Bridget McKenzie: Coalition had many problems and Labor ran a ‘superior’ campaign
Nationals senator, Bridget McKenzie, told ABC’s RN Breakfast there needs to be a “deep, honest and brutal” examination in what went wrong in the Coalition’s election campaign, but said no one factor was at fault.
There’s no one issue that you can point to that was the reason the Coalition had a catastrophic loss … there are issues around the campaign, research, communication, policy, etc., and tactics and strategy. And let’s be give credit where credit’s due. The Labor Party ran a superior campaign.
McKenzie said the Donald Trump factor benefits the incumbents at a time of global uncertainty, and said Trump “isn’t a conservative” as he “is literally ripping down institutions in a reaction to a political class in America which is very different to the political class here in Australia.”
Here in Australia, we have a compulsory voting which tears us to the center, and for good reasons.
Key events
Seven West Media buys Southern Cross regional stations in $3.8m deal
Seven West Media has agreed to buy the TV licences and assets of stations in Tasmania, Darwin, Spencer Gulf, Broken Hill, Mount Isa, and remote, central and eastern Australia from Southern Cross Media, the company announced to the ASX today.
The deal is worth $3.75m.
SWM managing director and chief executive, Jeff Howard, said:
Following this acquisition, Seven will reach almost 100% of Australia’s population [exRiverland]. With the successful launch of our Phoenix total television platform, our valued advertising partners and media buyers will be able to seamlessly reach and target these new and attractive audiences across both broadcast and digital campaigns.
The deal came after an initial deal struck with Australian Digital Holdings in February, which was set to launch right-wing news channel NewsMax Australia on the stations, fell through, Southern Cross told the ASX on today, with final conditions not satisfied.
ADH was launched with the backing of broadcaster Alan Jones after he left Sky news, before later rebranding to Newsmax Australia. The Newsmax Australia website still says “coming 2025”.
We’ve had a ‘gut full’: Sydney council addresses dumping with NSW’s first shared e-bike agreement
Waverley Council in Sydney’s east has signed an agreement with share bike provider Lime to regulate the use of the bikes in the area.
The council says the memorandum of understanding will put a responsibility on Lime to better manage and regulate the bikes, and contribute to the provision of parking infrastructure, as well as establish rules on where bikes can be ridden or parked.
Mayor Will Nemesh said:
We have taken urgent action because our community has had a gut full of e-bikes being carelessly dumped all over the place. This agreement is about ensuring there is a clearly defined framework of accountability and transparency for share bike operators.
I congratulate Lime for demonstrating their commitment to working with Council and ensure public safety and public amenity comes first.
The agreement will start on 30 June, and run for two years after a six-month trial period. The bikes are limited to 25km/h but this may be restricted in certain locations.
Lime said it is the first shared e-bike agreement in NSW.
AEC vote count reaches 78%, including 1m postal votes
An update on where the Australian Electoral Commission is at with vote counts, as of Tuesday morning, 8am, via AAP.
The vote count is at 78% nationally, with 14.1m lower house first preferences counted, including 1m postal votes.
First preferences have been counted for 7.2m Senate papers.
The AEC is delivering 1.3m ballots to home electorates for counting, and a mandatory second count of all votes will begin today.
Adam Morton
Voters rejected attacks on Labor’s climate crisis policies
Analysis of the election result has barely begun, but this much is clear: the country has backed a rapid acceleration towards renewable energy. Labor didn’t say much about the climate crisis during the campaign, announcing only one new policy. But Anthony Albanese and his climate change and energy minister, Chris Bowen, emerged with their ambitious goal of the country sourcing 82% of electricity from solar, wind and hydro by 2030 not just intact, but emphatically endorsed.
Labor’s position has been relentlessly attacked by the Coalition, right wing organisations backed by fossil fuel interests and one of the country’s biggest news media companies. Australians rejected that position comprehensively.
Changes to victims of crime registers to come before NSW parliament
Victims of crime in NSW will be given a chance to receive notifications about their offender’s progress through the custodial system in a change backed by prominent advocates, AAP reports.
Laws mandating a victim receive information about their rights to sign up as a registered victim-survivor and receive the critical information about perpetrators will hit NSW parliament on Tuesday.
Notifications a victim-survivor can receive include details about an offender’s location, their sentence, parole eligibility and other things affecting a victim’s safety.
Victim-survivors are often able to make a submission relating to an offender’s suitability for parole.
Victims advocate Howard Brown welcomed the changes and said they would help people move on with their lives.
The victims registers are able to provide the kind of information that victim-survivors may feel they need to be able to take back control of their lives, sometimes many years after a serious crime has been committed against them.
Maximising free and full access to such a vital resource like the victims register is a major step towards healing for victim-survivors.
Corrections minister, Anoulack Chanthivong, said the changes balanced the safety implications for victims with the need for them to not to be retraumatised.
The mandatory notifications are expected to be for families of murder victims, those where an offender is serving a life sentence, and for victims of serious offences such as attempted murder, sexual assault and abduction.
David Pocock: unlikely a second ACT independent will be elected to Senate
The independent senator for the ACT, David Pocock, said it was “really humbling” to nearly double his vote from the 2022 election, but he told ABC RN Breakfast he wasn’t taking it for granted.
I’ll continue to represent people in the ACT, as I have been doing, engaging in good faith, really bringing their voices into parliament. My commitment was to be accessible and accountable to people in the ACT, and over the last three years, I held over 50 public forums, from town halls, round tables, mobile offices, really wanting to hear from people in the ACT. And one of the things I take very seriously, as one of only two senators in the ACT is that not everyone voted for me.
There’s a whole bunch of people in Canberra who don’t like me, but I represent them, and I vote on their behalf. And so I take that very seriously, to actually get out there and hear a really wide range of perspectives to help inform how I conduct myself and ultimately how I vote.
He said there was a frustration in the community that the major parties weren’t standing up to vested interests, and that was a big reason people were voting for independents over the major parties. But he said, given the huge Labor vote in the ACT, it was unlikely a second independent would get the second senate spot in the ACT.
Wong says she will remain foreign affairs minister and Coalition ‘are not the party of middle Australia’
The foreign affairs minister, Penny Wong, continues her media appearances for the day, telling ABC’s RN Breakfast she will stay on as foreign minister in the government, and said the most surprising factor in the election for her was the realisation that the Coalition “are not the party of middle Australia”.
I had a look at the AEC’s current count of metropolitan seats. So they have an inner and outer metropolitan seat at this stage. On current numbers, the Coalition are down to seven out of 88 seats in metropolitan areas.
Know what that says? Sally, that says that in the cities and suburbs, the Coalition does not represent middle Australia. It doesn’t represent the hopes, aspirations and struggles of people, of Australians and their families living in our cities and suburbs. That really was a profoundly, profound message from the electorate.
She said the government would continue to talk to the US administration to argue against tariffs, and repeated her earlier comments regarding film production that Australia and the US collaborate well on film production.
Bridget McKenzie: Coalition had many problems and Labor ran a ‘superior’ campaign
Nationals senator, Bridget McKenzie, told ABC’s RN Breakfast there needs to be a “deep, honest and brutal” examination in what went wrong in the Coalition’s election campaign, but said no one factor was at fault.
There’s no one issue that you can point to that was the reason the Coalition had a catastrophic loss … there are issues around the campaign, research, communication, policy, etc., and tactics and strategy. And let’s be give credit where credit’s due. The Labor Party ran a superior campaign.
McKenzie said the Donald Trump factor benefits the incumbents at a time of global uncertainty, and said Trump “isn’t a conservative” as he “is literally ripping down institutions in a reaction to a political class in America which is very different to the political class here in Australia.”
Here in Australia, we have a compulsory voting which tears us to the center, and for good reasons.
Wong says US, Australia ‘make great films together’
In response to US president Donald Trump suggesting tariffs could be placed on foreign-produced movies, Wong says “we make great films together”.
We’ve got Australian actors who work on American films. We have American films which are filmed here in Australia. We have collaboration between our artists in the creative industries. The collaboration is a good thing. So let’s not get in the way of that.
Penny 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”.
She told ABC News Breakfast it was also a signal for where the Coalition was focused.
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.
Wong also said that Liberal senator Jane Hume’s comments that alleged Labor volunteers were Chinese spies was “extraordinary” and showed the party’s approach to “a whole range of issues” of concern to the Australian-Chinese community.
With the Coalition’s loss, has News Corp’s influence finally waned?
Award-winning author and freelance journalist, and member of the Scott Trust board, which owns Guardian Media Group, Margaret Simons, looks at whether this election is finally an acknowledgment that News Corp isn’t as influential as people think (or fear).
Simons also writes there are lessons for all media about their role.
Warm weather, high fire danger for Victoria
It is expected to be a warm May day for large parts of the country today, with Sydney expecting temperatures of up to 26C, the same in Melbourne and Brisbane, 24C in Perth, 23 in Adelaide with a shower or two, 20 in Hobart with a possible shower, 23 in Canberra, and 34 in Darwin.
Meanwhile, the Country Fire Authority has issued high fire danger warnings across large parts of Victoria, including the areas of Mallee, the north of the state, central Victoria, and west and south Gippsland.
Josh Taylor
Good morning,
I’ll be taking the live blog for this morning.
There are still more than a dozen seats to be declared in the federal election. The focus will be on the tight races in Kooyong, Goldstein, and on whether the Greens leader, Adam Bandt, can retain his seat of Melbourne.
You can see our results page below, and we will have updates from our Canberra team soon.
Full Story podcast asks: what comes next for the Liberal party?
The Liberal party is facing its worst crisis since it was formed in the 1940s. With Peter Dutton booted out of parliament, the question has quickly turned to who will take over the party’s leadership, and if it can survive the changing mood in the electorate
Nour Haydar talks to chief political correspondent Tom McIlroy about what comes next for the Liberal party.
Listen in full here:
Which demographics swung to Labor?
We have an excellent selection of analysis this morning about what shaped the election result, and what lessons can be drawn from the outcome.
Our number crunchers have been trying to identify the main demographic groups that swung to Labor – and they include urban voters, women, young people and Australians whose first language is not English.
Read the full piece here:
We’ll gravitate to sensible centre, says NSW Liberal leader
Liberals in Australia’s most populous state will focus on the party’s “timeless values” after a federal election drubbing, Australian Associated Press reports.
The party’s NSW branch will not get bogged down in internal or external culture wars, the opposition leader, Mark Speakman, said ahead state parliament resuming today.
“The policies we’ll be developing as an opposition will be evidence-based, they’ll be rigorous, they’ll be prompt, and they will gravitate to the sensible centre of NSW politics,” he told reporters ahead of a shadow cabinet meeting yesterday afternoon.
“Our values of aspiration, opportunity, enterprise, hard work, are timeless, and we will anchor our policies on those.”
His comments came with the Liberals likely to be left with four federal seats on Sydney’s urban fringes after Saturday’s election.
Speakman promised policies will be rolled out in a timely manner before the March 2027 state election.
“But above all be coherent, cohesive and focused on the issues that matter,” he said, pointing to housing affordability, the cost of living, schools, hospitals and infrastructure.
The state branch remains committed to the 2050 net-zero target Speakman announced as environment minister in 2016, with a continuing rollout of renewable energy backed by batteries, pumped hydrogen and gas.
“I can’t see nuclear energy happening in the foreseeable future in NSW, or Australia, but you never say never,” Speakman said.
Watt predicts Labor’s second term will be a ‘bit easier’ in Senate
Caitlin Cassidy
Watt also said Labor was under “no illusions” about the number of people voting for the party for the first time, or rejoining it – while adding “new things” would emerge this term.
The federal government picked up seven seats in the senator’s home state of Queensland in the federal election, including six in Brisbane and Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson. Federally, Labor has enjoyed almost a 3% swing in its favour.
Watt said:
We want to retain that trust by acting in accordance with the mandate that we received. There will be new things that emerge, globally and domestically, that we’ll need to deal with. But the priority is about respecting the mandate that we’ve been given.
Watt said Labor’s second term may also be a “little bit easier” for the federal government given the current makeup of the Senate.
Labor is on track for 28 seats in the Senate, meaning it would only require support of the Coalition or the Greens to pass legislation.
It is a significant change to the Senate … The idea that we can potentially get an outcome with either the Coalition or the Greens without having to cobble together all sorts of coalitions may make things a little bit easier.
I guess it will also depend on the approach that those parties take in the Senate and I think if there’s one thing that I would hope that both the Coalition and the Greens have learned from the last term is that being obstructive to the government’s agenda actually ends up rebounding on them. I think that that was a really key reason that we saw the Greens in particular go backwards, particularly here in Queensland.
Caitlin Cassidy
Labor to deliver more on housing in second term, Murray Watt says
Labor will be “able to deliver” action it has promised on housing in its second term, the minister for employment and workplace relations, Murray Watt, has flagged.
The Labor senator told ABC’s 7.30 on Monday evening that Labor’s agenda in its first term was “more ambitious” than it is credited for, particularly on housing.
I think this term … we’ll actually now be able to deliver a lot of the things that we have promised in housing.
Pressed on whether Labor would make tax changes in its second term, including to negative gearing, he said the party had been “very clear” that it wasn’t proposing to change its policy and wouldn’t “start scrapping policies” either.
We think that we can meet the needs of younger Australians through the policy platform that we took to the election. Of course, the commitment to reduce Hecs debts by 20% was very popular among younger people. The commitments we’ve made to build more homes for first home-buyers. The 5% deposit scheme backed in by the government was very popular among young voters.
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories before the main action kicks off.
Labor have not been given enough credit for policies to ease the housing crisis, Murray Watt said last night, as the Labor senator promised that the new Albanese government “will be able” to deliver more to help in its second term, expecting things to be a little easier for Labor’s policy agenda in the new Senate.
It came as the prime minister warned crossbenchers last night to “get out of the way” and allow the private sector to get on with building more homes. More coming up.
It’s an altogether different outlook for the Liberals who are well on their way to a full-blown existential crisis. Gina Rinehart has suggested the party needs to become more Trumpian while others, especially former senior women MPs and senators such as Linda Reynolds say the party has to reform and get more women into parliament. In New South Wales, the Liberal leader says the party needs to revert to “timeless values” after the drubbing. More on that in a few minutes.
