Former PM Paul Keating slams Albo for dumping two key Labor figures after historic win – as ousted Peter Dutton unleashes on Adam Bandt: ‘Australians were disgusted at their behaviour’

The former prime minister has criticised Labor for allowing Anthony Albanese to axe Science and Industry Minister Ed Husic from the cabinet.

Paul Keating issued a statement, shared on X by The Australian’s columnist Troy Bramston, labelling the decision ‘appalling’.

He said it denied Husic’s diligence and his work focussing government on emerging digital technology.

‘As the cabinet’s sole Muslim member, Husic’s explusion from the ministry proffers contempt for the measured and centrist support provided by the broader Muslim community to the Labor Party at the general election.’

The Labor icon also unleashed on the decision to dump Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus, noting he was the Cabinet’s ‘most significant and effective Jewish member’.

‘A showing of poor judgement, unfairness and diminished respect for the contribution of others,’ he said.

The Prime Minister is pushing out two senior cabinet ministers as he settles into his second term.

Science and Industry Minister Ed Husic and Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus have been dumped to make way for Victorian Right MPs Daniel Mulino and Sam Rae.

Dreyfus was asked on Thursday by reporters whether there was in-fighting over the frontbench.

‘I’ll have more to say next week,’ he said.

Anthony Albanese told Sky News on Thursday that ‘no individual is greater than the collective’.

‘I can’t have hoped for more support from my ministers, from my caucus, over the six years that I’ve been Labor leader,’ he said.

‘And that has enabled me to really focus outwardly… when you’re focused inwards, the electorate will mark you down.’

A list of 30 frontbenchers is due to be approved by the ALP caucus on Friday, from which Mr Albanese will select his cabinet.

Ousted Liberal leader Peter Dutton has rubbished Adam Bandt’s election excuses in a parting shot at the former Greens leader.

Bandt conceded the seat of Melbourne to Labor’s Sarah Witty on Thursday afternoon.

Bandt had told reporters preferencing arrangements from the Liberals and One Nation had favoured Ms Witty and cost him his seat.

‘The Greens got the highest vote in Melbourne, but One Nation and Liberal preferences will get Labor over the line … it’s an Everest we’ve climbed a few times now, but this time we fell just short,’ he said.

Bandt also blamed his loss on the redistribution of the seat of Melbourne and voter backlash against Peter Dutton.

‘People in Melbourne hate Peter Dutton and with a very good reason,’ he said.

‘They have seen his brand of toxic racism on display for many years, they have seen his time as Immigration Minister, they seen him make comments about Melbourne and like me, many of them wanted him as far away from power as possible.’

Dutton fired back and said Mr Bandt had lost the seat for his party’s vocal stance on the war in Gaza just hours later.

‘No spin by Adam Bandt can change the reality that he, and other Green members, lost their seats because of their appalling treatment of the Jewish community,’ Mr Dutton wrote in a post on X.

‘Australians were rightly disgusted at their behaviour. We were proud to preference the Greens last, helping to ensure Adam Bandt’s loss.’

Greens Leader Adam Bandt has officially conceded, blaming everyone but himself as he attributed his loss to the redistribution of his Melbourne seat, a voter backlash against Peter Dutton and preferences from One Nation and Liberal voters.

‘A short time ago I called the Labor candidate for Melbourne, Sarah Witty, to concede, congratulate her and wish her all the best as the next Member for Melbourne,’ he told reporters at 2.15pm.

‘The Greens got the highest vote in Melbourne, but One Nation and Liberal preferences will get Labor over the line.

‘To win in Melbourne we needed to overcome Liberal, Labor and One Nation combined, and it’s an Everest we’ve climbed a few times now, but this time we fell just short.

‘I want to thank the Melbourne community for regularly giving me the highest vote, including this election, and to thank you for the last 15 years and the chance to do some amazing things together.’

Bandt said that there was a number of seats where the Greens were second, creating a new colour of political persuasion.

‘Mix red and blue together and you get purple,’ he said.

‘There’s now a swathe of seats where Labor MPs owe their political life to Liberal preferences and the Greens are there in those seats as the real opposition to the two-party system.’

He claimed that was the fate of his own seat of Melbourne, which had been redistributed to include many more Liberal voters.

He also claimed there was a ‘huge riptide from Liberal to Labor’ over the five-week election campaign, where Dutton was damaged by his policy alignment with Donald Trump.

‘People in Melbourne hate Peter Dutton and with a very good reason. They have seen his brand of toxic racism on display for many years, they have seen his time as Immigration Minister, they seen him make comments about Melbourne and like me, many of them wanted him as far away from power as possible,’ Bandt added.

‘Despite us making it very clear that we shared their position, my initial take is that some votes leaked away from us as people saw Labor is the best option to stop Dutton.’

The third reason Bandt gave was preferences as he claimed Labor would win his seat on Liberal and One Nation preferences.

‘It is not like traditional contests where Labor just has to be Liberal. The Greens have to beat Labor and Liberal combined,’ he added.

‘More people in Melbourne voted Greens than anyone else. We got the highest vote but Liberal and One Nation preferences will get Labor over the line.’

He did not address any of his own mistakes in leading the party during his 25 minute statement.

Bandt said he was ‘really proud of what I have achieved as leader of the Greens’.

‘We have achieved the highest vote in Greens history,’ he said.

‘I leave with the vote for the Greens higher than when I started and the biggest representation ever in parliament.’

Labor’s Witty has ousted him from the seat he’s held since 2010.

Bandt told reporters at the press conference that he wouldn’t be taking questions.

A Liberal leadership candidate has announced when the Leader of the Opposition, and Deputy Leader, will be elected.

Acting leader Sussan Ley is in a two horse race with shadow treasurer Angus Taylor for the top position.

She issued a joint statement with high-profile members Michaelia Cash, Mellisa Price and Wendy Askew on Thursday evening confirming the details.

‘Following Saturday’s election defeat, the federal parliamentary Liberal Party will meet to elect a Leader of the Opposition and Deputy Leader of the Opposition, as under our party rules these positions must be declared vacant,’ it said.

‘Having consulted with our colleagues, we announce that a party room meeting of the federal parliamentary Liberal Party will take place in Canberra at 10:00am on Tuesday, 13 May 2025.’

For Liberals members where vote counting is still going, they said the party’s federal director Andrew Hirst will determine which members and candidates are projected to win and therefore who can participate.

He has been asked to make the decisions by 10am on Monday.

Adam Bandt laid the blame for the Greens’ election disaster on anyone but himself.

He attributed the humiliating loss of his own seat to the electorate’s redistribution, a voter backlash against Peter Dutton and preference flows to Labor from One Nation and Liberal voters.

On the final point he was emphatic.

‘It is not like traditional contests where Labor just has to be Liberal. The Greens have to beat Labor and Liberal combined,’ he told reporters.

‘More people in Melbourne voted Greens than anyone else. We got the highest vote but Liberal and One Nation preferences will get Labor over the line.’

But what he failed to mention was that he owed his election in 2010 to the same thing.

‘His statement does not note that he was elected because of Liberal Party preferences in 2010,’ James Massola, National Affairs Editor of Nine Newspapers pointed out on X.

Bandt’s blame game also cut little ice with former Albanese adviser Dean Sherr.

‘Bandt lost because there was a nearly 6 per cent primary swing to Labor and a nearly 5 per cent swing away from the Greens. That’s the be all and end all of it,’ Dean wrote on X.

‘Blaming conservative voters for not preferencing them is a lot easier than asking why that happened, but it’s far less productive.’

Senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price has revealed she will be leaving the Nationals to join the Liberal Party room.

As a member of the Country Liberal Party, she can choose where she sits in Canberra and has chosen to sit with the Nationals in the past.

In a statement she thanked Nationals Leader David Littleproud for allowing her to lead the No campaign in the Voice referendum.

But said she felt the ‘Liberal Party is my natural home and somewhere I can contribute meaningfully’.

The Shadow Minister for Indigenous Affairs added that she wanted to play a ‘robust part’ in the rebuilding of the Liberal Party.

‘I want to bring back our core values of liberty, individual freedom and responsibility, the rule of law, free market and economic prosperity, minimal government intervention, a fair go and most of all, love for our nation, Australia,’ she said.

It is a clear signal she wants to play a leadership role in the new Liberal Party.

The outgoing Greens leader made one final plea to the media: to treat the climate crisis ‘as if our country is being invaded’.

‘I really want the media to stop reporting on climate as a political issue and start thinking about it as if our country is being invaded,’ he said.

‘You should treat the climate crisis as if there is a war on.’

‘I would ask the media, every time you get a press release talking about renewable energy projects, every time you get told that the climate crisis has been taken seriously, please do not just treat this as well, “we will report what political parties say”,’ he added.

‘Look behind it. Look at the signs. Because your kids, our kids, they are in for a hellish future in their lifetimes if we don’t get the climate crisis under control.’

Two senior ministers are expected to lose their positions in a new-look lineup as Prime Minister Anthony Albanese warns Labor MPs against focusing too heavily on themselves.

Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus is set to be axed by his Victorian right faction colleagues in favour of Sam Rae, a key ally of Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles.

Industry Minister Ed Husic is also on the chopping block to rebalance the ledger between Victoria and NSW.

Labor’s ministry and cabinet are carved up between the states and the left and right factions, based on their proportion of seats.

The more progressive left, from which Mr Albanese hails, has edged ahead of the right after the election, with more of its candidates winning seats.

But the ministry quota system has sparked an internal fight between Victorians and their NSW counterparts as the former want an extra seat at the table.

New blood in the ministry will likely include Tim Ayres from NSW and Ged Kearney and Daniel Mulino from Victoria.

Anthony Albanese has hinted there will be some new faces on his frontbench.

The landslide election victory resulted in a boost in numbers to the Labor left faction, which now outnumbers those on the Right for the first time.

And the Prime Minister has signalled there could be some major changes, telling Sky News that ‘no individual is greater than the collective’.

‘We have a process and we’ll work it through,’ the PM said.

‘The important thing is… for most of the 125 years since Federation, we’ve sat at the other end of the corridor in the old place, in the opposition party room.

‘Government brings with it responsibility, and no individual is greater than the collective — that includes myself.’

The Labor Party caucus will meet on Friday to thrash out the new cabinet.

Our Political Editor Peter Van Onselen explains how the factional left and right are set to go to war divvying up the spoils of victory below:

Monique Ryan is set to win her way back into parliament for a second term, after an Australian Electoral Commission blunder logging votes completely shifted the expected outcome in Kooyong.

Before the AEC mistake the Liberals were on track to mount a stunning comeback and knock the accident prone teal out of federal politics.

With the error now fixed, coupled with the trends we are seeing in postal votes and expected flows from absentee votes thereafter, Ryan will win Kooyong and serve another three years.

Postal voting in Kooyong is now almost finished, and should wrap up today, and Amelia Hamer and the Liberal Party are now too far behind to pull back Ryan’s lead, meaning that once the count is completed the Teal MP will survive despite looking likely to lose prior to the AEC blunder being revealed.

Hamer currently trails Ryan by more than 700 votes.

That figure will tighten, but not by enough for Hamer to overhaul Ryan’s advantage.

Short of another AEC mistake, Kooyong is a seat we can call for the teals.

Don’t be fooled by the Greens poor performance in the lower house where its leader Adam Bandt lost his seat.

Adam Bandt’s humiliating defeat will send shockwaves through the Greens as the party is forced to pick a new leader.

Bandt officially lost his seat of Melbourne, which he has held since 2010, to Labor’s Sarah Witty on Wednesday afternoon.

This is despite a Greens’ press release claiming on Saturday night that he ‘expects the count to elect him in Melbourne’.

So where did it all go so wrong for the Greens leader?

As much as his critics – and there are many – would hope it was all down to voters taking against him personally, the main reason he lost took place long before any votes were cast.

The boundaries of Bandt’s Melbourne seat were redistributed last year.

This redrawing of the electoral map meant that the Greens leader lost several suburbs in the inner north, where he was popular, while also absorbing more Liberal-supporting areas.

But Bandt does also shoulder a lot of the blame for positioning the Greens so obviously in opposition to Labor.

Renee Coffey, the Labor challenger who ousted Max Chandler-Mather in Griffith, said that voters were most concerned with cost of living and housing issues.

But the Greens were seen as a barrier to progress after they joined forces with the Liberals to block some of Labor’s housing reforms.

‘(The other seat) is fundamentally is a progressive electorate and people were wanting to see real change and progress, so I think there was some disappointment with some of the blocking that went on and this idea of protest,’ she told the ABC.

Kos Samaras , a former Victorian Labor strategist and Redbridge Group director, said the Greens had turned into a ‘movement fuelling civil unrest and disruption’.

‘The party clearly recognised this too late after a string of poor results at state, territory, and local government elections,’ he added.

‘By the time they adjusted course, the damage was done. Their leader is now gone. I never imagined that I would see the Greens lose Melbourne in my lifetime.’

Foreign Minister Penny Wong had a similar analysis, telling Channel Nine that ‘Australians rejected the politics of conflict and the politics of grievance’.

‘Unfortunately Adam Bandt in some ways is quite like Peter Dutton,’ Senator Wong added.

And she’s not wrong, given Bandt has also suffered the ignominy of losing his own seat.

Mehreen Faruqi, the current Greens deputy leader and frontrunner to take over the minor party, has refused to concede that her boss Adam Bandt is to be booted out of parliament.

Most major news organisations have now declared that Bandt will lose his Melbourne seat, which he has held since 2010.

But Senator Faruqi said the count was still continuing.

‘Adam is still leader,’ she told the ABC.

‘As many as 15,000 absentee and declaration votes have yet to be sorted and counted. And often those votes have swung towards the Greens so we are waiting for all those votes to be counted to declare the result.’

Meanwhile, victorious Liberal candidate Tim Wilson in the seat of Goldstein could not resist taking a swipe at Bandt.

Sharing a news article reporting that he was on track to lose his seat, Wilson wrote: ‘I didn’t think this day could get any better, and yet – here we are!’

Anthony Albanese’s arch nemesis Max Chandler-Mather has taken another brutal swipe at the Prime Minister after their war of words erupted.

Keith Wolahan has lost his seat of Menzies in Victoria.

The former army officer (pictured below) was seen as a Liberal leader of the future, and also one of the few remaining city MPs amongst the conservatives.

It looked like he was certain to lose on Saturday night but strong postal voting flows suggested he could just maybe fight back and survive.

Not anymore, he’s too far behind given the postal trends and wouldn’t be able to stay in front even if he clawed back because absentee votes always favour Labor in his electorate.

It’s a big generational loss for the Liberals in what was already a devastating defeat nationally.