Greens leader Adam Bandt projected to lose seat of Melbourne
Nick Evershed
The ABC has called the seat of Melbourne for Labor, meaning that Adam Bandt will almost certainly lose his seat.
Labor’s Sarah Witty leads the two-candidate preferred (TCP) count by 52.7% to the Greens 47.3%.
The seat is still undergoing a recount of the TCP after the Australian Electoral Commission picked the incorrect final pairing of candidates on election night. As of Wednesday afternoon, 23 booths have been included in the new count, and Labor has benefited from strong preference flows to take the lead over the Greens.
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.
Bandt had held the seat for 15 years after he was first elected in 2010 in Labor’s Gillard minority government.
Labor’s victory upset in Melbourne was one few saw coming. It means Anthony Albanese can now claim the political scalps of two party leaders in both Peter Dutton and Bandt.
It also reduces the minor party’s gains in the lower house after a high-water mark in the 2022 federal election. The Greens will likely be reduced from four lower house seats to just one – the Ryan MP, Elizabeth Watson-Brown, assuming Watson-Brown wins the seat when the new TCP count for Ryan is done.
Key events
Greens deputy leader says parliament can be a ‘bloody awful place’ following criticism from outgoing MP
The Greens deputy leader, Mehreen Faruqi, says parliament can be a “bloody awful place” after one-time MP Max Chandler-Mather spoke out about his time there.
Speaking on the ABC’s Triple J Hack radio program, Chandler-Mather, who lost his inner-Brisbane seat to Labor after one term in office, called parliament a “sick place”.
In the interview, Chandler-Mather said half the Labor front bench would be “screaming at me and calling me a joke and an idiot” and he had walked back to his office “almost throwing up out of stress”.
Faruqi was asked about Chandler-Mather’s comments during her own interview on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing program a short time ago. She said:
Of course the parliament can be a bloody awful place, I could relate so much to his comments about what he has said about his time in parliament.
This is a workplace where for six years I have experienced outright racism.
Faruqi, whose party has lost three MPs including Chandler-Mather and its leader Adam Bandt’s, said the Greens would undertake an analysis of the election and their campaign “once all the results are declared”.
But she talked up the party’s success in the upper house, saying:
One thing is quite clear for us, the people of the country have put us in sole balance of power in the Senate … So that does mean that we have a mandate to keep pushing Labor.
With Labor having a majority in the lower house there is no excuse for Labor not to make progressive and transformational changes on the things that people have been struggling on … cost of living, housing, addressing the climate crisis
Faruqi said the Greens vote had “exploded” with swing of 20% towards the progressive party in some booths in seats she said were home to large migrant communities such as Wills and Fraser and those in western Sydney.
Littleproud suggests Nationals won’t back down from nuclear plans
David Littleproud has suggested the Nationals won’t walk away from having nuclear energy as part of its policy offering.
The Coalition’s resounding election defeat has cast doubt on its plan to build nuclear reactors in Australia, which was one of its signature election policies.
There is already division among some Liberal MPs and senators over whether the policy should be abandoned.
Speaking on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing program a short time ago, Littleproud said the Nationals would “obviously have a conversation” with the Liberals if the latter decided to ditch the nuclear policy.
Littleproud said:
I don’t see any need for us to change from a technology-agnostic approach to our energy grid.
You can’t run an economy on the scale of Australia on renewables, it just cannot work.
What we’re saying is we’re not walking away from renewables, even the grid we were proposing would see more renewables. You should have a mix.
Earlier today, the Liberal MP Tim Wilson, who defeated the independent Zoe Daniel to regain the Melbourne seat of Goldstein, said he backed nuclear energy as “part of building the future industrial base of our country”.
Wilson said:
In my core sense of belief I believe in the role of nuclear power not as an end but as a beginning.
Greens leader Adam Bandt projected to lose seat of Melbourne
Nick Evershed
The ABC has called the seat of Melbourne for Labor, meaning that Adam Bandt will almost certainly lose his seat.
Labor’s Sarah Witty leads the two-candidate preferred (TCP) count by 52.7% to the Greens 47.3%.
The seat is still undergoing a recount of the TCP after the Australian Electoral Commission picked the incorrect final pairing of candidates on election night. As of Wednesday afternoon, 23 booths have been included in the new count, and Labor has benefited from strong preference flows to take the lead over the Greens.
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.
Bandt had held the seat for 15 years after he was first elected in 2010 in Labor’s Gillard minority government.
Labor’s victory upset in Melbourne was one few saw coming. It means Anthony Albanese can now claim the political scalps of two party leaders in both Peter Dutton and Bandt.
It also reduces the minor party’s gains in the lower house after a high-water mark in the 2022 federal election. The Greens will likely be reduced from four lower house seats to just one – the Ryan MP, Elizabeth Watson-Brown, assuming Watson-Brown wins the seat when the new TCP count for Ryan is done.
Nick Evershed
Sky News and independent analyst say Bandt will lose Melbourne
Sky News and the independent election analyst William Bowe are both projecting the Greens leader, Adam Bandt, will lose the seat of Melbourne to Labor’s Sarah Witty.
Labor leads the two-candidate preferred (TCP) count by 52.7% to the Greens 47.3%.
The seat is still undergoing a recount of the TCP after the Australian Electoral Commission picked the incorrect final pairing of candidates on election night. As of Wednesday afternoon, 23 booths have been included in the new count, and Labor has benefited from strong preference flows to take the lead over the Greens.
