Linda Reynolds blames male dominance of Liberals for poll failure and backs Ley to lead
Outgoing Liberal senator Linda Reynolds has thrown her support behind a potential leadership tilt by current deputy leader Sussan Ley, while saying the party’s election campaign had been “a comprehensive failure”.
She told ABC Radio Perth:
You can see through successive reviews in federal and state in terms of where we have taken the wrong turn but we haven’t comprehensively understood those lessons and we certainly haven’t implemented the reforms that are needed. It was a comprehensive failure.
She attributed the failure of the party to speak to voters as partly due to its male dominance, and failure to act on the findings of reviews that recommended changes that would increase the involvement of women in the party.
Reynolds said:
Ten years ago I was part of a review into gender … and we recommended targets and how to get there without quotas. That’s been the Liberal party policy for 10 years but it’s just sat on a shelf. We do have to have the hard conversations now about how we become more gender-balanced but also a broader diversity.
There was also a strong religious right flank of the party in WA, Reynolds said, which didn’t resonate with or represent mainstream Australia.
Reynolds said she would support current deputy leader Sussan Ley to replace Peter Dutton as leader, if Ley should nominate, saying she would be “a great and a very healing and receptive leader for our party”.
Key events
Luca Ittimani
Labor’s election win offers “an enormous positive for the country,” providing consistency and certainty for businesses and lenders, Westpac chief executive Anthony Miller has said.
The continuity of re-election stood in contrast to the uncertainty and volatility faced by other countries, Miller told investors and media after releasing Westpac’s half-yearly report. He said:
That certainty that the Labor Party has provided over the last couple of years in government and now re-elected, is an incredibly powerful outcome and a very positive one for the country. …
[It] puts us in a very good position globally to attract capital and talent to this country. And so I think consistency and certainty and just getting things done methodically, as opposed to boldly going in different and new directions, is something to be thoughtful about.
Miller said the continuity would give the government more opportunities to improve productivity, pointing to treasurer Jim Chalmers’ comments about focusing on productivity reform in a second term. He flagged the energy transition, critical minerals and rare earths and expanded defence forces including AUKUS as potential drivers of economic growth in Labor’s second term:
There’s so many opportunities for them that I think it’s a very positive outlook for the next few years, notwithstanding the global uncertainty that we’re operating in.
Dan Jervis-Bardy
Labor set to increase Senate seats
Labor is expected to further grow its numbers in the Senate, allowing it to pass legislation with only the support of the Greens in a power shift that could sideline previously influential crossbenchers such as David Pocock.
The Coalition’s election disaster looks likely to claim another casualty, with the Nationals’ deputy leader, Perin Davey, poised to lose her New South Wales Senate seat.
Despite the Greens losing two of their four seats in the lower house, party leader Adam Bandt said the Senate results should encourage Labor to pursue a bolder, more progressive policy agenda in its second term, including expanding Medicare, free childcare and banning new fossil fuel projects.
Read the full story here:
Linda Reynolds blames male dominance of Liberals for poll failure and backs Ley to lead
Outgoing Liberal senator Linda Reynolds has thrown her support behind a potential leadership tilt by current deputy leader Sussan Ley, while saying the party’s election campaign had been “a comprehensive failure”.
She told ABC Radio Perth:
You can see through successive reviews in federal and state in terms of where we have taken the wrong turn but we haven’t comprehensively understood those lessons and we certainly haven’t implemented the reforms that are needed. It was a comprehensive failure.
She attributed the failure of the party to speak to voters as partly due to its male dominance, and failure to act on the findings of reviews that recommended changes that would increase the involvement of women in the party.
Reynolds said:
Ten years ago I was part of a review into gender … and we recommended targets and how to get there without quotas. That’s been the Liberal party policy for 10 years but it’s just sat on a shelf. We do have to have the hard conversations now about how we become more gender-balanced but also a broader diversity.
There was also a strong religious right flank of the party in WA, Reynolds said, which didn’t resonate with or represent mainstream Australia.
Reynolds said she would support current deputy leader Sussan Ley to replace Peter Dutton as leader, if Ley should nominate, saying she would be “a great and a very healing and receptive leader for our party”.
Benita Kolovos
Liberal candidate says late swing to her party in Kooyong
Sticking with the battle for the Victorian seat of Kooyong, Guardian Australia has seen an email from Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer to her supporters on Sunday night in which she says there has been a late swing towards the party in the seat.
In the email, she says:
Last night was not the result we had hoped for the Coalition. We had an average 3% swing against us across the country. But thanks to all your hard work, we managed to fight the national swing. It is now clear there will be a swing towards us in Kooyong. There are only a small handful of seats nationwide where this is the case. Currently the swing to us in Kooyong is +1.5% and we have 49% of the vote. That is a direct result of your efforts over the past year.
She says there are still 22,000 votes to be counted in the electorate and the Liberals “need just 943 extra votes to win”.
Most of the uncounted votes are postal votes. They are coming in very strongly in our favour. If these postal votes continue on their current TPP trajectory of 62–38, we can win this seat. That is not blind hope – that’s the raw numbers.
Hamer also apologised for missing any supporters at her election night event at the Tower in Hawthorn. The Age has reported she didn’t attend the party until 11pm and hasn’t spoken publicly since election night.
Benita Kolovos
Postal vote count continues amid close races in Goldstein and Wills
The Australian Electoral Commission says it will have an update on the tightly contested Victorian seats of Goldstein and Wills later this afternoon.
While candidates in both seats expected there would be few votes counted today, the AEC has confirmed to Guardian Australia it will continue to count postal votes in both seats.
There are about 5,000 unopened postal votes on hand in Wills and 4,300 in Goldstein that will be checked off the roll this morning and then admitted to the count this afternoon.
Labor’s MP for Wills, Peter Khalil, is facing a challenge from Greens candidate Samantha Ratnam, while the independent MP for Goldstein, Zoe Daniel, is trying to hold on to her seat as the former Liberal MP for the electorate, Tim Wilson, attempts to stage a comeback.
In a social media video on Sunday night, Wilson said there were 27,000 postal vote applications in Goldstein and they usually track 60-40 in the Liberal party’s favour:
That’s the reason we remain incredibly optimistic, but we are not seeking to comment on the result until we see the final results.
Catie McLeod
Albanese says student debt reduction is first priority
Albanese says the first item on his government’s policy agenda is a “20% cut in student debt”.
Late last year, the prime minister promised that a re-elected Labor government would wipe about $16bn worth of debt in what an election policy sold as a cost-of-living measure for young Australians.
The 20% reduction would not capped and would also apply to vocational education and training (VET) loans and apprenticeship support loans.
According to government figures, released at the time the policy was announced, a university graduate with an average debt of $27,600 will save $5,520.
Speaking to reporters this morning, Albanese said he expected the legislation to pass before the start of the next financial year:
I’m very confident we have a mandate for that. We can’t have been clearer.
If the Senate gets in the way of that, then they’ll receive the same response the housing spokespeople for the Liberal party and the Greens got on Saturday.
With these last comments, Albanese was referring to the Liberal party’s former housing spokesperson, Michael Sukkar, and the Greens’ former housing spokesperson, Max Chandler-Mather, who both lost their seats in parliament on Saturday night.
Albanese was also asked whether, given the size of the mandate Labor had won, he was tempted to consider changes to the taxation or superannuation systems.
He replied:
We’re not getting ahead of ourselves.
Albanese says had ‘warm and positive conversation’ with Trump
Catie McLeod
Albanese has expanded on his conversation with Trump and said they will meet in person “at some time in the future”.
In response to questions from journalists at parliament house about his discussion with the US president, Albanese said:
I had a warm and positive conversation with President Donald Trump just a short while ago when I was at the Lodge.
And I thank him for his very warm message of congratulations.
We talked about Aukus and tariffs. We’ll engage with each other on a face-to-face basis at some time in the future.
But it was … very warm. I thank him for reaching out in such a positive way as well.
The prime minister would not be drawn on whether Trump made any promises about his administration’s wide-ranging tariff regime, which includes Australia.
Albanese said:
I won’t go into all of the personal comments that he made. But it was very generous in his personal warmth and praise towards myself.
He … expressed the desire to continue to work with me in the future.
Albanese says he spoke to Trump and other world leaders after poll win
Catie McLeod
The prime minister says he hopes to earn Australians’ trust “on an ongoing basis” and that he has spoken to a range of world leaders after winning the election.
Anthony Albanese is addressing the media at Parliament House in his first press conference since Labor’s landslide win returned the party to government with an increased majority.
Albanese said he had spoken with leaders including the US president, Donald Trump, and the Canadian prime minister, Mark Carney.
Albanese said Carney had invited him to attend the next conference of the G7 economic forum in June and that he had accepted.
Australia is not a G7 member but has been invited to take part in its conferences in the past.
Albanese did not elaborate on his conversation with Trump.
Monique Ryan walks back claim of victory in Kooyong
Benita Kolovos
Independent MP for Kooyong Monique Ryan says her seat is “too close to call” despite claiming victory on Saturday night.
In a statement she posted on Facebook this morning, Ryan is now saying it will take some days, even weeks, before the final count will be known:
The election result in Kooyong is too close to call at this point. It will take some days – possibly some weeks – for the outcome to be confirmed. Thank you Kooyong, for your support. Thanks to my team, and my family. Thanks to all of the Kooyong volunteers for your extraordinary hard work. And thanks to the AEC workers who are still dealing with a whole lot of ballots.
It comes after Goldstein independent Zoe Daniel also issued a similar statement on Sunday as her lead against Liberal MP Tim Wilson had shrunk from 1,800 votes in the morning to 90 by the afternoon.
Both Daniel and Ryan took to the stage of their respective election night parties to claim victory.
“This has been incredibly hard, but we did it,” Daniel told her supporters, who gathered at Elwood bowls club.
Ryan told supporters at the Auburn hotel that “despite the slings and arrows” of a “tough” campaign, they looked to have “overcome the Brethren” – a nod to the Plymouth Brethren Christian church, who had been campaigning for her opponent, Liberal Amelia Hamer.
Standing behind her, Ryan’s family held up a sign that read: “Kooyong, we did it!”
Climate group says Dutton’s ‘nuclear fantasy was a major turn-off’
Australians want “a credible plan to cut climate pollution” and voted for it on Saturday, the Climate Council chief executive has said.
The organisation’s own analysis of the election results showed that Labor’s two-party-preferred vote increased in seats where there was considerable debate about offshore wind farms, the council said in a release today.
The Climate Council’s chief executive, Amanda McKenzie, said:
Voters have sent a resounding message: no party can expect to govern this country without a credible plan to cut climate pollution.
Peter Dutton’s scheme to delay climate action with a nuclear fantasy was a major turn-off, particularly for women and undecided voters. Instead, in overwhelming numbers, people voted for Labor’s cleaner, renewable-powered future backed by storage, including home batteries.
Climate denial and delay are now politically toxic in Australia. This is a lesson that the Coalition ought to have learned in 2022, when a record number of climate champions knocked out seven of their MPs. The 2025 election results show this is now a political norm: voters won’t consider you fit for government unless you have sensible policies that pass the climate barometer.
Aussie voters expect, and deserve, much better than Trumpian attacks on science and climate denialism.
We mentioned earlier that the Greens are closely watching the count in Wills, where Labor MP Peter Khalil is facing a challenge from Greens candidate Samantha Ratnam. Khalil is currently ahead 51.6% to 48.4% – some 2,813 votes separating the candidates.
Latest election count as some seats go down to wire
The electorate of Kooyong is another seat where the election outcome is still yet to be determined, where “teal” independent MP Monique Ryan is being challenged by Liberal Amelia Hamer. Ryan leads with 51.03% of the vote to Hamer’s 48.97%.
Over in Bradfield, in New South Wales, 905 votes separate independent Nicolette Boele and Liberal Gisele Kapterian. Bradfield was formerly a safe seat for the Coalition.
In the Western Australian seat of Bullwinkel, Labor’s Trish Cook leads Liberal Matt Moran by just 85 votes. Preferences from the Nationals, who are in third place, will likely decide the outcome there.
– With AAP
Natasha May
Butler lashes out at ‘misleading campaign run by the big pathology companies’
The health minister, Mark Butler, has told Adelaide’s 5AA Radio his priorities for the portfolio this second term are turning bulk billing around for people without a concession card and rolling out more urgent care clinics.
Butler was also asked about signage within pathology services that say from 1 July the government is cutting $356m from pathology services, halving the Medicare rebate for vitamin B12 and urine tests.
Butler said:
This is a pretty dishonest campaign being run by the very big, big, big pathology companies. We implemented some changes that were the product of expert advice, expert clinical advice. There is a sort of expert group of doctors and clinicians who advise the government, whether they’re Labor or Liberal, about how the Medicare schedule works, and they provided some advice to try and cut down what they describe as unnecessary tests.
Now there’s been a pretty misleading campaign run by the big pathology companies saying people who have a clinical need for this type of testing are not going to get it through Medicare. They will. There’s no question about that.
And what the big pathology companies also fail to put into their poster is that for the first time in many, years, I’ve provided indexation, or rebate increases, for pathology tests, which they’ve been complaining about for some time. I think it has been more than 20 years since the Medicare rebates had been increased for pathology.
Trump says he is ‘very friendly’ with Albanese and has ‘no idea’ who ran against him
The US president, Donald Trump, has commented on the Australian election, saying Anthony Albanese has been “very respectful” in their dealings together but he had “no idea” who his opponent was.
Trump refused to answer questions about whether “the Trump effect” was responsible for the Liberal defeat.
Trump told reporters:
Albanese I’m very friendly with … I can only say that he’s been very, very nice to me, very respectful to me. I have no idea who the other person is that ran against him, and you know we’ve had a very good relationship.
