May 4, 2025 • 15 mins
Karen Middleton has known Anthony Albanese for more than 30 years – since before he entered parliament.
She’s watched his rise, and documented the moments that have shaped the leader he is today.
And Karen says this election is going to change Anthony Albanese, in ways that will change the country too.
Today author of Albanese: Telling it Straight Karen Middleton, on why Anthony Albanese won – and what the next three years of Labor government will look like.
If you enjoy 7am, the best way you can support us is by making a contribution at 7ampodcast.com.au/support.
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Guest: Journalist and author of Albanese - Telling It Straight Karen Middleton
Photo: AAP Image/Lukas Coch
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
So, Karen, welcome back to seven AM. It's great to
have you on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Thanks, Ruby, it's great to be back.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Karen Middleton has known Anthony Albanesi for more than thirty years,
since before he entered parliament. She's watched his rise and
documented the moments that have shaped the leader he is today.
And Karen says that this election is going to change
Anthony Albanesi in ways that will change the country too.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It's different winning the second time, and when you win
a second time with the majority as massive as this landslide,
really is what we're talking about. I think that has
an impact on a leader, how they think and what
they might be prepared to do.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
From Schwartz Media, I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM Today,
author of Albanesi Telling It Straight. Karen Middleton on why
Anthony Albanesi won and what the next three years of
Labor government will look like. It's Monday, May five. So
(01:10):
this election is obviously a huge and historic moment for
Anthony Alberzi. He's been returned to government in a landslide,
one of the best results that a Labor leader has
ever achieved. You have followed Alberese's career for a very
long time. You wrote his biography. So tell me, are
(01:31):
you surprised by the strength of his victory over the weekend.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I haven't talked to anyone who isn't surprised about just
how emphatic that victory has been.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Wow, what about this?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
This morning?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
He is waking up to a healthy, very healthy, eighty
eight seat majority government. Just talk us through how expected
was this result? I mean, slightly expected, but not by
this massive margin?
Speaker 2 (01:54):
No, the results? How do you reflect on what happened
last night? It's still sinking in, David. I mean, this
was beyond even our most optimistic expectations. It's much bigger
than I expected it to be. I was quite surprised
at just how many seats they've won and just what
a state the Liberal Party has been left in.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
And three years ago so in twenty twenty two, we
were actually both at the Labor headquarters when he won
that first election. But to get returned to government with
this kind of majority is unusual, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
It is.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
If you sink back to saying the John Howard victory
in nineteen ninety six and then the one in nineteen
ninety eight, he almost lost that second election, it was
very close, and this time Anthony Albernezi has dramatically increased
his majority. So that is quite a different circumstance to
the one we saw in twenty twenty two, and I
(02:51):
think it does something to a leader winning a second
time again. If you think back to John Howard, you've
got to send from him, and I've got the sense
a little bit from Anthony Albanesi as well, that there's
a little tiny niggling thing in the back of their
minds that when they win that first victory that says
that maybe it wasn't just them, Maybe it was because
(03:13):
the other side had been in for a long time,
the electric was sick of the other guy, as it
was in both cases, and so it isn't really until
they win that second victory that they feel like that
is an endorsement of them and their leadership and their policies,
their strategy. And so I think that's what you see
now with Anthony Albanesi.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
And his reelection chances looked very different at the beginning
of this year. There were several news polls that had
the Coalition in the lead fifty one to forty nine.
Back in January so do you think that those polls
they were an accurate representation of how people felt about
Anthony Albanesi at the beginning of the year, and if so,
(03:55):
what changed for him.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yes, I think there were an accurate reflection in so
far people were really fatigued with the cost of living crisis.
They felt that the government had been a little bit
adrift and that things weren't changing. They weren't getting the
attention and the support that they felt that they needed,
and you'd seen the opposition really being able to capitalize
(04:18):
on that through last year and put the government on
the defensive, so that you know, really we came into
the new year with the opinion polls suggesting that a
coalition upset victory was a real possibility. I think the
Prime Minister had had some trouble communicating clearly last year,
and what happened early this year is that he and
(04:40):
his office really focused very very strongly on the messages
that they wanted to send in the lead up to
this election, and they worked on that very intensely, and
I think what you have seen in the campaign period
is the results of that work. He has managed to
turn those polls around by being very very disciplined with
(05:01):
the messaging, making sure that what they had was a
program to offer the Australian people that was forward looking,
that was optimistic, that was centered around things that Australians
cared about, and health really was the main anchor to
their policy platform offering for this election, and to connect
all of that up to easing the cost of living
(05:24):
burdens on Australians. And I think there were a number
of things that happened even as recently as throughout the campaign,
not re least Donald Trump and the Wavy Opposition ran
their campaign that contributed, but there was a change in
the way Labor and the Prime Minister and his team
approached things that meant that they started turning those polls
around right as they came into the campaign period.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
So Labor clearly has a mandate now for the next
three years, and as many people are speculating with a
majority like this for the term after that as well potentially.
So what do you think that thy Albanezi is going
to do with that?
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Well, it's an interesting question, isn't it. Because he has
a huge mandate, and he has a huge backbench, and
he has the security of a huge backbench and that
means that he's got a lot of political capital he
can afford to do things be perhaps a bit more bold.
That was one of the criticisms that his own traditional
constituents made of their Prime minister and his government, that
(06:25):
it was too cautious and wasn't willing to do enough
in the old traditional labor style. But I think one
of the things that Anthony Alberanzi will be very mindful
of is that there's certainly a message from the electorate
that you have to take people with you, So I
don't think you want to start floating policy ideas that
haven't been properly ventilated with the public. Having said that,
(06:45):
there are things that he has talked about as desirable
objectives and achievements for labor, and I think when he
was asked during one of the debates in the campaign period,
what you know his great legacy or priority might be,
he talked about universal childcare. Mister Albanezi, what's the one
big change you'd like to be remembered for. Affordable childcare
(07:07):
is one of the things that we're doing.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
We've already did put measures in place.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
So there'll be things like that that he has spoken
about as an ambition that you might see him pursue
more vigorously in a second term.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
And you mentioned earlier you talked about how winning a
second time changes politicians. You know Anthony Albanezi, well, how
do you think that this will change him?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
The Prime Minister's speech was a fascinating demonstration and of
the difference in three years, and the word that really
stuck with me was confident. You know, he mentioned that
in his speech and I think that is what you
will see from this Prime minister now, less defensiveness, more confidence. Moreover,
(07:54):
since that his strategy was rewarded and endorsed, that his
personal approach, his role in the campaign, his public presentation,
which we in the media have criticized so much and
some of his own colleagues have as well, has improved.
And I think the confidence you will see in Anthony
Alberanezi is what's going to be very interesting to watch
(08:16):
because that will dictate how much courage he has and
what kinds of things he might be prepared to do
with this huge mandate. And he'll be thinking, I don't
know necessarily about legacy in terms of his own personal impact,
but he'll be thinking about what he can do to
change Australia in a permanent way, to make it a
(08:38):
better place for everyone who lives there, and he's particularly
focused on the people who do it the hardest. I'm
sure he'll be thinking of his late mentor Tom Urn,
from whom he learned all of his political skills, and
I think he will want to be thinking that when
he leaves politics. However far away that is that he
has made a change to Australia and he's been given
(08:59):
the opportunit unity with this huge victory, to really start
to recraft some things in Australian maybe to make it
a fairer and better place. And I think that's going
to be a fascinating thing to watch.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Coming up after the break The Risks of Success, Karen,
there has been a lot of talk about how bad
Peter Dutton's campaign was, but there really was only five
weeks in it. So how much of an influence do
(09:33):
you think that campaign and the mistakes that were made
had on the way that people voted or do you
get the sense that perhaps people had already made up
their minds about Dutton when he took over the leadership
three years ago.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I think there's a cumulative effect of these things. So
we know that Peter Dutton wasn't a popular figure in
Australian politics. The people had seen him as a fairly
hardline guy, and he has talked about himself trying to
soften out his image and get people to see the
other side to him, so he's conscious of that. So
I think there was that entrenched in the minds of
(10:08):
Australians and then they're you know, they're wanting to be
convinced that there are other reasons if they have some
doubts about him, they want to have other reasons to
vote for him. And the problem he had was that
he made some mistakes, he had to change his policy,
he seemed to be inconsistent, and that then fed into
this sense that perhaps the opposition wasn't ready for government,
(10:30):
and that was certainly the line that Anthony Obernizi and
his labor team were pushing. So I think all of
those things came together, and it was some of the
things in the campaign and the mistakes and the sort
of sense of chaotic unpreparedness for the campaign, let alone
for government, that reinforced some of those other concerns about
Peter Dutton that had been lingering around for people over
(10:53):
the past three years.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
And obviously it wasn't the election that the Greens were
hoping for either. I don't know whether his seat has
been called yet, but it was getting extremely close on
election night. Max Tandler Maper has lost his seat. How
do you think the Greens will be thinking about this.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I think this was not a good result for the Greens.
They'll be trying to put a positive spin on it
in that they may end up having a little more
influence in the Senate, but they would be shocked. I
think that Adam Bann has gone so close to losing
his own seat that they've lost two of those seats
that they won so well at the twenty twenty two
election in Queensland. They are still in the hunt for
(11:35):
one or two seats in Victoria and one or two elsewhere.
But on the whole, you can't say that this is
an emphatic endorsement of the Greens. And I think what
this says is that they made a mistake in the
way they approached their politics over the past year. They
went very hard like the Coalition frankly on what's been
(11:57):
called Grief's politics and attacking the government. They raised and
went very hard on Gaza, and some people saw that
as divisive in the community. Others thought they were champions
of the Palestinian cause. But I think they've realized from
the public feedback that it wasn't going well for them
and they had to pivot to a different kind of campaign.
(12:17):
They've been emphasizing keeping Peter Dutton out of office and
they were claim some credit now for him having lost
his own seat, and they switched more to focusing on
economic issues and talking about holding government to account but
not being seen as being obstructionist, and that was another
problem they had. They didn't support some of the government's
measures on housing, for example, so they've had to change
(12:38):
lad in the peace and that's probably helped their campaign.
But I think it says that, you know, there's a
warning from the public that they weren't entirely happy and
they certainly the Greens certainly haven't done as well as
they did last time.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
And so Karen, as you've outlined, it was a bad
result for the Greens, a terrible result for the coalition.
So how do you think that Labor are now thinking
about their own success and how they'll measure it in
the next three years.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Well, the first thing they have to make sure of
in achieving success is that they don't fall victim to
hubris and arrogance, and winning a victory as big as
this one, that's a huge risk. So for a start
they need to guard against that, and I know that
they're very conscious of that. And with an opposition in disarray,
it's easy to fall into that. So I think they
have to be super careful, and I think they will
(13:27):
think that if they can maintain public support in the
opinion polls, achieve some change and do that in a
way that doesn't see the public turn against them, and
then they will consider that as a success. And we
know the Prime Minister likes to think ahead. Before the
last election he said he had a strategy for two terms.
(13:50):
He said that again in an interview during this campaign
that he was thinking about the next turn. So he's
always trying to lay the groundwork for the one after
this one. He'll be trying to do that in a
way that intreaches Labor as a party of long term
government as it was back in the days of Bob
Hawk and Paul Keating, because we really haven't seen long
(14:13):
term sustainable labor governments since then, and we'll see how
well they go in three years' time when we're awaiting
the next ventual election.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Well, Karen, thank you so much for your time. It's
been great having you back on the show.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Thanks Herby, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Also in the news today, Clive Palmer's Trumpet of Patriots
has failed to secure any seats in the House of
Representatives or the Senate. More than three quarters of votes
have been counted in the House, with only one point
nine percent going to the fringe minor Party. Clive Palmer
has claimed that he spent sixty million dollars on the campaign,
(15:10):
and former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has been diagnosed
with prostate cancer. The Nationals MP made the announcement today
following his re election to the seat of New England
on Saturday night. Joyce is due to have surgery today,
saying he didn't announce it earlier because he didn't want
to distract from his campaigning and urged all men to
(15:30):
get tested. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks
for listening.
So, Karen, welcome back to seven AM. It's great to
have you on the show.
Speaker 2 (00:04):
Thanks, Ruby, it's great to be back.
Speaker 1 (00:06):
Karen Middleton has known Anthony Albanesi for more than thirty years,
since before he entered parliament. She's watched his rise and
documented the moments that have shaped the leader he is today.
And Karen says that this election is going to change
Anthony Albanesi in ways that will change the country too.
Speaker 2 (00:25):
It's different winning the second time, and when you win
a second time with the majority as massive as this landslide,
really is what we're talking about. I think that has
an impact on a leader, how they think and what
they might be prepared to do.
Speaker 1 (00:41):
From Schwartz Media, I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven AM Today,
author of Albanesi Telling It Straight. Karen Middleton on why
Anthony Albanesi won and what the next three years of
Labor government will look like. It's Monday, May five. So
(01:10):
this election is obviously a huge and historic moment for
Anthony Alberzi. He's been returned to government in a landslide,
one of the best results that a Labor leader has
ever achieved. You have followed Alberese's career for a very
long time. You wrote his biography. So tell me, are
(01:31):
you surprised by the strength of his victory over the weekend.
Speaker 2 (01:35):
I haven't talked to anyone who isn't surprised about just
how emphatic that victory has been.
Speaker 1 (01:41):
Wow, what about this?
Speaker 2 (01:42):
This morning?
Speaker 1 (01:43):
He is waking up to a healthy, very healthy, eighty
eight seat majority government. Just talk us through how expected
was this result? I mean, slightly expected, but not by
this massive margin?
Speaker 2 (01:54):
No, the results? How do you reflect on what happened
last night? It's still sinking in, David. I mean, this
was beyond even our most optimistic expectations. It's much bigger
than I expected it to be. I was quite surprised
at just how many seats they've won and just what
a state the Liberal Party has been left in.
Speaker 1 (02:13):
And three years ago so in twenty twenty two, we
were actually both at the Labor headquarters when he won
that first election. But to get returned to government with
this kind of majority is unusual, isn't it?
Speaker 2 (02:28):
Yes?
Speaker 1 (02:29):
It is.
Speaker 2 (02:29):
If you sink back to saying the John Howard victory
in nineteen ninety six and then the one in nineteen
ninety eight, he almost lost that second election, it was
very close, and this time Anthony Albernezi has dramatically increased
his majority. So that is quite a different circumstance to
the one we saw in twenty twenty two, and I
(02:51):
think it does something to a leader winning a second
time again. If you think back to John Howard, you've
got to send from him, and I've got the sense
a little bit from Anthony Albanesi as well, that there's
a little tiny niggling thing in the back of their
minds that when they win that first victory that says
that maybe it wasn't just them, Maybe it was because
(03:13):
the other side had been in for a long time,
the electric was sick of the other guy, as it
was in both cases, and so it isn't really until
they win that second victory that they feel like that
is an endorsement of them and their leadership and their policies,
their strategy. And so I think that's what you see
now with Anthony Albanesi.
Speaker 1 (03:33):
And his reelection chances looked very different at the beginning
of this year. There were several news polls that had
the Coalition in the lead fifty one to forty nine.
Back in January so do you think that those polls
they were an accurate representation of how people felt about
Anthony Albanesi at the beginning of the year, and if so,
(03:55):
what changed for him.
Speaker 2 (03:56):
Yes, I think there were an accurate reflection in so
far people were really fatigued with the cost of living crisis.
They felt that the government had been a little bit
adrift and that things weren't changing. They weren't getting the
attention and the support that they felt that they needed,
and you'd seen the opposition really being able to capitalize
(04:18):
on that through last year and put the government on
the defensive, so that you know, really we came into
the new year with the opinion polls suggesting that a
coalition upset victory was a real possibility. I think the
Prime Minister had had some trouble communicating clearly last year,
and what happened early this year is that he and
(04:40):
his office really focused very very strongly on the messages
that they wanted to send in the lead up to
this election, and they worked on that very intensely, and
I think what you have seen in the campaign period
is the results of that work. He has managed to
turn those polls around by being very very disciplined with
(05:01):
the messaging, making sure that what they had was a
program to offer the Australian people that was forward looking,
that was optimistic, that was centered around things that Australians
cared about, and health really was the main anchor to
their policy platform offering for this election, and to connect
all of that up to easing the cost of living
(05:24):
burdens on Australians. And I think there were a number
of things that happened even as recently as throughout the campaign,
not re least Donald Trump and the Wavy Opposition ran
their campaign that contributed, but there was a change in
the way Labor and the Prime Minister and his team
approached things that meant that they started turning those polls
around right as they came into the campaign period.
Speaker 1 (05:46):
So Labor clearly has a mandate now for the next
three years, and as many people are speculating with a
majority like this for the term after that as well potentially.
So what do you think that thy Albanezi is going
to do with that?
Speaker 2 (06:02):
Well, it's an interesting question, isn't it. Because he has
a huge mandate, and he has a huge backbench, and
he has the security of a huge backbench and that
means that he's got a lot of political capital he
can afford to do things be perhaps a bit more bold.
That was one of the criticisms that his own traditional
constituents made of their Prime minister and his government, that
(06:25):
it was too cautious and wasn't willing to do enough
in the old traditional labor style. But I think one
of the things that Anthony Alberanzi will be very mindful
of is that there's certainly a message from the electorate
that you have to take people with you, So I
don't think you want to start floating policy ideas that
haven't been properly ventilated with the public. Having said that,
(06:45):
there are things that he has talked about as desirable
objectives and achievements for labor, and I think when he
was asked during one of the debates in the campaign period,
what you know his great legacy or priority might be,
he talked about universal childcare. Mister Albanezi, what's the one
big change you'd like to be remembered for. Affordable childcare
(07:07):
is one of the things that we're doing.
Speaker 1 (07:09):
We've already did put measures in place.
Speaker 2 (07:12):
So there'll be things like that that he has spoken
about as an ambition that you might see him pursue
more vigorously in a second term.
Speaker 1 (07:20):
And you mentioned earlier you talked about how winning a
second time changes politicians. You know Anthony Albanezi, well, how
do you think that this will change him?
Speaker 2 (07:33):
The Prime Minister's speech was a fascinating demonstration and of
the difference in three years, and the word that really
stuck with me was confident. You know, he mentioned that
in his speech and I think that is what you
will see from this Prime minister now, less defensiveness, more confidence. Moreover,
(07:54):
since that his strategy was rewarded and endorsed, that his
personal approach, his role in the campaign, his public presentation,
which we in the media have criticized so much and
some of his own colleagues have as well, has improved.
And I think the confidence you will see in Anthony
Alberanezi is what's going to be very interesting to watch
(08:16):
because that will dictate how much courage he has and
what kinds of things he might be prepared to do
with this huge mandate. And he'll be thinking, I don't
know necessarily about legacy in terms of his own personal impact,
but he'll be thinking about what he can do to
change Australia in a permanent way, to make it a
(08:38):
better place for everyone who lives there, and he's particularly
focused on the people who do it the hardest. I'm
sure he'll be thinking of his late mentor Tom Urn,
from whom he learned all of his political skills, and
I think he will want to be thinking that when
he leaves politics. However far away that is that he
has made a change to Australia and he's been given
(08:59):
the opportunit unity with this huge victory, to really start
to recraft some things in Australian maybe to make it
a fairer and better place. And I think that's going
to be a fascinating thing to watch.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
Coming up after the break The Risks of Success, Karen,
there has been a lot of talk about how bad
Peter Dutton's campaign was, but there really was only five
weeks in it. So how much of an influence do
(09:33):
you think that campaign and the mistakes that were made
had on the way that people voted or do you
get the sense that perhaps people had already made up
their minds about Dutton when he took over the leadership
three years ago.
Speaker 2 (09:46):
I think there's a cumulative effect of these things. So
we know that Peter Dutton wasn't a popular figure in
Australian politics. The people had seen him as a fairly
hardline guy, and he has talked about himself trying to
soften out his image and get people to see the
other side to him, so he's conscious of that. So
I think there was that entrenched in the minds of
(10:08):
Australians and then they're you know, they're wanting to be
convinced that there are other reasons if they have some
doubts about him, they want to have other reasons to
vote for him. And the problem he had was that
he made some mistakes, he had to change his policy,
he seemed to be inconsistent, and that then fed into
this sense that perhaps the opposition wasn't ready for government,
(10:30):
and that was certainly the line that Anthony Obernizi and
his labor team were pushing. So I think all of
those things came together, and it was some of the
things in the campaign and the mistakes and the sort
of sense of chaotic unpreparedness for the campaign, let alone
for government, that reinforced some of those other concerns about
Peter Dutton that had been lingering around for people over
(10:53):
the past three years.
Speaker 1 (10:55):
And obviously it wasn't the election that the Greens were
hoping for either. I don't know whether his seat has
been called yet, but it was getting extremely close on
election night. Max Tandler Maper has lost his seat. How
do you think the Greens will be thinking about this.
Speaker 2 (11:12):
I think this was not a good result for the Greens.
They'll be trying to put a positive spin on it
in that they may end up having a little more
influence in the Senate, but they would be shocked. I
think that Adam Bann has gone so close to losing
his own seat that they've lost two of those seats
that they won so well at the twenty twenty two
election in Queensland. They are still in the hunt for
(11:35):
one or two seats in Victoria and one or two elsewhere.
But on the whole, you can't say that this is
an emphatic endorsement of the Greens. And I think what
this says is that they made a mistake in the
way they approached their politics over the past year. They
went very hard like the Coalition frankly on what's been
(11:57):
called Grief's politics and attacking the government. They raised and
went very hard on Gaza, and some people saw that
as divisive in the community. Others thought they were champions
of the Palestinian cause. But I think they've realized from
the public feedback that it wasn't going well for them
and they had to pivot to a different kind of campaign.
(12:17):
They've been emphasizing keeping Peter Dutton out of office and
they were claim some credit now for him having lost
his own seat, and they switched more to focusing on
economic issues and talking about holding government to account but
not being seen as being obstructionist, and that was another
problem they had. They didn't support some of the government's
measures on housing, for example, so they've had to change
(12:38):
lad in the peace and that's probably helped their campaign.
But I think it says that, you know, there's a
warning from the public that they weren't entirely happy and
they certainly the Greens certainly haven't done as well as
they did last time.
Speaker 1 (12:50):
And so Karen, as you've outlined, it was a bad
result for the Greens, a terrible result for the coalition.
So how do you think that Labor are now thinking
about their own success and how they'll measure it in
the next three years.
Speaker 2 (13:05):
Well, the first thing they have to make sure of
in achieving success is that they don't fall victim to
hubris and arrogance, and winning a victory as big as
this one, that's a huge risk. So for a start
they need to guard against that, and I know that
they're very conscious of that. And with an opposition in disarray,
it's easy to fall into that. So I think they
have to be super careful, and I think they will
(13:27):
think that if they can maintain public support in the
opinion polls, achieve some change and do that in a
way that doesn't see the public turn against them, and
then they will consider that as a success. And we
know the Prime Minister likes to think ahead. Before the
last election he said he had a strategy for two terms.
(13:50):
He said that again in an interview during this campaign
that he was thinking about the next turn. So he's
always trying to lay the groundwork for the one after
this one. He'll be trying to do that in a
way that intreaches Labor as a party of long term
government as it was back in the days of Bob
Hawk and Paul Keating, because we really haven't seen long
(14:13):
term sustainable labor governments since then, and we'll see how
well they go in three years' time when we're awaiting
the next ventual election.
Speaker 1 (14:25):
Well, Karen, thank you so much for your time. It's
been great having you back on the show.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Thanks Herby, thanks for having me.
Speaker 1 (14:47):
Also in the news today, Clive Palmer's Trumpet of Patriots
has failed to secure any seats in the House of
Representatives or the Senate. More than three quarters of votes
have been counted in the House, with only one point
nine percent going to the fringe minor Party. Clive Palmer
has claimed that he spent sixty million dollars on the campaign,
(15:10):
and former Deputy Prime Minister Barnaby Joyce has been diagnosed
with prostate cancer. The Nationals MP made the announcement today
following his re election to the seat of New England
on Saturday night. Joyce is due to have surgery today,
saying he didn't announce it earlier because he didn't want
to distract from his campaigning and urged all men to
(15:30):
get tested. I'm Ruby Jones. This is seven am. Thanks
for listening.
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