TRANSCRIPT
"We did it!"
Independent M-P Zoe Daniels claimed victory on election night.
"We did it Goldstein!"
Celebrating too early.
Postal votes have since seen Liberal MP Tim Wilson declare a narrow victory over the teal independent.
"We had to defy political gravity to get here."
The result is yet to be made official, but SBS has called Goldstein for Mr Wilson.
Ms Daniels' would be a significant scalp for a Liberal party that has been badly bruised by Labor's emphatic victory at the weekend.
Her former seat of Goldstein takes in Melbourne's affluent bayside suburbs, which had been Liberal heartland until Daniels won the seat in 2022.
If Mr Wilson does win, it will be one of just a handful of metropolitan seats the party has managed to hold.
His victory would also add to the ranks of the party's moderate faction, whose number have slimmed down markedly in recent years.
"We very much built it from the bottom up, and I think there are a lot of lessons for a recovering Liberal Party about how it wants to take on the future of the country, and that's why we are so proud of it, because we share this victory together. It is not my victory, and I need to make this crystal clear. It is all of our victory, and we have all shared this incredible journey together."
Two other Liberals could join Mr Wilson in coming days if the vote goes their way in Kooyong and Bradfield.
Independent MP Monique Ryan had held the Melbourne seat of Kooyong - and she's still got her nose ahead of Liberal challenger, Amelia Hamer, but only just.
The contest is coming down to a few hundred votes.
The Sydney seat of Bradfield is also on a knife's edge, with Liberal MP Gisele Kapterian leading independent challenger Nicolette Boele by a similar margin.
These races offer small shoots of hope for the Liberals, whose defeated leader, Peter Dutton gave a brief comment to the media while departing an airport today [[07 May]].
"I've spoke to my colleagues, and the Liberal Party rebuilds from here, and that's as it should be."
He's promising he'll maintain a graceful silence as he moves onto life beyond politics.
For those in his party left, the conversation now turns to who the new leader will be.
Mr Dutton's deputy, Sussan Ley, and Treasury spokesperson, Angus Taylor, are being seen as frontrunners.
The name of former Immigration spokesman Dan Tehan is also being bandied about.
A resurrected Tim Wilson has been mentioned in conservative media too.
While not commenting on any leadership aspirations, he has backed a controversial policy."Nuclear power is part of building the future industrial base of our country. If we don't do that, then we are saying either, one, we're going back to coal, or we as a nation are going to de-industrialise. That is not a future I am prepared to accept."
A colleague of Mr Wilson's, Liberal Senator Maria Kovacic, read the results of the election very differently.
In an interview with the ABC she called for the policy to be dumped immediately.
"Young Australians, all Australians care about our climate and our environment, and they didn't see this as a legitimate climate policy."
The signature policy will form a key plank in the party's post-election debate about its future direction.
Some MPs from the coalition's junior partner, the Nationals, have publicly backed nuclear despite the LN's resounding loss.
The rural party is likely to have more clout in a future coalition agreement, and National's senator Matt Canavan has even raised the prospect of a coalition breakup.
Here he is speaking to the Nine's Today show.
"There's an opportunity for the country, for our coalition, for the Nationals party to run in more seats. Why don't we run in outer suburban, peri-urban sort of areas, where we look after people who are on the frontiers who feel ignored by the major cities."
A major city upset emerging today in Melbourne, too, with Greens leader Adam Bandt seeming set to lose his seat.
That result hasn't been called officially either, but if Mr Bandt loses, he'll join at least two other Greens M-Ps.
Amidst the uncertainty, Labor's landslide victory is the one constant as the 48th parliament takes shape.
