Nationals still in the fight and threatening to clinch shock victory in core Victorian Labor seat
The Nationals are threatening to produce a shock victory in the core Labor seat of Bendigo, with the seat firmly held by the major party since 1998.
Despite Prime Minister Anthony Albanese's resounding election victory, counting in the once ironclad Labor seat of Bendigo in regional Victoria has slowed, with the Nationals a stone throw away from securing an upset result.
Nationals candidate Andew Lethlean, a well-known local bar operator is now trailing incumbent Labor MP Lisa Chesters by 1009 votes, with the two-party preferred count sitting at 50.72 to 49.28 per cent.
However, at 2pm on Wednesday Mr Lethlean was sitting 808 votes ahead of Ms Chesters with the Nationals receiving a 29.6 per cent swing on first preferences.
Ms Chesters is doing better-than-expected on postal votes though, which traditionally favour conservative candidates as Mr Lethlean leads postal votes 51-49 on a two-party preferred measure.
Labor has firmly held the seat since 1998 with Ms Chesters heading into the 2025 election on a sizeable margin of 12 per cent.
Bendigo was one of the seats where preference voting had to be reset after the AEC included Labor and the Liberals in the two-party preferred count on election night, instead of Labor and the Nationals.
The Nationals have not run a candidate in Bendigo since 2016 receiving only 3.63 per cent of primary votes, with the party last holding the seat in 1949.
Ms Chesters still remains a strong chance to hold as the vote count continues to significantly stall, with a two-candidate preferred only completed for 23 of the 66 polling places and 69.25% of ballet papers processed.
The Nationals are believed to have poured nearly $1 million into the seat and ran a targeted campaign tying Ms Chesters to Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan, who holds the state seat of Bendigo East.
The Nationals spent more money in the electorate than anywhere else in Victoria and pursued extensive letterboxing campaigns, with one unnamed Labor figure telling The Age 'What the hell is going on in Bendigo?'
During the campaign Mr Lethlean came under fire after it was reported a bar he owned sold alcohol while its license was suspended.
Mr Lethlean said the suspension was the result of an 'administrative oversight' and stated the annual license fee was paid as soon as the issue was identified.
Unlike their Liberal counterparts, the Nationals secured re-election in nine out of ten of their lower house seats, losing Calare in NSW to independent Andrew Gee who quit the party in late 2022 due to the Coalition's stance on the Voice.
With the country party now making up a larger percentage of the Coalition due to the Liberals catastrophic loss, Nationals MP Michael McCormack told the ABC his party would be calling for more shadow ministries.
'It's worked out on a per capita basis with how many seats you hold as part of a joint number in the Coalition,' Mr McCormack said
The Riverina MP, who retained his seat with a 3.3 per cent swing also advised the Liberals to keep their grievances to their party room.
'Anonymous Liberal people who so often background and brief journalists in Canberra, shut your bloody mouths,' he said.
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The Advertiser
29 minutes ago
- The Advertiser
Proposed law change protects questionable pub jokes
Telling a questionable joke at a pub will not land people before an anti-discrimination complaints hearing under a territory's proposed new laws. Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby has defended the Northern Territory government's planned anti-discrimination laws to be introduced to parliament in July. At an estimates hearing on Monday, she rejected accusations from shadow attorney-general Chansey Paech that the planned laws "watered down" protections for people offended by comments made about them. Ms Boothby said her government was restoring "fairness and common sense" to laws that went too far when the previous Labor government revised them in 2022. The proposed laws remove "vague" terms such as "offend" and "insult". They will be replaced with clearer terms to prohibit conduct that "incites hatred, serious contempt or severe ridicule" based on personal attributes such as race, sexuality, gender identity, religion and more. "It's still a strong measure of anti-vilification, so we don't put up with that kind of behaviour," Ms Boothby said. "Any kind of hate speech is not acceptable in our community." The attorney-general said the new laws also restored protections for religious schools, allowing them to hire staff who upheld their faith while protecting against discrimination based on race, sexuality or gender. Territorians wanted their freedom to enjoy the territory lifestyle, she said. "It's not just having a joke at the pub that's going to land you in front of a hearing," Ms Boothby said. "We want something that's more serious than that. "We still want to be able to tell a joke. We still want to have freedom of speech debates." It was a case of restoring balance and ensuring the law did not overreach into everyday conversations, religious freedoms, or basic rights to express an opinion, Ms Boothby said. The government consulted religious and multicultural groups, sex workers, LGBTQI groups, the anti-discrimination commissioner and others on the new laws. The proposed legislation was in line with changes made in other Australian jurisdictions, the attorney-general said. The estimates hearing was told the office of the NT Anti-Discrimination Commissioner had a budget cut for 2025/26 of $269,000 to $1.65 million. Commissioner Jeswynn Yogaratnam told the hearing his office received up to 300 complaints a year but only had two complaints officers amid a large backlog of cases. He said only three of 46 vilification complaints this financial year had been accepted in relation to race, religious belief, gender identity and disability. Complaints were assessed as to whether they were trivial, vexatious or had no grounds, while those that proceeded were subject to a high-threshold objective standard of assessment, Mr Yogaratnam said. "So things like your jokes at the pub would not amount to vilification in the context of the way in which we assess it. "Clearly if that joke is one that incites hatred in relation to one of the 24 protected attributes like race, gender identity, disability, then that would be something we would need to consider." Any other version of the NT's vilification provision "would be watering it down" because it was the strongest vilification law in Australia, he said. Telling a questionable joke at a pub will not land people before an anti-discrimination complaints hearing under a territory's proposed new laws. Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby has defended the Northern Territory government's planned anti-discrimination laws to be introduced to parliament in July. At an estimates hearing on Monday, she rejected accusations from shadow attorney-general Chansey Paech that the planned laws "watered down" protections for people offended by comments made about them. Ms Boothby said her government was restoring "fairness and common sense" to laws that went too far when the previous Labor government revised them in 2022. The proposed laws remove "vague" terms such as "offend" and "insult". They will be replaced with clearer terms to prohibit conduct that "incites hatred, serious contempt or severe ridicule" based on personal attributes such as race, sexuality, gender identity, religion and more. "It's still a strong measure of anti-vilification, so we don't put up with that kind of behaviour," Ms Boothby said. "Any kind of hate speech is not acceptable in our community." The attorney-general said the new laws also restored protections for religious schools, allowing them to hire staff who upheld their faith while protecting against discrimination based on race, sexuality or gender. Territorians wanted their freedom to enjoy the territory lifestyle, she said. "It's not just having a joke at the pub that's going to land you in front of a hearing," Ms Boothby said. "We want something that's more serious than that. "We still want to be able to tell a joke. We still want to have freedom of speech debates." It was a case of restoring balance and ensuring the law did not overreach into everyday conversations, religious freedoms, or basic rights to express an opinion, Ms Boothby said. The government consulted religious and multicultural groups, sex workers, LGBTQI groups, the anti-discrimination commissioner and others on the new laws. The proposed legislation was in line with changes made in other Australian jurisdictions, the attorney-general said. The estimates hearing was told the office of the NT Anti-Discrimination Commissioner had a budget cut for 2025/26 of $269,000 to $1.65 million. Commissioner Jeswynn Yogaratnam told the hearing his office received up to 300 complaints a year but only had two complaints officers amid a large backlog of cases. He said only three of 46 vilification complaints this financial year had been accepted in relation to race, religious belief, gender identity and disability. Complaints were assessed as to whether they were trivial, vexatious or had no grounds, while those that proceeded were subject to a high-threshold objective standard of assessment, Mr Yogaratnam said. "So things like your jokes at the pub would not amount to vilification in the context of the way in which we assess it. "Clearly if that joke is one that incites hatred in relation to one of the 24 protected attributes like race, gender identity, disability, then that would be something we would need to consider." Any other version of the NT's vilification provision "would be watering it down" because it was the strongest vilification law in Australia, he said. Telling a questionable joke at a pub will not land people before an anti-discrimination complaints hearing under a territory's proposed new laws. Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby has defended the Northern Territory government's planned anti-discrimination laws to be introduced to parliament in July. At an estimates hearing on Monday, she rejected accusations from shadow attorney-general Chansey Paech that the planned laws "watered down" protections for people offended by comments made about them. Ms Boothby said her government was restoring "fairness and common sense" to laws that went too far when the previous Labor government revised them in 2022. The proposed laws remove "vague" terms such as "offend" and "insult". They will be replaced with clearer terms to prohibit conduct that "incites hatred, serious contempt or severe ridicule" based on personal attributes such as race, sexuality, gender identity, religion and more. "It's still a strong measure of anti-vilification, so we don't put up with that kind of behaviour," Ms Boothby said. "Any kind of hate speech is not acceptable in our community." The attorney-general said the new laws also restored protections for religious schools, allowing them to hire staff who upheld their faith while protecting against discrimination based on race, sexuality or gender. Territorians wanted their freedom to enjoy the territory lifestyle, she said. "It's not just having a joke at the pub that's going to land you in front of a hearing," Ms Boothby said. "We want something that's more serious than that. "We still want to be able to tell a joke. We still want to have freedom of speech debates." It was a case of restoring balance and ensuring the law did not overreach into everyday conversations, religious freedoms, or basic rights to express an opinion, Ms Boothby said. The government consulted religious and multicultural groups, sex workers, LGBTQI groups, the anti-discrimination commissioner and others on the new laws. The proposed legislation was in line with changes made in other Australian jurisdictions, the attorney-general said. The estimates hearing was told the office of the NT Anti-Discrimination Commissioner had a budget cut for 2025/26 of $269,000 to $1.65 million. Commissioner Jeswynn Yogaratnam told the hearing his office received up to 300 complaints a year but only had two complaints officers amid a large backlog of cases. He said only three of 46 vilification complaints this financial year had been accepted in relation to race, religious belief, gender identity and disability. Complaints were assessed as to whether they were trivial, vexatious or had no grounds, while those that proceeded were subject to a high-threshold objective standard of assessment, Mr Yogaratnam said. "So things like your jokes at the pub would not amount to vilification in the context of the way in which we assess it. "Clearly if that joke is one that incites hatred in relation to one of the 24 protected attributes like race, gender identity, disability, then that would be something we would need to consider." Any other version of the NT's vilification provision "would be watering it down" because it was the strongest vilification law in Australia, he said. Telling a questionable joke at a pub will not land people before an anti-discrimination complaints hearing under a territory's proposed new laws. Attorney-General Marie-Clare Boothby has defended the Northern Territory government's planned anti-discrimination laws to be introduced to parliament in July. At an estimates hearing on Monday, she rejected accusations from shadow attorney-general Chansey Paech that the planned laws "watered down" protections for people offended by comments made about them. Ms Boothby said her government was restoring "fairness and common sense" to laws that went too far when the previous Labor government revised them in 2022. The proposed laws remove "vague" terms such as "offend" and "insult". They will be replaced with clearer terms to prohibit conduct that "incites hatred, serious contempt or severe ridicule" based on personal attributes such as race, sexuality, gender identity, religion and more. "It's still a strong measure of anti-vilification, so we don't put up with that kind of behaviour," Ms Boothby said. "Any kind of hate speech is not acceptable in our community." The attorney-general said the new laws also restored protections for religious schools, allowing them to hire staff who upheld their faith while protecting against discrimination based on race, sexuality or gender. Territorians wanted their freedom to enjoy the territory lifestyle, she said. "It's not just having a joke at the pub that's going to land you in front of a hearing," Ms Boothby said. "We want something that's more serious than that. "We still want to be able to tell a joke. We still want to have freedom of speech debates." It was a case of restoring balance and ensuring the law did not overreach into everyday conversations, religious freedoms, or basic rights to express an opinion, Ms Boothby said. The government consulted religious and multicultural groups, sex workers, LGBTQI groups, the anti-discrimination commissioner and others on the new laws. The proposed legislation was in line with changes made in other Australian jurisdictions, the attorney-general said. The estimates hearing was told the office of the NT Anti-Discrimination Commissioner had a budget cut for 2025/26 of $269,000 to $1.65 million. Commissioner Jeswynn Yogaratnam told the hearing his office received up to 300 complaints a year but only had two complaints officers amid a large backlog of cases. He said only three of 46 vilification complaints this financial year had been accepted in relation to race, religious belief, gender identity and disability. Complaints were assessed as to whether they were trivial, vexatious or had no grounds, while those that proceeded were subject to a high-threshold objective standard of assessment, Mr Yogaratnam said. "So things like your jokes at the pub would not amount to vilification in the context of the way in which we assess it. "Clearly if that joke is one that incites hatred in relation to one of the 24 protected attributes like race, gender identity, disability, then that would be something we would need to consider." Any other version of the NT's vilification provision "would be watering it down" because it was the strongest vilification law in Australia, he said.
West Australian
39 minutes ago
- West Australian
Rita Saffioti refuses to deny that State Government will dump power bill credits
WA's economy is in 'very different' environment compared to when the State Government started rolling out power bill credits three years ago, Rita Saffioti believes, as she prepares to hand down a budget without the cost of living measure. Ahead of Thursday's State Budget — Labor's first since the election — the Treasurer refused to be drawn on continued speculation the Government was intending to dump the $400 electricity bill credits after three years. Asked on Monday whether she had considered weaning households off the credit with a reduced discount from July, Ms Saffioti said the Government 'considered all aspects in relation to budget considerations'. 'You have to look at the environment in which we're operating in. In 2022, we were experiencing inflation rates of over 6 per cent to 8 per cent,' she said. 'That was a very, very different environment. So you always have to consider the environment in which you're operating in and making sure we continue to invest in key aspects of the economy. 'There is a Commonwealth energy relief that's coming through the energy rebate that we pay through the state system of $150 but we continually look at all different aspects of cost of living.' Ms Saffioti said she recognised families were still facing pressures on household budgets. 'That's why we continue to outline key, key measures like the Student Assistance Payment, other initiatives such as supporting new housing supply,' she said. 'There's a whole range of initiatives that go to support people in relation to managing their household budgets. 'We constantly monitor the environment, and we make a range of decisions to make sure we can support households.' It comes after The West revealed last week families were facing a 50 per cent increase in their annual power bills from July, with the Government mooted to be dumping the energy bill credit. In the lead up to this year's dual State and Federal elections, both governments forked out electricity bill relief in the form of the power rebates of $400 and $300 respectively. Despite the Federal Government's decision to extend their $150 power bill rebate program for the last six months of this year, WA Labor's end to credits will mean households have to pay an extra $550 in the year from July. That, coupled with the 2.8 per cent increase, mean the average household modelled in the State Budget will see power prices rise from $1200 to more than $1800.
The Age
2 hours ago
- The Age
Liberals firm on dumping Victorian elders after ‘assertive women' comments
The federal Liberal Party is preparing to dump the two octogenarian Victorians appointed to oversee the troubled NSW division, a fortnight after ex-Victorian treasurer Alan Stockdale questioned whether the prevalence of assertive women required protecting men. Under a draft plan conveyed by four senior Liberal sources, who all spoke on the condition of anonymity citing party rules barring speaking with the media, the administrative committee's term would expire on June 30. It would probably be replaced by a seven-person committee chaired by a Liberal luminary. Under the plan, the NSW division would be steered by a five to seven-person committee from July 1, with representation from each of the three factions plus an independent chair appointed to oversee the party's constitutional reform process, according to three sources privy to the proposed changes. The tenure of Stockdale and former Victorian senator Richard Alston, unpopular among a large section of NSW Liberals, appeared terminal after the former raised concerns about assertive women during a meeting of the party's women's council on June 3. Stockdale later characterised his comments as a 'poorly chosen remark', but he was rebuked by federal party leader Sussan Ley and other Liberal women. Alston, Stockdale and NSW MP Peta Seaton were appointed by former Liberal leader Peter Dutton after the division's failure to submit 140 candidate nomination forms before last year's local government elections. Negotiations have been taking place for weeks, one senior Liberal source said. Ley has been talking to powerbrokers from the party's three factions along with NSW leader Mark Speakman about the best way forward. Stockdale, Alston and Seaton were consulting party members as part of an effort to reform the division's constitution, reduce the power of factions in NSW and improve the ability of members to participate in the party. Another Liberal source involved in planning the deal said the proposed replacement committee would be between four and seven people. The three former vice presidents of the NSW state executive would play a key role, along with the division's treasurer, Mark Baillie.
