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Australian Federal election results 2025 recap May 5: Jacqui Lambie in battle with Lee Hanson for Senate spot

Elisia Seeber, Matt Shrivell and Max CorstorphanThe Nightly
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Independent senator Jacqui Lambie is in a tough contest to hold her spot in parliament.
Camera IconIndependent senator Jacqui Lambie is in a tough contest to hold her spot in parliament. Credit: Mick Tsikas/AAP

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Elisia Seeber

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Scroll back through for all the updates and fall out from the Federal election.

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Elisia Seeber

Watch the latest Newsworthy episode

WATCH: In Newsworthy, Ben O’Shea unpacks Darth Trump’s weird Star Wars post as the US President boasts of friendship with Anthony Albanese. Plus, the PM gets onto student debt.

VideoIn today’s episode, ‘optimistic’ Anthony Albanese gets down to business, outlining his priorities on education and housing, while Donald Trump praised the PM and sledged former opposition Peter Dutton.
Elisia Seeber

Andrew Hastie pulls out of race to replace Dutton

Andrew Hastie will not run for the Liberal leadership.

The Nightly’s Latika M Bourke reports Mr Hastie, widely seen as a future Liberal prime minister, has not been making calls to lobby for colleagues’ support.

He was the only West Australian Liberal to increase his margin in his seat of Canning on the weekend.

2025 Federal Election

But he is not considered to be in the running to contest the Liberal leadership, which is vacant following the Coalition’s wipeout in the Federal election and Peter Dutton’s shock loss in the seat of Dickson.

Read more here.

Elisia Seeber

‘Slow the pace down’: PM in no rush to select cabinet

The Prime Minister says he won’t race to lock in a new cabinet.

Following Saturday’s landslide victory, attention has turned to the makeup of Anthony Albanese’s frontbench for his second term, but Albo says he’ll wait to reshuffle his ministry with some seats still too close to call.

“We’re going to try and slow the pace down a little bit over coming days. I’ll consult with colleagues about forming a front bench down the track,” he told reporters on Monday.

“Obviously there are a number of results that are unclear in electorates, but it’s very clear that we will have a substantial majority in the House of Representatives.”

Read more here.

Liberal insiders reveal why party’s polling missed swing towards Govt

As the Liberal Party headed towards an electoral disaster on Saturday, the small group in charge of Coalition strategy was largely oblivious.

At the start of the five-week campaign they had decided to focus the Liberal Party’s precious polling resources on 15 marginal seats.

Under a plan designed to push the Labor government into minority status, and perhaps even snatch power with crossbench support, the nightly “tracking” polls measuring the campaign’s progress only monitored one Coalition seat. The rest were held by the Labor Party or “teal” independents.

The offensive game strategy largely left leader Peter Dutton and his advisers blind as to what was unfolding across Australia: a fragile economic recovery and global trade war was spooking wavering voters into sticking with the government.

Instead of winning seats, the Coalition suffered a 2.9 per cent swing that will cost it more than a dozen, including many previously considered to be safe.

“They were operating with a numerical delusion,” a senior Liberal source said. “They thought they were a lot more competitive in a lot more seats than they were.”

Read the full story here.

Elisia Seeber

Parliament to include record-breaking number of women

Sisters are doing it for themselves!

News Corp’s Jessica Wang reports: A record number of women will represent Australians in the next term of government, with female MPs set to soar between 66 and 74 out of a total 150 seats.

The figure is a considerable uptick from the then record-breaking 58 women who were elected to the 47th parliament, while just 40 women were elected under the Morrison-led 46th parliament in 2019.

In the House of Representative, Labor has increased its female representation to 47 MPs out of a confirmed 87, meaning the number of female MPs outnumbers male MPs (40).

New faces set to enter parliament this year include Barton’s Ash Ambihaipahar, who retained the seat of former Indigenous minister Linda Burney for Labor, Claire Clutterham, who flipped the Adelaide seat of Sturt, and Ali France, who defeated Liberal leader Peter Dutton in Dickson.

Meanwhile, the Coalition has seven female MPs out 39, a decrease from its 2022 result of nine.

Read more here.

Elisia Seeber

Fiery Tasmanian senator’s near-decade of serving could be over

AAP’s Andrew Brown reports:Fiery Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie’s near-decade of serving on the cross bench may be coming to an end as she battles a familiar name for a final spot.

Senator Lambie is in a close contest for the sixth and final spot among the state’s Senate seats with One Nation’s Lee Hanson, the daughter of party founder Pauline Hanson.

The final spot could also be won by Labor, which secured a more than eight per cent swing in Tasmania.

Deputy Nationals leader Perin Davey is also in a fight to keep her place in the Senate, with the coalition suffering a 10 per cent swing against it in NSW.

The loss of the coalition’s Senate seat in NSW will be picked up by Labor, which will get three of the six slots in the state.

As of Monday afternoon, Labor is on track to have 28 seats in the 76-seat Senate.

The coalition is on course to claim 26 and the Greens 11, with the remainder going to the cross bench.

Read more here.

Elisia Seeber

Liberal loss: ‘Bitter pill for us to accept’

Liberal MP Aaron Violi, one of the few MPs to actually see a swing towards him in the seat of Casey in Melbourne, provided a sobering assessment of the Liberals this afternoon on the ABC.

“The Australian people made the decision that they didn’t believe we, as a Liberal party and the policies we put forward would help address the challenges that they faced, and that is a tough and bitter pill for us to accept,” he said.

“But that’s what we need to do. So, we need to move forward, holding the government to account, but also, most importantly, offering those positive policies that will solve the tangible challenges that the Australian people face.

“And clearly, the electorate broadly didn’t feel that we had the solutions to the challenges they face.”

2025 Federal Election
Elisia Seeber

First-time Labor candidate ready to hit the ground running

One of the Greens’ most prominent losses this election so far was their housing spokesperson, Max Chandler-Mather, in the Brisbane seat of Griffith.

There was almost a 17-percentage point two-party preferred swing to Labor rival Renee Coffey, a first-time candidate who boosted the party’s primary vote by six points.

2025 Federal Election

Ms Coffey says she’s ready to tackle to big issues in Griffith, including cost of living, housing, and climate change.

“I’m looking forward to getting my feet under the desk,” she said on ABC this afternoon.

“It has been a bit of a whirlwind now. I absolutely am a community-driven person and I have had a long history of involvement with our P&Cs across the electorate, so I’m looking forward to working with them, working out where the real needs are in the community, how I can assist and my office can assist best is something I’m really looking forward to.

“I am so excited to be able to do that and I’m looking forward to those chats, working out where I can add the most value here locally, but also in Canberra when it comes to representation for this community.”

Labor increased its representation of female candidates, with Queensland Labor welcoming Emma Comer, Madonna Jarrett, Kara Cook, Ali France, Renee Coffey and Julie-Ann Campbell.
Camera IconLabor increased its representation of female candidates, with Queensland Labor welcoming Emma Comer, Madonna Jarrett, Kara Cook, Ali France, Renee Coffey and Julie-Ann Campbell. Credit: News Corp Australia

She added that people “really want to see action” on the things that “matter most”, and Labor was getting it done.

“Every Australian taxpayer got a tax cut, wages are on the rise, we have actually closed the gender pay gap, it is the lowest it has ever been, inflation is under control and there has been a huge investment in things like Medicare, early education and care,” Ms Coffey spruiked.

“These are the things people care about.”

Elisia Seeber

Move towards teals ‘not going away’: Kate Chaney

Newly-elected Independent for Curtin in WA, Kate Chaney, says the movement towards the teals isn’t going away, despite the seats of Kooyong and Goldstein now leaning towards the Libs.

“We knew it was going to be close and there were so many attack adverts in the electorate,” Ms Chaney said of her win on ABC. “I’m happy with the result and I think it reflects there are a lot of people who feel disillusioned by the two parties.

“There is no doubt this is a movement that is not going away. We have seen the Liberal Party vacate that central or centre-right position and move to becoming a Conservative party and I think there are a lot of communities across Australia that are seeing being represented by someone who is accountable to them rather than a party structure can actually align more closely with their values, so I do not think it is going away.”

2025 Federal Election

She added having more voices in parliament that can speak up without being constrained by a party structure meant “we have richer discussions about the big challenges we’re facing as a country”.

“I think the role I can play now is much the same as the role in the last parliament and that is to look at everything on the merits and represent the values of my electorate and keep submissions on the agenda that the major parties would rather sweep under the carpet,” Ms Chaney said.

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