Dutton Nukes His Party into Meltdown. Fallout will ensure another 6 years of Labor

Eighty minutes after opening the ballot boxes it was clear Peter Dutton would be the First Federal Opposition Leader to Lose His Seat. Who wants the Poison Chalice to replace him as Leader ?

Despite massive funding from Big Mining¹ and other sources, Peter Dutton led his Liberal Party into the Political Wilderness and his Coalition probably lost up to 20 seats.

This picture on X sums up the problem, showing defeated Peter Dutton sitting next to former Liberal Prime Minister John Howard who also lost his own seat at the 2007 federal election.

Former Labor PM Paul Keating always makes the headlines when he chooses to speak.

I doubt that Dutton will return to politics. Pollsters on election night suggested his comment in the last week of the campaign that he would be happy to have a Nuclear Reactor in his seat of Dickson, probably sealed his fate and contributed to the massive swing of 7.72% primary vote against him and 8.25% on the Two Party Preferred count.²

David Littleproud, who Dutton described as his “Partner in Crime” and is credited with urging taxpayer owned Nuclear Reactors, retains his seat of Maranoa, despite a 4.91% primary swing against him.³

All splinter parties who backed Dutton’s Nuclear Madness should take a careful look at where that landed them as they count the dollars wasted, although it is interesting that Bob Katter retained his seat which was not threatened with a Nuclear Reactor.⁴

Trumpet of Patriots candidate for Hunter and the public face of the party, apart from Billionaire Clive Palmer, Suellen Wrightson⁵, was gracious in defeat.

At the time of writng she scored 3.36% of the formal vote, but Labor sitting candidate Dan Repacholi achieved a large swing toward him, gaining 42.97% of primaries.⁶⁷

Informal votes in Hunter were 7.49% and we won’t know for a while how many people chose not to vote.

At the time of writing it is not clear whether One Nation Senator Malcolm Roberts can hold on given that former Senator Gerard Rennick has eaten into his vote.⁸

ABC election expert Antony Green says it could take 5 weeks for the Senate count to be finalized.

He has provided a webpage for the House of Representatives seats in doubt.⁹

At this stage it looks like a reduced crossbench of independents and minor parties.

1.

2. https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-31496-252.htm

3. https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-31496-170.htm

4.

5.

6.

7. https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-31496-126.htm

8. https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal/2025/results/senate

9. https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal/2025/results?sortBy=latest&searchQuery=&filter=all&selectedRegion=all&selectedParty=all&partyWonBy=all&partyHeldBy=all