Labor will form government after recording strong swings in New South Wales, Queensland, Tasmania and South Australia and a small swing in Victoria, while Peter Dutton has conceded his own seat of Dickson.
The ABC has called 78 seats for Labor, enough for a majority, but it is leading in several more, and ABC election analyst Antony Green has declared the result.
It will make Anthony Albanese the first prime minister elected twice since John Howard.
Dutton concedes election and loss in own seat
“We didn’t do well enough in this campaign, that much is obvious tonight,” Mr Dutton said to the Liberal faithful gathered in Brisbane, saying he had called both Anthony Albanese and Labor’s Dickson candidate Ali France to concede and congratulate them.
“It is an historic occasion for the Labor Party and we recognise that. I congratulated the prime minister and wished him, Jodie and Nathan all the very best and I said to the prime minister that his mother would be incredibly proud of his achievement tonight and he should be proud of what he has achieved,” he said.
He also paid tribute to Ms France’s son Henry, who died earlier this year. “Her son Henry would be incredibly proud of her tonight and she will do a good job as a local member for Dickson and I wish her all the best.”
Mr Dutton apologised to Liberal candidates who have “lost their seats [and] their ambition… We have an amazing party, and we will rebuild.”
Labor on track for multiple gains
The majority of election day votes have been counted, while early votes are beginning to be counted, as are the first votes in Western Australia where polls were last to close.
The ABC projects Labor will gain the seats of Banks, Bass, Bonner, Braddon, Deakin, Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson, Hughes, Leichhardt, Menzies, Petrie, and Sturt.
It is also competitive in the seats of Berowra, Bowman, Casey and Forde.
And it has consolidated or held its ground at this stage in several of its own marginal seats, including Aston, Bennelong, Blair, Boothby, Chisholm, Dunkley, Gilmore, Lyons, McEwen, Paterson and Werriwa.
Peter Dutton likely needed to win all of those seats and more if he was to form majority government himself, which would have required a 20-seat gain. He would have needed to pick up roughly 10 seats to be competitive in a hung parliament scenario.
Instead, he will find himself out of the parliament altogether, forcing the Liberal Party to find a new leader. Two other frontbenchers, housing spokesperson Michael Sukkar and foreign affairs spokesperson David Coleman, are set to join him.
Swings across the country
“Labor is everywhere outperforming what the opinion polls were saying,” he said. It would have to be a huge swing, a massively better result for the Coalition with the pre-poll vote… We are seeing this all across the country at the moment.”
Current figures show a 4.2 per cent swing towards Labor in the two-party preferred vote nationwide, compared to results at the same polling booths at the last election.
There is a 7.9 per cent swing in Tasmania and a 2.7 per cent swing in Victoria, a 3.7 per cent swing in Queensland, a 4.4 per cent swing in New South Wales and a 4.7 per cent swing in South Australia.
Early votes are beginning to trickle in from Western Australia.
Nationally, Labor has gained 2.5 percentage points on its primary vote, while the Coalition has fallen 4.6 percentage points and minor parties and independents have gained ground.
There are very few swings to the Coalition at this stage in seats anywhere, but an exception is the Darwin-based seat of Solomon, while there are also small swings in Eden-Monaro, Bendigo, Whitlam and Eden-Monaro, but not enough for Labor to be behind in any of those seats at this stage.
Labor has so far held its ground in Melbourne’s west, a heavy campaign focus for Peter Dutton.
Third-party candidates in tight fights
Independent candidates running in the seats of Bradfield and Cowper, held by the Coalition, appear competitive, but both races are too close to call.
But Liberal frontbencher Dan Tehan has picked up a very small swing against independent Alex Dyson in Wannon and is ahead.
There are also strong results for independents challenging Coalition MPs in the seats of Flinders, Fisher and McPherson, but it is too early to know whether these seats are in play, and in the latter two the independents are vying with Labor to make it to the final two.
Independent Jessie Price has picked up a strong swing in the Labor-held seat of Bean in Canberra’s south, and is in a competitive position.
The Nationals vote has fallen sharply in the seat of Calare, where independent Andrew Gee appears competitive, while another independent, Kate Hook, also has a sizeable primary vote.
The seats won by teal independents at the 2022 election so far appear to have mostly recorded modest swings to those independents, but the exception is Goldstein, where there has been a small swing towards Liberal Tim Wilson.
A swing away from the Greens on primary votes in the Queensland trio of Brisbane, Griffith and Ryan plus a boost to Labor’s primary in all three seats has the Greens on the back foot, projected to lose Max Chandler-Mather’s seat of Griffith and Stephen Bates’ seat of Brisbane at this stage.
There has been a small swing to the Greens in the inner Melbourne seat of Wills, but Labor remains ahead there. The seat of Richmond in the NSW northern rivers is a tight three-corner contest involving Labor, the Greens and the Nationals.
20 Seats in doubt
This article was originally published by ABC Pacific and has been republished with permission.
