Australia news live: Greens’ Max Chandler-Mather ‘happy’ that loss means he doesn’t have to endure being yelled at in ‘miserable’ parliament
Parliament House a ‘miserable’ workplace: Max Chandler-Mather
Max Chandler-Mather said the Greens operated against “often very hostile two major parties”. He told Triple J Jack Hack:
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 …
Despite all of that and fighting hard we fell short, and I feel like I’ve let people down because I always feel like, at the end of the day, the MP has to take responsibility for that and I suppose I do.
Key events
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”.
He continued:
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.
Parliament House a ‘miserable’ workplace: Max Chandler-Mather
Max Chandler-Mather said the Greens operated against “often very hostile two major parties”. He told Triple J Jack Hack:
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 …
Despite all of that and fighting hard we fell short, and I feel like I’ve let people down because I always feel like, at the end of the day, the MP has to take responsibility for that and I suppose I do.
Max Chandler-Mather takes responsibility for Greens defeat in Griffith: ‘I feel like I’ve let a lot of people down’
The former Greens member for Griffith, Max Chandler-Mather, said he has “let a lot of people down” after losing the seat in this year’s federal election. He spoke to Triple J Hack last night:
A negative feeling I really have at the moment is I feel like I’ve let a lot of people down.
We helped build a lot of hope, and then we lost in Griffith, and ultimately, I have to take responsibility for that. In Griffith, it became impossible to overcome the combined liberal and labor vote.
Can we cut the reams of waste in election paper trail?
A mountain of waste is created each time Australians go to the polls to vote in local, state and federal elections, and experts say we need to find creative ways to reduce it.
The 2025 federal election was Australia’s biggest yet, with 710,000 more people on the electoral roll than in 2022.
The Australian Election Commission used 250,000 pencils, 240,000 vests, 80,000 ballot boxes and 5,000 rolls of tamper-proof tape to stock 7,000 polling places.
RMIT University’s Lisa Given said Australia needed to mandate an efficient approach to creating, using, recycling and disposing of election materials and consider online voting to cut waste.
A key area of waste is the number of plastic corflutes produced for each election, many of which are not recycled. The exception is South Australia, which last year banned corflutes except on private property.
“It’s great that SA has taken that first step, corflutes are not easy to recycle,” Given said. “They’re generally single-use, and the more that we can just stop creating them, the better off the environment is going to be.”
– Australian Associated Press
Child missing after Toowoomba house fire
Police are investigating after a child went missing in a house fire in Toowoomba overnight.
Emergency services were called to Merritt Street, Harristown, around 12:30am this morning, where they found a house fully engulfed. The fire has since been extinguished, Queensland police said in a statement.
Six people were able to escape the property, including a 34-year-old man who was taken to hospital with serious injuries, a 36-year-old woman and four children taken to hospital with critical injuries.
The woman and two children have been taken to Toowoomba hospital with critical injuries. The man was also transported to Toowoomba hospital with serious injuries.
A fifth child “remains unaccounted for at this time,” the Queensland police statement said.
A crime scene has been declared and investigations into the cause of fire are under way. Police are appealing to anyone with information or vision.
Renewables influx a cooler change to summer energy mix
An influx of renewables into Australia’s main energy grid has driven down emissions while helping counter price pressure from expensive coal, hydro and gas.
Solar and wind chipped in 43% of the main grid’s supply in the first three months of 2025, up from 39% over same period in 2024, while coal availability slipped to new first-quarter lows.
Large-scale battery generation reached an all-time high, with output jumping 86% to 98MW when averaged across all hours.
Wholesale prices were higher in the southern states and lower in the north during the summer months, electricity system updates from both the Australian Energy Market Operator (AEMO) and the Australian Energy Regulator showed. Compared with the last three months of 2024, average wholesale prices were 6% lower.
Upward forces in coal and hydro prices were largely offset by downward pressures from higher renewable energy availability and fewer periods of extreme price volatility, AEMO’s executive general manager of policy and corporate affairs, Violette Mouchaileh, said.
– Australian Associated Press
Rafqa Touma
Thanks to the great Martin Farrer for kicking off the live blog this morning. I’ll be rolling your news updates from here – let’s go.
Who is Labor’s Paul Erickson?
In his victory speech on Saturday night, Anthony Albanese described him as “a “magnificent campaign director”.
But who is Paul Erickson, the mastermind behind Labor’s win? Henry Belot traces his rise from student politics in Melbourne through the Labor machine. As one observer says: “He’s a true believer who wants to beat Tories and get Labor governments elected to do good things.”
Read the whole piece here:
Flu vaccination rates ‘dire’, expert warns
Natasha May
Experts are urging people to get vaccinated for the flu this season with cases already relatively high for this time of year in all jurisdictions.
Prof Julie Leask from the University of Sydney said the flu is the “underdog of infectious diseases”, in that people underestimate its severity.
As a result, flu vaccination coverage remains perpetually low, with current data showing the national rate for people above 65 years of age receiving flu vaccines is only 62%, and far lower for other age groups. These vaccination rates are “dire” and not improving, Leask says.
Flu vaccination needs to be a habit for Australians, with data showing once they receive a vaccine one year, they tend to continue it the next, so it is important for healthcare workers to encourage patients to initiate that habit, Leask said.
Prof Patrick Reading, the director of WHO collaborating centre for reference and research on influenza based at the Peter Doherty Institute for infection and immunity, said flu case numbers in Australia between January and April have already been higher than usual in all jurisdictions.
However, experts cannot predict the severity of the upcoming flu season as the virus is so unpredictable that an early peak does not always predict greater severity, Reading said.
Leask said “it’s always a bad flu season because it results in hospitalisations and deaths”, but the more people can receive recommendations, reminders, and easy access to flu vaccines, the better.
Welcome
Good morning and welcome to our live news blog. I’m Martin Farrer with the top overnight stories and then it’ll be Rafqa Touma with the main action.
Tim Wilson is projected to reclaim his inner-Melbourne seat of Goldstein from the teal independent Zoe Daniel today but several other races are going down to the wire. Another class-of-2022 independent, Monique Ryan, is less than 100 votes ahead of Liberal Amelia Hamer in Kooyong next door to Goldstein; there is also a too-close-to-call race in the Sydney seat of Bradfield between the Liberal Gisele Kapterian and independent Nicolette Boele. And back in Melbourne, Greens leader Adam Bandt may lose his seat. We will have the latest on all the races over the day in the blog.
Back with the Liberals, whoever replaces Peter Dutton faces a period of “instability” and must be prepared to be regularly criticised and challenged as the party wrestles with its future after its disastrous election defeat. We will have the latest on this other important race.
Speculation about the makeup of Anthony Albanese’s new ministry continued with Labor insiders saying assistant trade minister Tim Ayres’s move to pass up promotion last year in favour of female colleagues will all but guarantee him a spot in Anthony Albanese’s looming reshuffle. And economists hope that the treasurer, Jim Chalmers, will be able to pursue structural reform after the fall of inflation.
Experts are warning this morning that flu vaccination rates in Australia are “dire” ahead of the flu season this winter. Flu cases have already been higher than usual this year and one specialist urged people to take up the jab because flu was the “underdog of infectious diseases” and easy to underestimate its severity.
