Federal election 2025 live updates: Australia election date called for 3 May by Anthony Albanese; Peter Dutton to campaign on economy​on March 28, 2025 at 2:44 am

The Australian Electoral Commission says more voters are on the electoral roll than ever before, ahead of the 3 May federal election.

Commissioner Jeff Pope said in a statement this afternoon:

There are more voters on the electoral roll than ever before, there’ll be more voting venues than ever – both within Australia and overseas, there’ll be greater accessibility options than we’ve ever had, and we again need around 100,000 staff to deliver it …

Australia’s electoral roll is already sitting at an incredible 97.8% of eligible voters enrolled, but we know the announcement of an election will be an incentive for new voters in particular to get enrolled.

The AEC said 710,000 more people were on the electoral roll (between the 2022 federal election and the end of 2024).

Northern Land Council condemns changes to NT sacred sites legislation

Just circling back to some earlier news, that the NT government has introduced changes to its sacred sites legislation.

The move has been denounced by the Northern Land Council, which says the changes prioritise development over protection of the territory’s most important cultural heritage assets.

The council accused the NT government of progressing legislation “without any consultation at all”, saying the Sacred Sites Act does not need to be upgraded and their proposed amendments to strengthen it “were largely ignored”.

Chair Matthew Ryan said in a statement that the bill was “a rush job”:

The Sacred Sites Act isn’t about putting profits before our people, it is to protect our cultural heritage as we are obliged to do as custodians.

Traditional owners deserve the courtesy of being consulted about matters of critical importance and they are angry about being ignored.

Securing rights to land and protecting sacred sites and cultural heritage have been hard-won rights and this dismissive behaviour from the NT government is nothing short of an attack on our people.

Tink to campaign for independent challenger in Dutton’s electorate this weekend

Outgoing independent MP Kylea Tink will travel to Queensland this weekend to support independent candidates – including the one aiming for Peter Dutton’s seat.

Tink will lose her seat of North Sydney at the upcoming election, as the seat is set to be abolished.

She was recently appointed director of the Community Independents Project, where she will travel around the country to support independents during the election campaign.

In a statement, Tink said she would visit Queensland this weekend to support the following candidates:

• Ellie Smith – independent candidate for Dickson (Dutton’s seat)

• Keryn Jones – independent candidate for Fisher (Andrew Wallace’s seat)

• Francine Wiig – independent candidate for Fairfax (Ted O’Brien’s seat)

Tink said this election was “already an historic moment” for the independent movement, with “one in five electorates running a community independent”.

From Darwin in the north to Hobart in the south, communities in our cities, our regions and our suburbs are standing up and making their voices heard. Voting for a community independent in this federal election is your opportunity to reclaim your community’s true voice and show that politics can be done differently.

My message to the traditional parties at this election is: ignore the community independent movement at your peril.

Full Story podcast: what’s ahead in the election

Now that the election has officially been called, our political reporter Dan Jervis-Bardy talks us through what we can expect – before he heads off on the trail.

You can have a listen below, on the latest Full Story episode:

Allan responds to federal election being called

The Victorian premier, Jacinta Allan, has responded to the federal election being called. She told Guardian Australia:

The choice this election couldn’t be clearer: a Labor government that is strengthening Medicare, investing in housing and education and building our economy. Or Peter Dutton, who’ll cut infrastructure funding in Victoria and cut Medicare to pay for his $600bn nuclear reactors.

Victoria has emerged as a battleground at the election, with the Coalition hoping to capitalise on the unpopularity of the Labor government, which has been in power at a state level for 10 years.

Good afternoon! Emily Wind here, I’ll be taking the blogging reigns after what was a whirlwind morning – with plenty more to come.

Thank you for joining me on what has been Christmas for politics lovers (the announcement that the election will be held on 3 May, officially triggering the election campaign).

I will be back with you next week, bringing you all of the key (and of course silly) moments of the election campaign – and there will be plenty!

I will leave you in the hands of blogging queen Emily Wind to take you through the afternoon.

Independent senator David Pocock (who represents the ACT, where the Coalition is promising to cut public service jobs) responded to the budget reply first on social media.

He says he agrees with the Coalition that health, housing and energy are priority issues, but says the Coalition’s solutions are “breathtakingly bad”.

While Pocock has also called for a gas reserve policy, he says Dutton’s policy coupled with a rapid expansion in gas isn’t the way to go.

You can see Pocock’s full response here:

Pocock says Gallagher’s claim of underdog status does her ‘a disservice’

Just finally back to David Pocock speaking earlier, he also responded to previous comments made by the finance minister and ACT senator, Katy Gallagher, who considered herself an underdog in the ACT Senate race.

Gallagher, who was first elected to the upper house in 2015 and was the ACT’s chief minister between 2011 to 2014, described herself as an underdog, conceding she thought Pocock would get first place.

Pocock responded on Friday:

I spend a lot of time in sport where people are constantly trying to call themselves the underdog. I think she’s doing herself a bit of a disservice there. You know, she’s been a politician in the ACT since I was in grade eight, so she’s very well known.

She’s the finance minister … I guess it maybe shows the pressure that community-driven politics is putting on both major parties, and it’s no surprise that they work together to stitch up electoral reform to try and ensure that going forward. It’s much harder for independence because they are a threat to the status quo in both of the major parties.

Littleproud is also warning the public not to vote for independents.

A few Nationals seats are under threat from the community independents movement, including Cowper, which is held by Nationals MP Pat Conaghan.

Conaghan is sitting on a slim 2.3% margin against independent Caz Heise, who is running again.

Littleproud says a vote for the independents is a vote for Labor.

The nation’s biggest threat in the regions are independents. A vote at the next federal election for an independent is a vote for Anthony Albanese and three more years of an Albanese-Green-teal-independent chaotic government.

Littleproud ups the energy on campaign trial

Nationals leader David Littleproud is also putting his best campaigning foot forward – with a heavy focus on energy.

The energy grid transition has a massive impact on regional Australia – with all the renewable projects and transmission lines that are being built across the country – which the Coalition has argued is not good for farmers and regional communities.

Littleproud’s speaking to the ABC from Toowoomba backing the gas and nuclear plan:

In fact, just a couple of hundred kilometres west of where I stand today, is a much of where that gas that we will flood into the Australian market, where Australian gas should be used by Australians first.

The Coalition won’t commit to a figure on how far energy prices could drop, but promises increasing supply will drive prices down.

If you solve the energy prices and bring gas into the grid quickly, they will also put downward pressure on your grocery bill. And if you look at what we’re doing with excise on fuel, that will flow through to the supply chain, putting downward pressure on to your grocery bill at checkout.

Pocock says Coalition plan to slash public service jobs ‘clearly ideological’

Continuing from our last post: David Pocock has described the opposition’s plans to slash 41,000 federal public service jobs as “clearly ideological” and “Canberra bashing”, likening it to Elon Musk‘s razor gang in the Trump administration.

At his press conference on Friday morning, the independent ACT senator said the plans seemed “impossible” without also cutting essential frontline service jobs, despite Peter Dutton ruling that out in his budget reply speech.

Pocock noted about 60% of the Australian Public Service, which is forecast to reach about 213,000 by the end of June 2026, worked in the ACT, and axing 41,000 roles would rip out billions of dollars in the territory’s gross product.

I think it’s impossible to cut that many public servants from Canberra without doing the kind of thing that we’re seeing Elon Musk do. And if, you know, if that’s Peter Dutton’s vision for Australia, where you’re just decimating the public service, the very services that people rely on every single day. And in a country where you take veterans – for example, we have 6,000 veterans who are homeless. That’s shameful. And to be even talking about cutting frontline services, which he says he won’t, but I don’t see how else you cut that many public servants, is really irresponsible.

The Liberals are without an ACT federal representative after the former senator Zed Seselja lost his seat to Pocock in 2022. Pocock said the major party seemed “to have very little regard” for the nation’s capital.

This is totally ideological. Where you get to, you get to punch down on Canberra and try and get votes elsewhere, where people are feeling cost of living pressures. This is not the way to deal with those cost of living pressures.

David Pocock backs Dutton’s gas reservation policy

The independent ACT senator David Pocock held a press conference earlier at Parliament House where he welcomed one aspect of Peter Dutton’s budget reply – the gas reservation policy.

Interestingly, it’s a policy supported by a number of progressive politicians, including the Greens, and now Dutton and his Coalition.

To quickly recap, the idea is to force gas companies to supply more gas for domestic consumption over exporting it overseas. It’s expected such a policy would reduce domestic gas prices.

But where the opposition and progressive politicians diverge is on whether to open up new gas projects – Pocock and the Greens are staunchly against new projects and the Coalition want to ramp-up domestic production.

Pocock said uncontracted gas should be offered to Australians first to alleviate the projected shortfall by the end of the decade.

We have a situation where both the major parties, over decades, have just capitulated in the face of vested interests, where we basically get nothing from our gas exports, and we’re paying international prices here at home.