Federal election 2025: Albanese gets heckled, Dutton has ‘no doubt’ Coalition can win election — as it happened

We’re wrapping up the blog for the day — a little later than usual, it must be said (what better way to spend a Friday night, though, right?)

It’s been a pleasure covering this campaign — let’s do it one last time tomorrow.

Join us bright and early in the morning on election day as we bring you updates from right across the country, and then stay with us through the evening as we bring you the results.

Don’t forget to check out the rest of today’s online coverage at our Australia Votes page — and there’s still time to try out the ABC’s Vote Compass tool, to see how your views align with those of the political parties and candidates.

Have a great evening.

The ALP has been asked not to display the signs on the right. (Supplied: Facebook)

The Australian Electoral Commission has asked the Labor Party to remove signs in the south-west Sydney seat of Fowler which read “A vote for Dai Le is a vote for Dutton”.

The commission found the signs “may” be in breach of the Electoral Act, and confirmed it’s asked the Labor Party not to display them.

Dai Le is the incumbent independent member for the seat, facing a challenge from Labor candidate Tu Le.

Dai Le criticised the Labor Party over the incident on social media, accusing it of lying in its campaigning.

The Australian Electoral Commission has released its final (pre-election) tally of pre-poll voting — and it’s broken a record, once again.

More than 6.77 million people cast a pre-poll vote this election, while 1.64 million completed postal votes have been returned so far, the AEC reports.

Add to that 155,000 people who voted with a mobile team, and you have about 8.5 million people who’ve already cast their ballots — almost half the electoral roll.

(Supplied: Australian Electoral Commission)

  One of the most common questions we’re seeing appear in search results at the moment is “Who is winning the election?”

It’s a surprisingly tricky question to answer.

On the one hand, everyone has seen the polls in the past few days giving Labor a substantial edge over the Coalition (the latest Newspoll, released just two hours ago, gives the government a five-point two-party-preferred (2PP) lead, 52.5 per cent to 47.5 per cent, while Roy Morgan, released at the same time, puts that lead at six points, 53 per cent to 47 per cent).

Media outlets also love to declare who “won” each day on the campaign trail, and the post-mortems seem to have already begun on what most commentators have concluded was a lacklustre effort from the Coalition (it’s hard to imagine the Liberals are too confident when their frontbenchers are using phrases like “You don’t read the entrails until you gut the chicken”).

On the other hand, the only way you can accurately answer the question “Who is winning the election?” is by responding “No-one yet.”

The fact remains that elections aren’t decided until the ballots are counted — and that won’t happen until the polls close tomorrow evening.

Even with the high number of pre-poll ballots already cast (which aren’t counted until election night either) almost 10 million Australians are still yet to put a number in the box — and both parties have acknowledged there’s a high proportion of disengaged “soft” voters this election that could swing either way.

There’s also the fact that it’s entirely possible for a major party to win the national 2PP vote, but still lose the election — remember governments are formed by whoever wins the most seats, not whoever receives the most votes.

(ABC News)

And finally, I would not be the first person to tell you that sometimes the polls can get it wrong (Newspoll, which I cited earlier, gets the outcome right about 80 per cent of the time — and even the absolute best polls in the business make it clear they have a margin of error of at least a few percentage points).

So, there’s your answer: No-one’s winning.

(… but if you had to pick one side you’d rather be on tomorrow night, it would probably be the one averaging a five-point 2PP lead across eight different polls in the last three days.)

This election has seen both Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton sit down with popular podcasters as part of their campaigns.

The long, conversational interviews are a far cry from the press conferences and news interviews we’re used to seeing.

Adam Ferrier is a consumer psychologist—you might recognise him from the ABC’s Gruen.

He told Radio National Breakfast’s Sally Sara this has been “a personal election” when it comes to campaigning methods.

“We’ve moved from broadcast into all forms of more personal media that kind of wrap around the consumer, and podcasting is a massive part of that.”

Adam says podcasts allow politicians to target huge audiences which are easy to research and “target” messaging to.

He says these interviews stand out because they help politicians come across as “human”.

“It feels like you’re eavesdropping on an intimate conversation that you are a part of, and therefore it makes [the politicians] much more likable.”

Jane Norman posted this afternoon about a heckler the PM ran into at a pre-polling booth in Dunkley.

The heckler shouted at the prime minister about the government’s decision to halve the number of Medicare-subsidised psychologist appointments following the COVID pandemic.

We’ve got the video now — you can watch it below.

Loading…

With less than 24 hours to go until the polls close, ABC national political lead David Speers spoke to both Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton to get their final pitch to voters.

Loading…

Green says the problem currently facing the Coalition is a lot of the seats that were spoken about as potential gains at the beginning of the campaign — especially in NSW and Victoria — are sitting on reasonably large margins.

So, are there 10 seats available for the Coalition tomorrow?

“I think it’s tough,” he replies.

“They were banking on receiving a good number in Victoria and it appears that might have subsided, that the anger against Labor is still there against the state government but may have subsided against the Commonwealth government.

“In NSW, you’ve got a few sites like Gilmore and Bennelong on tiny margins, but some of the seats they were talking about on 5 per cent and 10 per cent in NSW and Victoria, there seems to be less talk of them.

“There was talk of seats in western Melbourne, and they’ve all got margins of 10 per cent. Labor could suffer a big swing there and still hold them.”

That’s where we’ll leave 7.30 — you can watch Antony Green break down the numbers here:

Loading…

Green is asked next about voters trending away from the major parties — and how that might make it more difficult to do his job.

“The number of votes for others has got so high — 31 per cent at the last election — that no longer do we see 150 two-party contests across the country,” he says.

“Last time … there were 27 contests that didn’t involve both the Labor and Liberal parties, and that’s why politics and calling elections has gotten more complex.

“It made it particularly difficult last time because it was a breakthrough with so many of these seats.

“This time, there’s all those teal independents and other community independents and Greens and minor parties — we have a history of them standing. Last time we didn’t.

“It will be slightly easier in that sense.”

It’s Antony Green time — and Ferguson opens by asking him to remind us what the actual numbers are when it comes to what either side needs to claim victory.

Green gives us the following breakdown:

Labor goes into the election with 78 seats;The Coalition holds 57 (if you include a few ex-Coalition crossbenchers whose seats are likely to return to the fold)There are 15 members on the crossbench (not counting those he’s included in the Coalition’s count)

“Labor loses its majority if it loses three seats which is a swing of about 1 per cent,” he says.

“For the Coalition to finish with more seats than Labor it’s a swing of about 3.5 per cent, and for the Coalition to achieve majority government in its own right, it’s over 5 per cent.

“The difficulty is that with so many crossbenchers, with the potential for crossbenchers to be picking up seats off the two major parties, it’s been hard to be very firm about what those swings needed are.”

Ferguson asks Paterson if the Coalition has simply been unlucky when it comes to the timing of the election, with the campaign having taken place “under the shadow of Donald Trump at his most chaotic”.

“Maybe, maybe not,” Paterson replies.

“But I have to say two things: Donald Trump is not on the ballot in Australia, but Peter Dutton is, Anthony Albanese is.

“No-one can vote for Donald Trump in this country, and I think it’s irresponsible for the government to have weaponised this in a domestic political context.

“The US relationship is our most important security relationship … I hope if they are successful at this election, if they win a second term, that they’ve got a plan to deal with an administration that they’ve used as a political weapon.”

Gallagher is asked next about Paterson’s allegation that Labor is running a last-minute scare campaign on the aged pension, telling voters they might lose their benefits if they travel overseas under the Coalition.

“The prime minister said today that government is serious. Is a scare campaign like that the day before an election serious?” Ferguson asks.

Gallagher replies that there are in fact cuts to pensions in the Coalition’s costings, prompting Paterson to jump in that “that’s not true”.

“You can clarify what your policy is, but that’s our understanding of your policy,” Gallagher says.

“Perhaps if we’d had more time than you throwing them out on Thursday afternoon and not being there to explain them or give people enough time to work through them, you would be able to explain that.”

Finance Minister Katy Gallagher and Shadow Home Affairs Minister James Paterson are up now.

After congratulating Anthony Albanese for allegedly reaching 100 lies over the course of the campaign, Paterson says most polling is showing a “significant soft vote”, meaning many voters among the 10 million due to cast their ballot tomorrow are yet to make up their mind.

Ferguson asks him if he agrees with the analysis that the Coalition released a number of complex policies too late in the campaign.

He says he doesn’t want to do the “post-mortem” for the election tonight, but “with all due respect, the stuff written in the media is massively overstated”.

“It’s been a highly professional and competent campaign,” he says.

Host Sarah Ferguson asks 7.30 political editor Laura Tingle whether this election has seen anything like the “October surprise” so often warned of in the US — in other words, a last-minute development that could upend the election.

Tingle says she thinks the closest thing to have happened in the past 24 hours is either “the One Nation wobble” or “the Voice wobble” — either One Nation’s decision to heavily preference the Coalition in some seats, or Penny Wong’s later-clarified statement on the Betoota Advocate’s podcast that people might one day look back on the Voice referendum like they look back at the gay marriage issue (in other words, raising the prospect the government may one day have another crack at it).

“That’s taken off and this morning, on both sides of politics, people were saying that this was biting in a lot of electorates, like Tangney in Western Australia, McEwen in Victoria, Blair in Queensland,” Tingle says.

A special election-eve edition of 7.30 has just kicked off.

Laura Tingle’s election wrap-up is airing first, but Antony Green is appearing later in the program, which I’m mentally preparing myself for — I discovered this afternoon he speaks quicker than anyone else I’ve covered on this blog.

Despite the country’s dismal record of domestic and family violence, the ongoing national crisis has been far from prominent in the major parties’ campaigns.

Last week both Labor and the Coalition released their plans for tackling violence against women and children, if they get to form government.

You can read more with this analysis piece from my colleagues Heidi Davoren and Mary Lloyd.

As you line up for your democracy sausage tomorrow and prepare to cast your ballot, what are the key things you should keep in mind?

On the Politics Now podcast, Patricia Karvelas and Claudia Long break down the major promises from all the parties.

And they also ask the big questions, like how does Greens leader Adam Bandt cart his giant toothbrush around?

Claudia asks: “How do you reckon he carries it around? Do you reckon it fits in the car?”

PK replies: “For sure it does, like across the back seat. I’ll ask him.”

Hear more on Politics Now at the link below.

Not a bad place to end up at the end of the day. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)

That’s a wrap for day 35 on the Dutton camp, after a brief visit to a local cafe in the Labor-held seat of Pearce.

It was a pretty low-key end to what has been a gruelling day of travel across two states.

Dutton began before sunrise at a fresh produce market in Adelaide before travelling to spend most of the day in Perth’s outer suburbs.

Dutton visited his 16th petrol station of the campaign this afternoon, in the electorate of Moore. (ABC News: Matt Roberts)

He is now due to fly back east, where he is expected to cast his ballot and do some last-minute campaigning. We imagine he will vote in his own electorate of Dickson.

Before leaving WA, Dutton has done a final blitz of TV interviews for the evening news bulletins.

(ABC News: Matt Roberts)

7.30 has an election special coming up tonight, featuring Antony Green, James Paterson, Katy Gallagher, Laura Tingle and host Sarah Ferguson.

However, before the nation heads to the polls tomorrow, the program’s “paw-litical editor” has handed down her election prediction.

Loading…