Australia news live: Peter Khalil holds Wills for Labor; analysts split on Adam Bandt’s hopes of holding Melbourne
Guardian Australia calls the seat of Wills for Labor
Peter Khalil, who was first elected to federal parliament in 2016, fought a tight contest against the Greens’ Samantha Ratnam to hold onto the electorate in Melbourne’s north.
Khalil had held the seat, which takes in the suburbs of Carlton North, Brunswick, Coburg, Glenroy, Fawkner and Pascoe Vale, on a margin of 8.6% on a two-candidate preferred basis against the Greens.
The Greens were hoping they could win the seat, which covers some of Melbourne’s most progressive territory, but the results had been too close to call until this afternoon.
The Australian Electoral Commission’s most recent update, published this afternoon, put Khalil in front of Ratnam with 51.84% of the two-candidate-preferred vote to 48.16% – a lead of 3356 votes.
The race narrowed even further in terms of primary votes alone – Khalil had secured 32,926 primary votes and Ratnam 32,179, as of this afternoon’s AEC update.
Key events
Allegra Spender lauds independent movement
The independent MP for Wentworth, Allegra Spender, says independent candidates have “done well” in the election, and she has her “fingers crossed” for those in seats that are still too close to call.
Speaking on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, Spender said more than 1 million Australians had given their first preference votes to an independent, making it the “fasting growing political movement in the country”.
While Spender was re-elected to her electorate in Sydney’s eastern suburbs, other “teal” independents who were elected to parliament with her in 2022 may not have fared so well.
The contests in the Melbourne seats of Kooyong and Goldstein have come down to the wire, with independents Monique Ryan and Zoe Daniel fending off challenges from Liberal candidates hoping to regain the seats for the Coalition.
Asked by the ABC whether she was surprised Ryan and Daniel had suffered swings against them and could lose their seats, Spender said:
These seats have been Liberal forever. It was a huge change to even have these people in these seats – non-Liberals, independents and, frankly, women.
I think for both of those seats, neither of them have ever had a woman represent them before as well.
It’s very unusual and they had quite big redistributions. I’m not sure what has happened, whether it’s redistributions, local factors or campaigns, I don’t know, but they were marginal seats and I still have my fingers crossed.
Liberal senator says party needs to work on getting more women into parliament
Tasmanian Liberal senator Jonathon Duniam says his party has “a lot of work to do” to increase its number of women candidates before the next election.
Duniam, who criticised the Coalition’s campaign HQ in an interview with Sky News earlier today, has just been up on the ABC’s Afternoon Briefing, where he expanded on some of his concerns.
Asked where he stood on quotas as a way to address the party’s gender imbalance, Duniam said:
Look, I think it is something we need to address.
Here in Tasmania of course at the last election, we had 50% female representation, not with a quota but it was the way it unfolded.
We have to make sure we can represent the community we seek to represent and I’ll do my bit along with our organisation to ensure we encourage people … but we have a lot of work to do in that space.
In 1994 the Labor party adopted a mandatory 35% preselection quota for women in winnable seats at all elections by 2002.
Greens leader Adam Bandt now expected to lose Melbourne, analyst says
Sarah Basford Canales
And just as quickly as that, another electoral analyst is predicting Greens leader Adam Bandt will now lose the seat of Melbourne by a very slim margin.
In more bad news for the Greens, analyst Kevin Bonham is projecting Labor’s Sarah Witty will clinch the inner Melbourne seat by less than 1% after “very bad preference flows” in a few booths counted recently.
Guardian Australia spoke to Bonham only an hour before his latest call, but it seems the odds are turning against the minor party leader for now as the Greens fight to hold on to the seat they’ve held since 2010.
Bonham had earlier described Bandt’s position as “shaky”.
Meanwhile, Ben Raue has tempered his prediction that Bandt will just scrape in.
He’s now projecting a Greens win in Melbourne by just 0.2%. Either way you cut it, it’s not a great result for the Greens which hoped to rule with Labor in a minority government.
The speculation will likely last at least another day or two but could take as long as a week for the results to finalise.
Guardian Australia calls the seat of Wills for Labor
Peter Khalil, who was first elected to federal parliament in 2016, fought a tight contest against the Greens’ Samantha Ratnam to hold onto the electorate in Melbourne’s north.
Khalil had held the seat, which takes in the suburbs of Carlton North, Brunswick, Coburg, Glenroy, Fawkner and Pascoe Vale, on a margin of 8.6% on a two-candidate preferred basis against the Greens.
The Greens were hoping they could win the seat, which covers some of Melbourne’s most progressive territory, but the results had been too close to call until this afternoon.
The Australian Electoral Commission’s most recent update, published this afternoon, put Khalil in front of Ratnam with 51.84% of the two-candidate-preferred vote to 48.16% – a lead of 3356 votes.
The race narrowed even further in terms of primary votes alone – Khalil had secured 32,926 primary votes and Ratnam 32,179, as of this afternoon’s AEC update.
Adam Bandt expected to retain Melbourne for Greens
Sarah Basford Canales
The count in the Greens-held seat of Melbourne is still tight but electoral analyst Ben Raue thinks Adam Bandt will hold onto the inner-city seat.
As of 3pm on Tuesday, Labor’s Sarah Witty is leading Bandt 52% to 48% on a two-party preferred margin although only two-thirds of ballots have been counted.
The Greens have held the seat since 2010 and few would have predicted the size of swing against the minor party, even after an unfavourable boundary redistribution hurt their lead ahead of polling day.
But Raue says his calculations predict the Greens leader will hold on, if only just.
This is because the Australian Electoral Commission began with counting postal votes, which have typically not gone the way of the Greens.
Raue says pre-poll and election day votes would typically favour Greens over Labor and Liberal and on those projections, Bandt should lead with a very slim margin.
Raue said:
Bandt has had a swing against him. There’s no denying that. It’s definitely happening.
I think that probably reflects Labor’s resurgence and people want to vote for the government.
And, you know, it’s a very progressive area. And so there are probably people who like the Greens, but also want to have a Labor government, and that influences how they vote.
Inside Bandt’s camp, the vibes remain positive even as the nearby seat of Wills has been called for Labor, with Peter Khalil retaining the seat. Party sources blame the collapse in the Liberal vote and Labor’s advantage in three-way contests for the loss of some lower house seats.
Like other complicated seat counts, the results in Melbourne could take a few more days before an outcome is clear.
Catie McLeod
Hello. I hope you’ve had a good day so far. I’m here to take you through the rest of the day’s news.
I will now hand the blog over for the afternoon to my colleague, Catie McLeod, who will guide you for the remainder of the day.
Search for missing swimmer suspended
Just an update on our earlier posts about the search for a missing swimmer on a northern rivers beach in NSW. Police say that they’ve now suspended the search for the woman, and she has not been located.
The woman didn’t reportedly didn’t resurface after entering the water shortly after 7am at Pottsville beach.
There have been no official missing person reports and no unattended vehicles or items have been located near the beach.
The woman is described as of Caucasian appearance, aged in her early 20s, of thin build, with light brown shoulder-length hair worn in a ponytail. She was wearing cream-coloured shorts. Police want anyone who matches the description of the woman to contact local police
Man dies in Erskine Park warehouse incident
A 29-year-old man has died after reports of a workplace incident at a warehouse in Erskine Park in NSW.
Emergency services were called out to a warehouse on Grady Crescent at 8.30am on Tuesday after the reports. NSW police attended with NSW Ambulance to treat the man, who died at the scene.
The man has yet to be formally identified. An investigation into the incident is under way.
A report will be prepared for the coroner and the incident has been referred to SafeWork NSW.
Nick Evershed
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 Wolahan’s 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.
Will Adam Bandt hold his seat?
Nick Evershed
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.
