Follow today’s live news and reaction to the 2025 Australian federal electionFull federal election results: live Australian Senate seat countSee our full coverage of the Australian electionGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastPenny Wong: Liberal Party was ‘very aggro’ and wanted a ‘culture war’The foreign minister, Penny Wong, says the media response to her comments in the final week of the election campaign about the voice to parliament were disappointing and an inaccurate “beat-up”.I think more importantly, what it did show Australians is that the reflex for the Liberal Party was to have a culture war and get very aggro, let’s be frank. Whereas most Australians weren’t there. You know, most Australians wanted to talk about Medicare and schools and cost of living and tax cuts and fee-free Tafe and childcare and 20% off their Hecs debt.That’s where most Australians were. But the Coalition – yet again – their reflex is to have a culture war, which is often very hurtful to First Nations Australians but, more generally, to people who care about reconciliation. So I think it was a demonstration of why the Liberal Party has done so badly in Australia’s cities and suburbs. Continue reading…Follow today’s live news and reaction to the 2025 Australian federal electionFull federal election results: live Australian Senate seat countSee our full coverage of the Australian electionGet our breaking news email, free app or daily news podcastPenny Wong: Liberal Party was ‘very aggro’ and wanted a ‘culture war’The foreign minister, Penny Wong, says the media response to her comments in the final week of the election campaign about the voice to parliament were disappointing and an inaccurate “beat-up”.I think more importantly, what it did show Australians is that the reflex for the Liberal Party was to have a culture war and get very aggro, let’s be frank. Whereas most Australians weren’t there. You know, most Australians wanted to talk about Medicare and schools and cost of living and tax cuts and fee-free Tafe and childcare and 20% off their Hecs debt.That’s where most Australians were. But the Coalition – yet again – their reflex is to have a culture war, which is often very hurtful to First Nations Australians but, more generally, to people who care about reconciliation. So I think it was a demonstration of why the Liberal Party has done so badly in Australia’s cities and suburbs. Continue reading…
Outgoing Liberal senator for NSW Hollie Hughes has claimed the shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, was manoeuvreing for the Liberal leadership two to three weeks before the end of the election campaign on Saturday.
Hughes told Sky News on Monday night:
I got a phone call today from someone who was a very senior person within the organisation at the federal level, and they had received a phone call – they were saying two to three weeks ago – encouraging her to get behind supporting Angus for leader. So that was two, three weeks before the election was finished, and I was horrified when the numbers were being done.
She said it wasn’t something she was privy to during the election campaign, and she said Taylor should have been supporting Dutton during the election.
I am a Liberal, and I’m still very much committed to Liberal values, but I think the behaviour of some of the people in that party room is absolutely reprehensible. I don’t think they were supportive of Peter Dutton. I don’t think they did the work. And I think they were more interested in their own future political ambitions than they were [anything] else. And you know, I think that shows from the policy vacuum that we saw.
Hughes said a joint Taylor and Dan Tehan ticket may be the wrong call, given the party’s problem with female voters, and she said they should “go back to the monkey pod” – a reference to the room members of the right faction met in parliament for lunch. She said she supports Sussan Ley for the leadership. Hughes will get to vote in the party room before her term in the Senate expires next month.
More updates on seats too close to call
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.
Home approvals down 8.8% in March amid struggle to meet target of 1.2m new homes
New home approvals were 8.8% lower in March in a further sign the economy is struggling to meet the Albanese government’s target of 1.2m new homes by mid-2029.
The fall to 15,220, from 16,683 in February, puts the brakes on an upswing that had started in mid-2024. That February figure came in 26.5% higher than it had the year before but the growth rate halved in today’s March figure, at just 13.4%, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics.
Much of the slippage came from apartments and other non-house dwellings. About 7,200 of those were approved in February, but only 6,100 in March, though Westpac analysts noted units jump around a bit and were unusually high early this year.
But the private sector also received fewer okays for new houses, which continued to fall from its September peak back to levels seen in February 2024.
The slide was much bigger than expected, with the market predicting approvals to fall by 0.6%, Westpac said, while the bank itself was expecting a 1.5% slide.
The re-elected Albanese government has promised to see 1.2m new homes built by mid-2029, or at least 240,000 per year. but economists have warned the country is well behind on that figure. Building approvals pretty neatly track new building starts, and with just over 180,000 new approvals in the year to March, Australia is still running well behind.
Will that pace improve? Commonwealth Bank analysts had been optimistic as to the rest of the year ahead of the data release, though they had only been expecting a 2% fall:
We do expect interest rate cuts and rising dwelling prices to support a continued improvement in building approvals through this year.
Time for an update on undecided seats – Queensland’s Forde for Labor
We’re calling Forde for Labor, which is a gain at the expense of the LNP’s Bert van Manen.
The Liberals have also successfully retained Forrest in WA.
Fremantle, Wills, Menzies, Monash, Flinders and Calwell are still too close to call at this point.
Bullwinkel is so close that the Labor and Liberal candidates are separated by only 28 votes, with the Labor candidate Trish Cook in the lead. The AEC lists 3,081 postal and other votes still to be processed today (and this number will change, with most absent and pre-poll votes yet to be counted), and so far the postal votes are splitting narrowly in favour of the Liberal party candidate.
In Longman, the LNP candidate leads by 309 votes, despite a swing against him of 2.9 percentage points. Postal votes are now favouring the LNP, with 53.2% going their way compared with 46.8% for Labor, so it’s hard to see how Labor could take the lead here. But again, most absent and declaration votes have yet to be counted and may favour Labor more.
The ALP are very likely to retain Richmond against the Greens, but this is one of the seats where the two-candidate preferred count is being re-done, so we’re going to hold off a little longer before making a call.
I’ll do a separate post on the other seats which involve either the Greens or independent candidates.
Outgoing Liberal senator for NSW Hollie Hughes has claimed the shadow treasurer, Angus Taylor, was manoeuvreing for the Liberal leadership two to three weeks before the end of the election campaign on Saturday.
Hughes told Sky News on Monday night:
I got a phone call today from someone who was a very senior person within the organisation at the federal level, and they had received a phone call – they were saying two to three weeks ago – encouraging her to get behind supporting Angus for leader. So that was two, three weeks before the election was finished, and I was horrified when the numbers were being done.
She said it wasn’t something she was privy to during the election campaign, and she said Taylor should have been supporting Dutton during the election.
I am a Liberal, and I’m still very much committed to Liberal values, but I think the behaviour of some of the people in that party room is absolutely reprehensible. I don’t think they were supportive of Peter Dutton. I don’t think they did the work. And I think they were more interested in their own future political ambitions than they were [anything] else. And you know, I think that shows from the policy vacuum that we saw.
Hughes said a joint Taylor and Dan Tehan ticket may be the wrong call, given the party’s problem with female voters, and she said they should “go back to the monkey pod” – a reference to the room members of the right faction met in parliament for lunch. She said she supports Sussan Ley for the leadership. Hughes will get to vote in the party room before her term in the Senate expires next month.
Wild winds forecast for Victoria’s eastern ranges, this afternoon
A severe damaging winds warning has been issued for parts of the eastern ranges of Victoria, with gusts around 90km/h possible above 1200 metres from this afternoon.
The Bureau of Meterology has said the winds will ease after sunrise tomorrow.
Dutch academic poses new theory about centuries-old shipwreck
An “evil” man took advantage of a shipwreck to lead a mutiny that caused the death of more than 100 men, women and children.
So goes the story of the Batavia, wrecked off the Western Australian coast in 1629. But does the truth lie elsewhere?
Read more on this story below.
Victoria Health: beware of poisonous mushrooms, this autumn
The Victorian health department is warning people to be aware of poisonous mushrooms growing during autumn as weather becomes wetter and cooler.
Death cap mushrooms and yellow-staining mushrooms are more evident at this time of year, the Victorian chief health officer, Dr Christian McGrath said, and people should be on the lookout for the mushrooms growing in home gardens and publicly accessible areas.
Initial symptoms of the poisoning include stomach pains, nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea.
McGrath said:
Adults and children should not touch wild mushrooms with their bare hands, let alone eat them, and animals should be kept well away from them.
Anyone who collects and consumes wild mushrooms of unknown species is putting themselves at risk of potential poisoning and serious illness. Consuming a death cap mushroom can be fatal.
The mushrooms should only be removed from home gardens by wearing gloves, placing them in a bag, and disposing of them in a closed general waste rubbish bin.
Tasmania’s homeless numbers ring ‘alarm bells’, says community services peak body
Tasmania’s social housing waitlist has hit a record high of more than 5,000 applications, with 3,871 people homeless or sleeping rough.
The data was released as the Tasmanian Council of Social Service (TasCOSS) unveiled a new, interactive housing dashboard.
TasCOSS chief executive Adrienne Picone questioned if the state was on track to meet its target of 10,000 social and affordable homes by 2032.
She said:
The dashboard shows Homes Tasmania has delivered a mix of 4,345 ‘homes’ since 2022, but this includes land lots and crisis units. In actual fact, the number of safe, secure and appropriate new homes is only, at most, 2,567.
Meanwhile, a key barometer for affordable housing availability in this state – the social housing waitlist – hit a record high 5,000 applications last month, with 3,871 of those homeless or sleeping rough.
This must ring alarm bells for a government committed to end homelessness in Tasmania by 2043.
It begs the question, is the government’s housing target and record on delivery keeping up with the level of need in the community?
Victoria’s new commissioner: police exist to prevent crime
Mike Bush says the issues facing Victoria – last year it recorded its highest crime rate in almost a decade – are not unique. He says he will take a “different” approach to the former leadership of Victoria police to tackle it.
There are crime issues within the state. Everyone knows that these crime issues are actually global, quite similar wherever you go, but it’s not good enough just to turn up after the act. It’s really important that we respond well, we investigate, we resolve, but you have to do more.
You have to get in front of these things. And having a prevention mindset and a prevention focus at the front is really, really important. Some of you will be familiar with Sir Robert Peel, that is the number one principle of policing. We actually exist to prevent crime and harm. So yeah, we will be taking a different look at that as to how we do [approach] it. There’ll definitely be more visibility, but we’ll also be quite sophisticated about how we bring in the intelligence and deploy people to get in front of crime issues.
Bush also confirms he was approached by the Victorian government for the role. Allan explains:
The appointment of a new chief commissioner is a significant one for any government. It’s an important one, and it’s a significant one for the community … The instruction to the recruiting agency and the panel was to go and find the best person for the job, to go and find someone who could look at what some of the challenges are.
New Victorian police commissioner appointed
The former head of New Zealand’s police force, Mike Bush, has been appointed Victoria police’s next chief commissioner.
The premier, Jacinta Allan and police minister, Anthony Carbines, have just made the announcement this morning and were joined in person by Bush.
Bush joined the New Zealand police in 1978 and was chief commissioner from 2014 until April 2020, when he retired. He led the police response to the 2019 Christchurch massacre and the White Island volcano eruption.
Asked what made him come out of retirement, Bush tells reporters:
I have a real passion for police that’s kind of in my blood. I’ve been doing it my entire adult life and most of my life has been committed to public safety. It’s just so important that people in communities are safe and feel safe, and police services are at the forefront of that. So that’s two very good reasons, and the third one is that the state of Victoria is a brilliant place. Kiwis love Victoria. I’m no different and I’m very honored to be part of your community and to serve you.
It is the first time someone who has not worked at Victoria police has been appointed to the top job since 2001.
It follows the resignation of commissioner, Shane Patton, after a no confidence vote by rank and file police officers. Rick Nugent was then appointed as acting commissioner but blindsided the government last month when he announced he would not be applying for the post.
Australian billionaire and Pratt Industries and Visy chair Anthony Pratt is at the Met Gala in New York, donning a bright green suit with “Pratt 100% recycled” covering the entire outfit, from the suit to the shirt and tie.
And here’s a closeup of the suit.
Pratt, a supporter of US president Donald Trump, last week announced a US$5bn (A$7.8bn) investment pledge to make recycled goods in the US, which he said would create 5,000 manufacturing jobs and would help the “reindustrialisation” of the US. He attended a White House event hosted by the president and his company’s press release called the announcement a “vote of confidence in President Trump’s leadership”.
For more on the Met Gala, we have a separate live blog running below.