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Federal Election 2025: Winners and Losers after Labor's landslide

Federal Election 2025: Winners and Losers after Labor's landslide

News.com.au03-05-2025

Anthony Albanese has led Labor to a landslide win in the federal election after a nationwide swing toward the party put it on track to gain up to nine seats in the lower house.
The path to victory was brutal on the opposition, costing several senior Coalition MPs — including leader Peter Dutton — their seats.
The Greens have also taken a hit, with even the minor party's leader fighting to retain his seat of Melbourne.
With the vote count continuing, here are the key winners and losers so far.
NSW
Labor's Zhi Soon defeated senior Liberal MP David Coleman in the Sydney seat of Banks.
Mr Coleman was the opposition's foreign affairs spokesman.
Jenny Ware also lost Hughes — a Liberal stronghold since 1996 — to Labor's David Moncrieff, a 29-year-old first time candidate.
At the time of reporting, several other key seats in the state remain too close to call, including Calare, held by Nationals-turned-independent MP Andrew Gee.
Queensland
The Opposition Leader lost the seat of the Dickson to Labor's Ali France, bringing an end to Mr Dutton's 24 years in parliament.
It was Ms France's third attempt to oust him from the marginal north Brisbane seat.
Other LNP losers in Brisbane included Luke Howarth (Petrie), Ross Vasta (Bonner) and Terry Burt van Manen (Forde).
The Greens also took a hit in the Sunshine State, with one-termers Stephen Bates (Brisbane) and Max Chandler-Mather (Griffith) both succumbing to the red wave.
Victoria
Michael Sukkar, the Coalition's housing spokesman and manager of business in the house is expected to lose his seat of Deakin to Labor's Matt Gregg.
Tasmania
Labor's Jess Teesdale unseated maverick Liberal MP Bridget Archer in the ultra-marginal Tasmanian electorate of Bass, while Labor senator-turned-lower house candidate Anne Urquhart beat the Liberals' Mal Hingston for Braddon.
Western Australia
Vince Connelly — the former MP for the abolished Perth seat of Stirling — failed in his bid to return to parliament in Moore, with Labor's Tom French set to take it.
South Australia
ACT
Labor managed to clearly retain two of its three seats in the capital territory.
Counting was still underway in Bean.

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Anthony Albanese faces a novel challenge in Sussan Ley
Anthony Albanese faces a novel challenge in Sussan Ley

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timean hour ago

  • ABC News

Anthony Albanese faces a novel challenge in Sussan Ley

Anthony Albanese loves a trophy, especially a human one. He prides himself on his various "captain's pick" candidates — good campaigners he has steered into seats. Way back in the Gillard days, he was key in persuading discontented Liberal Peter Slipper to defect. Slipper became an independent and Labor's speaker. The exercise helped the government's numbers, but the bold play didn't end well for Labor or for Slipper. The government was tarnished, and Slipper, relentlessly pursued by the Coalition and mired in controversy, eventually had to quit the speakership. The affair did produce Julia Gillard's famous misogyny speech, however. Now Albanese has another gee-whiz prize — Western Australian Senator Dorinda Cox, who has defected from the Greens. Cox, after being defeated in a bid for Greens deputy leader, approached Labor and the PM drove her course to being accepted into the party. The manoeuvre makes a marginal but insignificant difference to Senate numbers — Labor will still need the Greens to pass legislation opposed by the Coalition. Taking in Cox is a risk, and some in Labor are looking at it askance. The prime minister's embrace of Cox contradicts Labor's argument when its Western Australian senator Fatima Payman defected to become an independent. It said then hers was a Labor seat and she should therefore resign. But this wouldn't be the first time expediency trumped consistency in politics. Cox, who is Indigenous and was spokesperson for First Nations and resources in the last parliament, has been a fierce critic of the extending the North West Shelf gas project, which the government has just announced. Albanese says he is confident she "understands that being a member of the Labor Party means that she will support positions that are made by the Labor Party". She has also faced allegations of treating staff badly. Labor discounts the claims against her, saying they are overblown and a product of Greens factionalism and toxicity. Certainly, she was given a tough time by the hard-left faction represented by deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi. Labor would be wise to ensure Cox feels supported in her new party home. Albanese perhaps calculates that the worst that can happen is there's a blow up and she defects to the crossbench. Labor could shrug and say, she was never really one of us. Snatching a senator from the Greens is particularly satisfying to Albanese because he hates the party so much. Last term, lower house Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather (defeated at the election) really got under his skin. More generally, the Greens held up important legislation, most notably on housing. In the new Senate, Labor will need only the Greens to pass legislation opposed by the Coalition. How new Greens leader Larissa Waters — who replaced Adam Bandt after he lost his seat — handles the party's relationship with the government will be crucial for the more contentious parts of Labor's legislative program. The usually low-key Waters will be under a lot of pressure. The Greens had a bad election, losing three lower house seats. Now they have lost a senator at the start of Waters's watch. Waters conceded on the Serious Danger podcast in late May that Labor had successfully run the narrative of the Greens as blockers. "So, I do think we're going to need to be quite deft in how we handle balance of power in this term, […] People want us to be constructive. They don't just want us to roll over and tick off on any old shit. They want meaningful reforms." Waters will want to pick her fights carefully and also find ways of pursuing the Greens' agenda where the party co-operates. The first deal is likely to be on the government's legislation to increase the tax on those with large superannuation balances, which contains the controversial provision to tax unrealised capital gains. Opposition Leader Sussan Ley and her team will confront some of the same problems as the Greens — when to oppose and when to seek to negotiate with the government. For his part, Albanese will have a novel challenge with Ley — what stance to adopt against the first female opposition leader, especially but not only in parliamentary clashes. After facing two alpha-male Liberal leaders, Scott Morrison and Peter Dutton, a new approach will obviously be necessary. As one Labor man succinctly puts it, "Labor can't monster a woman". There can be no repeat of Albanese, a frontbencher a decade ago in the Shorten opposition, interjecting to urge a female colleague engaged in a stoush with Ley to "smash her". For Ley, trying to deal with the Liberals' multiple difficulties in attracting women voters and candidates must be high on her agenda. Former Liberal federal president Alan Stockdale, one of the three-person group currently running the NSW division of the party, showed himself part of the problem when this week he told the NSW Liberal Women's Council, "The women in this party are so assertive now that we may need some special rules for men to get them pre-selected." Stockdale said later he was being "light-hearted". Tone deaf might be a better term. Ley jumped on him. "There is nothing wrong with being an assertive woman. In fact, I encourage assertive women to join the Liberal Party." The jury is out on whether Ley will be able to make any sort of fist of her near-impossible job. But in the short time she's been leader, she has shown she is willing to be assertive. She emerged from the brief split in the Coalition looking much steadier than Nationals leader David Littleproud, even though she had to persuade her party room to accept the minor party's policy demands. In her frontbench reshuffle, she was willing to wear the inevitable criticism that came with dropping a couple of senior women who had under-performed. As deputy leader, Ley adjusted her style a while before the election, toning down the aggression and sometimes wild attacks, that had characterised her performance earlier in the term. A Liberal source said she found her "line and length". As leader, she will have others, notably deputy Ted O'Brien, to do the head-kicking, giving her room to attempt to develop a positive political persona. Labor leaned into attacking Dutton — never afraid to name him. With Ley, Albanese might adopt the Bob Carr approach of avoiding using his opponent's name. At least until he finds his line and length in dealing with her. Michelle Grattan is a professorial fellow at the University of Canberra and chief political correspondent at The Conversation, where this article first appeared.

Chalmers has earned the right to snub the Coalition, but here's why he shouldn't
Chalmers has earned the right to snub the Coalition, but here's why he shouldn't

The Age

timean hour ago

  • The Age

Chalmers has earned the right to snub the Coalition, but here's why he shouldn't

Jim Chalmers slammed the door shut this week on doing a deal with the Coalition on tax changes to superannuation. The treasurer is perfectly entitled to thumb his nose at the opposition. Labor first announced these tax changes last term, the government took them to the election, and it then secured a thumping majority on May 3. But Chalmers is making a mistake. The much-depleted Coalition has not yet decided whether it plans to be constructive, in a legislative sense, in this second term on the opposition benches, or whether it will continue with the monomaniacal impulse to say 'no' to most proposals. Chalmers could not agree to the Coalition's twin requests – that the tax change be indexed so that over time the impost does not affect more than the initial estimate of 80,000 people and second, that the tax would not apply to unrealised capital gains (such as a family farm or an expensive artwork) held by an individual's self-managed super fund. Instead, the treasurer has chosen to negotiate with the Greens, who also want tweaks, but who are much more likely to eventually pass the tax in its original form. So, notwithstanding the huffing and puffing from the opposition and some in the more conservative sections of the media, this debate is likely to end up with Chalmers getting his way and securing the new tax – which raises the tax rate to 30 per cent on superannuation balances over $3 million – in its unamended form. The treasurer's mistake is not so much in not compromising on the detail with the Coalition (arguments can be made for and against the proposed changes). Rather, it's in the signal sent to the Coalition about how he intends to negotiate in the coming term of parliament. Chalmers' PhD, Brawler Statesman, was written about Labor's legendary former treasurer and prime minister, Paul Keating and how the one-time member for Blaxland implemented and then bedded down ambitious and necessary economic reform over more than a decade. Keating's record of reform (backed by Bob Hawke) is part of political folklore now – he floated the Australian dollar, opened up the economy, reduced tariffs, welcomed foreign banks, privatised major government-owned companies such as Qantas and more.

Chalmers has earned the right to snub the Coalition, but here's why he shouldn't
Chalmers has earned the right to snub the Coalition, but here's why he shouldn't

Sydney Morning Herald

timean hour ago

  • Sydney Morning Herald

Chalmers has earned the right to snub the Coalition, but here's why he shouldn't

Jim Chalmers slammed the door shut this week on doing a deal with the Coalition on tax changes to superannuation. The treasurer is perfectly entitled to thumb his nose at the opposition. Labor first announced these tax changes last term, the government took them to the election, and it then secured a thumping majority on May 3. But Chalmers is making a mistake. The much-depleted Coalition has not yet decided whether it plans to be constructive, in a legislative sense, in this second term on the opposition benches, or whether it will continue with the monomaniacal impulse to say 'no' to most proposals. Chalmers could not agree to the Coalition's twin requests – that the tax change be indexed so that over time the impost does not affect more than the initial estimate of 80,000 people and second, that the tax would not apply to unrealised capital gains (such as a family farm or an expensive artwork) held by an individual's self-managed super fund. Instead, the treasurer has chosen to negotiate with the Greens, who also want tweaks, but who are much more likely to eventually pass the tax in its original form. So, notwithstanding the huffing and puffing from the opposition and some in the more conservative sections of the media, this debate is likely to end up with Chalmers getting his way and securing the new tax – which raises the tax rate to 30 per cent on superannuation balances over $3 million – in its unamended form. The treasurer's mistake is not so much in not compromising on the detail with the Coalition (arguments can be made for and against the proposed changes). Rather, it's in the signal sent to the Coalition about how he intends to negotiate in the coming term of parliament. Chalmers' PhD, Brawler Statesman, was written about Labor's legendary former treasurer and prime minister, Paul Keating and how the one-time member for Blaxland implemented and then bedded down ambitious and necessary economic reform over more than a decade. Keating's record of reform (backed by Bob Hawke) is part of political folklore now – he floated the Australian dollar, opened up the economy, reduced tariffs, welcomed foreign banks, privatised major government-owned companies such as Qantas and more.

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