Category Archives: Liberal party

Australia news live: Littleproud says Canavan leadership challenge ‘healthy’; teen caught with knife and fake gun outside AFL match

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Nationals leader applauds his colleague for having the courage to put up his hand. Follow today’s news live

Nationals leader David Littleproud is backing his record to hold on to the party’s top job as he faces a challenge from a fellow Queenslander.

The minor Coalition party faces a leadership tussle after Queensland senator Matt Canavan threw his hat in the ring.

We shouldn’t get upset about democracy taking place.

This is healthy for our democracy.

From my perspective, I still think I have a contribution to make and I want to do so. Someone once said that success isn’t final, failure isn’t fatal and the courage to continue is what matters. Here I am, a Labor MP quoting Churchill on Insiders. That’s where we’ve got to.

Indeed. Can I say, the party has given me great opportunities. Its faith in me, particularly with my faith, allowed me in part to make and break records, I’ve challenged the status quo and conservativism. It provides hope and aspiration for others. I want to be part of that.

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Australia news live: Erin Patterson’s daughter says her mother was a ‘very good cook’; PM’s department boss quits

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Erin Patterson’s daughter’s pre-recorded video evidence is being played to the jury in Patterson’s triple murder trial. Follow today’s news live

‘I want to harness all the talent in my team’

“We do need to reflect a modern Liberal party,” Sussan Ley says. She is speaking on Sunrise before the Liberals’ party room meeting on Tuesday, when they will select a new leader:

It’s about making sure that I am listening to my colleagues and … demonstrate to them we want a strong approach that includes everyone. I want to harness all of the talent in my team, take it forward under my leadership and meet the Australian people where they are because, clearly we didn’t do that at the last election. But we do need to reflect a modern Liberal party, meeting modern Australians in every single walk of life across the country.

On the weekend, we suffered a significant election defeat and since then, I have been having many conversations with my colleagues, members of the community, with members of the party, indeed the Coalition, with everyday Australians. I have listened. We got it wrong. We need to do things differently, going forward, and we do need a fresh approach. So, on Tuesday morning when the Liberal party room meets in Canberra, I will be putting myself forward for the position of leader of the federal party.

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Australia news live: federal election 2025 results; AEC and Senate vote count continues today – latest update

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Liberal candidate says he is ‘proud’ to represent electorate after being ‘written off’ three years ago. Follow today’s live news and reaction to the 2025 Australian federal election results

Max Chandler-Mathers on housing: Labor refused to negotiate then told media the Greens were blocking their bills

Asked about criticism that the Greens slowed down progress on housing on Triple J Hack, Max Chandler-Mather said Anthony Albanese was “basically saying that, and it just wasn’t true, but then the media repeated as fact”.

It was odd for me, I have to say, because I would be sitting in a negotiating room with the prime minister or with the housing minister, and we’d be privately saying we’re willing to give up everything on our side of negotiations if you just build a bit more public housing. And then they say, ‘Nah, no way, we’re not giving you a thing’. And then they go out into the media and say, ‘The Greens are blocking housing’.

In the house, a lot of those things didn’t get across that you were hoping or that you were promising, the rent freezes, the rent caps, the negative gearing changes, the doubling of capital gains tax … That stuff didn’t get across the line, but Labor’s housing policies still did.

I’ll be honest, one of the things I’m quite happy about at the moment is I don’t have to spend more time in the House of Representatives, because, like, basically every time I stood up, I got screamed and yelled at. In terms of a workplace, it was bloody awful, and frankly, a lot of the times miserable.

The only reason I kept going back because it felt like we were one of the few voices fighting for millions of people who feel really let down by this political system …

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Too close to call: follow the federal election results in the undecided seats here

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Things are looking rocky in Bullwinkel for Labor but it’s likely the party will hold Richmond against the Greens

Election night ended with at least 16 seats too close to call. Here you can see a list of those which were, as of Wednesday morning, still undecided and our reasons for holding off from making predictions about who will win them.

We’re going to leave the electorates on this list even after predictions have been made so if something happens you won’t miss it.

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Huge swings to Labor from Chinese Australian voters in key seats show Liberals failed to rebuild trust, experts say

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Community convincingly chooses Labor in Melbourne and Sydney seats, despite opposition efforts to engage after 2022 review

Suburbs with significant Chinese Australian populations in key marginal seats recorded huge swings to Labor of up to 30%, and strategists and analysts warn the Liberal party has failed to rebuild trust with the community.

The Liberal party’s review of the 2022 federal election found hawkish rhetoric on China cost it votes in several seats with high numbers of Chinese Australians. It called for greater community outreach and to rebuild trust before the 2025 poll.

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One Nation candidate poised to help Coalition in handshake deal has railed against climate science and Covid ‘little Hitlers’

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Exclusive: Stuart Bonds could hand the Nationals the seat of Hunter thanks to a preference deal and ‘last minute’ change to how-to-vote cards

A One Nation candidate who could hand the Nationals the seat of Hunter, thanks to a handshake preference deal, has called public health officials “little Hitlers” and promoted a conspiracy theory alleging the government has used the climate crisis to control every aspect of people’s lives.

Stuart Bonds told a livestreamed forum with rightwing activists last week that the federal government should not do anything to address climate change. He also claimed “a crime” was committed against Australians during the Covid pandemic, alleging they were used “as an experiment to sell pharmaceutical projects”.

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Dutton claims majority of veterans don’t want welcome to country at Anzac Day ceremonies

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Opposition leader says opening of parliament is an appropriate time for ceremonies but that acknowledgment on planes is ‘over the top’

Peter Dutton has confirmed he does not believe welcome to country ceremonies are necessary at Anzac Day dawn services and on commercial flights, continuing to stoke a culture war in the final week of the election campaign.

It comes days after a neo-Nazi booed and heckled a welcome to country ceremony at a dawn service in Melbourne.

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Liberal candidate apologises for Anzac Day booklet that contained campaign message and linked to how-to-vote card

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Exclusive: Former navy officer Grange Chung, candidate for the Sydney seat of Reid, uses images of himself in military uniform

The Liberal candidate for Reid, Grange Chung, has apologised for distributing a four-page booklet commemorating Anzac Day that also encouraged people to vote for him and linked to a how-to-vote card.

The Anzac Day booklet, authorised by the NSW Liberal party, contained images of Chung, a former navy officer, dressed in military uniform. The defence department has repeatedly urged veterans to refrain from using pictures of themselves in uniform, to avoid any suggestion the military is politically partisan.

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Third-party groups targeting teals in key seats swarm pre-poll areas in NSW and Victoria

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Third-party group Better Australia has posters and representatives wearing yellow ‘community adviser vests’ at multiple locations in Sydney.

Third-party groups targeting the teal independents are flooding pre-poll locations in Victoria and New South Wales, and include campaigners with links to the Jewish community such as Repeal the Teal.

In Goldstein, where the independent Zoe Daniel is hoping to hold off Liberal candidate Tim Wilson, Repeal the Teal has made its presence known this week with posters, T-shirts and pamphlets. The group is also campaigning in Kooyong.

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Community groups furious Coalition nuclear plan would go ahead even if locals oppose it

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Opponents of policy say locals should be ‘very angry’ they will not be able to veto generators in their towns despite Coalition promise to consult them

There is a “growing backlash” to the Coalition’s nuclear plan, with community groups furious at the lack of consultation and angered that the policy would not give local communities the power of veto and that nuclear plants would be built regardless of local opposition.

Opponents say pro-nuclear lobby group Nuclear for Australia has been hosting information sessions but that they make it overly difficult for people to attend, make it hard to ask questions, and are not able to answer those questions that are posed.

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Liberal candidate co-authored inquiry submission suggesting Hazaras not persecuted for ethnicity in Afghanistan

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Exclusive: Zahid Safi, who is running in Melbourne seat of Bruce, listed as last author on 2021 Senate submission which says victims of Afghanistan war ‘not based on ethnicity’

The Liberal candidate for Bruce co-authored a parliamentary submission suggesting the Hazara community in Afghanistan was not persecuted on the basis of its ethnicity, contradicting the Australian government and drawing rebuke from international human rights groups.

Zahid Safi co-authored a submission to a 2021 parliamentary inquiry into Australia’s involvement in the Afghanistan war, which incorrectly cited a Human Rights Watch (HRW) report to allege Hazara “warlords” had “cut the breasts of women” and watched “live delivery of pregnant women” during the early 1990s. The 2005 HRW report does not mention these acts.

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Dutton tight-lipped over how many voluntary redundancies would be offered in public service cuts plan

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Opposition under pressure to release secret modelling and costings revealing how it plans to downsize the public service by 41,000 jobs by 2030

Peter Dutton has dodged revealing how many voluntary redundancies could be offered as part of the opposition’s plan to downsize the public service by 41,000 jobs by 2030.

Speaking at a conveyor manufacturing factory in Perth on Friday, the opposition leader avoided providing further details about the plan.

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Gender politics: will the 2025 election send more female MPs to Australia’s parliament?

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Labor has made great strides towards gender equality among its MPs and senators, but the number of female Coalition members remains stubbornly low

The 47th parliament was Australia’s most diverse to date. Both houses broke records for gender, ethnic and cultural diversity.

Across both houses in the outgoing parliament, the gender split was 55% to 45% in favour of men. Women made up 39% of the House of Representatives and 58% of the Senate.

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Dutton ducks question on Liberal party vetting amid concerns over charge against Melbourne candidate

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Opposition leader remains quiet on how Coalition will achieve promise to save $7bn through public service cuts

Peter Dutton has ducked questions about the quality of the Liberal party’s vetting processes after concerns were raised about a 2024 charge against a Melbourne candidate in the latest saga surrounding the party’s candidates.

The opposition leader, who visited a metalworks factory in the Labor-held seat of Aston in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs on Thursday, would also not divulge details about how his promise to achieve $7bn in savings by cutting 41,000 public service jobs by 2030 could match Labor’s plans to dramatically lift bulk-billing rates.

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Dutton playing ‘Donald Trump anti-migration card’ in plan to slash international students, higher education peak body says

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The Coalition would retain Labor’s cap on the private sector but cut an extra 30,000 places at universities

The Coalition has been accused of using the “Donald Trump anti-migration card” with its election policy to slash international students, as the university sector warns it favours the private vocational education and training (VET) sector.

On Sunday, Peter Dutton announced he would reduce the number of international students to 240,000 a year, a reduction of “over 80,000 in annual new overseas student commencements compared with 2023 levels”, he said.

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Guardian Essential poll: Albanese’s approval rating takes a hit but Labor inches ahead of Coalition

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Voters scored both PM and Peter Dutton poorly on key leadership questions including trust, competence and being out of touch

Labor has ticked ahead of the Coalition on a two-party-plus basis in the first Guardian Essential poll of the election period, as Anthony Albanese turns the blowtorch on Peter Dutton in the opening days of the campaign.

Essential’s “2PP+” measure, which allows voters to remain undecided, put Labor ahead 48% to 47%, with 5% undecided. The survey of 1,100 people was of a piece with recent major polls from Newspoll, Resolve and YouGov, which showed small movements toward Labor in recent weeks.

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Controversial bill to protect Tasmanian salmon industry passes despite environmental concerns

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Critics say industry threatens the endangered Maugean skate and laws were rushed through with ’no proper process’

Controversial legislation to protect the Tasmanian salmon industry has passed parliament after the government guillotined debate to bring on a vote in the Senate on Wednesday night.

Government and Coalition senators voted in favour of the bill, which was designed to bring an end to a formal reconsideration by the environment minister, Tanya Plibersek, into whether an expansion of fish farming in Macquarie harbour in 2012 was properly approved.

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Western Australia election: Liberals fail to attract swing required as Labor secures third-term victory

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WA Labor will hold a third term in office, with the early vote count showing the Liberals failing to gain traction with any significant swing

• Western Australia has one story about the gas industry. It won’t accept dissent from ‘over east’

Labor will govern for a third term in Western Australia, with the Liberal Party failing to attract the swing required to threaten Roger Cook’s majority.

Polls predicted a 12-13% swing could put up to 11 seats in reach of the Liberal party.

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Communities warned to prepare as weather system takes right turn – as it happened

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Why should Australia trust president Donald Trump, given how he’s treated Ukraine’s president at the Oval Office? Richard Marles said the government’s focus was on supporting Ukraine:

That’s where Australia lies. That’s the decision that we have to make. And Ukraine can absolutely rely on Australia’s ongoing support in their defence, and we will work with international partners.

We’ve obviously worked with the United States over the last three years, and we’ll continue to do that, but we’ve worked with the United Kingdom, and we’ll continue to do that as well, and with European partners, and look at the best way in which we can provide support.

We have established a timeline with [the] Ukrainian government about the delivery of those tanks to Ukraine. Now, for operational reasons, won’t go into the detail of that timeline.

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Former NSW Liberal MP pleads not guilty to sexually assaulting teenage boy

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Rory Amon committed to stand trial on 10 separate charges, including sexual intercourse with a person under the age of 14

A former New South Wales Liberal MP has been committed to stand trial over multiple alleged sexual assaults.

Rory Amon is accused of sexually assaulting a teenage boy he knew on Sydney’s northern beaches in 2017.

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