2025 as they bought in the last three months of 2024. That implies the small increase in total spend before March was just to cover inflation, so while we’re spending slightly more, we’re not getting any more goods or services.
Retail spending data last week also suggested spending had slowed, and NAB’s chief economist, Sally Auld, predicted the Reserve Bank would slash its key interest rate to 3.1% by August while giving this warning on Monday:
Retail sales [volumes] were flat for the first three months of 2025 and highlight the risk that the consumer has been unable to sustain the robust momentum witnessed in spending in 4Q 2024.
Nationals deputy ‘obviously shattered’ at expected loss of Senate seat
The Nationals deputy leader, Senator Perin Davey, has told ABC NewsRadio she is “obviously shattered” that it looks likely she has lost her Senate seat in the election.
Davey placed blame on the loss to being third on the joint Liberal-National Senate ticket behind two Liberal candidates.
I’m still watching the count, but I am a realist, and it doesn’t look good for me at all … It’s not based on a loss in the National party vote. My loss will be based entirely on people not wanting to vote for the Liberals because of our agreement with the Liberals that on this cycle, the Nationals position falls to the third spot on the Senate ticket, which is the most at-risk spot.
If people didn’t want to vote for the Liberals in the Senate that impacts my vote as as well. And it’s just a numbers game.
Davey said there was a strong case for the Nationals to get more shadow cabinet positions as a result of the changing numbers of Liberal and Nationals, and talked down the idea of the Nationals ending the Coalition agreement, noting it would be harder to get a Nationals elected in the Senate in NSW on their own, given the majority of the population live in Newcastle, Sydney and Wollongong.
She said there was support for nuclear in the regions, and called on the government to lift the moratorium, adding people in the regions were concerned about the large scale solar farms and windfarms.
Davey said she would be very surprised if David Littleproud was challenged for the leadership job.
Tasmanian Liberal senator says Coalition HQ ignored local feedback in ‘bad campaign’
The Tasmanian Liberal senator Jonathon Duniam has criticised the Coalition’s campaign headquarters, saying it ignored local feedback, following Labor’s landslide federal election win.
Speaking on Sky News earlier, Duniam said the Coalition’s central HQ had “frankly” run a “bad campaign”.
He said:
Many of us on the ground right across the country, me here in Tasmania, saw some pretty alarming signs, which we fed in but were ignored.
We had bad pollsters giving us bad numbers, way off the mark, totally out of line with all of the published polling.
Our own polling here in Tasmania pointed to the wipeout we ultimately got and so there are some people in our campaign headquarters who are going to have to answer some questions for us around what went wrong here.
Labor has won two Tasmanian seats – Bass and Braddon – off the Liberals, meaning the state has been left with no Coalition members in the House of Representatives.
Future Fund beats 10-year target, swells to $241b
Australia’s sovereign wealth fund has beaten its mandated 10-year target and grown its total funds under management to $307bn, AAP reports.
The Future Fund itself reached a record value of more than $240bn by 31 March, after securing 7.9% returns for the year.
“This was a strong result that reflects the work we have been doing for the past four years to ensure the portfolio is resilient and flexible to a range of scenarios,” Future Fund chief executive, Raphael Arndt, said on Tuesday.
By comparison, the S&P/ASX200 rose just over 2% in the 12 months to April, or almost 9% in the 2024 calendar year, when the Future Fund improved by 12.2%.
Pleasingly returns have also increased the value of the other six funds managed by the Future Fund Board of Guardians by $4.9bn to $66.8bn while also providing $985.7 m in payments to support their intended programme priorities in the financial year to date.
Difficult market conditions elevated by recent US trade policy and geopolitical tensions would likely lead to higher bond yields and could stir up inflation.
We are seeing consequential changes in geopolitical, economic and market environments at the moment and that is causing volatility and uncertainty for investors.
These are the conditions for which the portfolio has been built over the past five years, and it has behaved to our expectations in recent months.
Both Bendigo and Kooyong are back to being too close to call.
Bendigo is another seat where the two-candidate-preferred count is being redone, with the new final two of Labor and the Nationals. The new count is showing strong preference flows to the Nationals, which means the seat is now undecided – previously we had it as going to Labor.
In Kooyong, independent Monique Ryan is still in the lead, and still remains likely to win according to models from election analysts Ben Raue and William Bowe. However, the race is a lot closer than we previously thought, so it will remain on the undecided list until things become more clear.
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