Pauline Hanson’s daughter defeated by firebrand senator
Kat Wong |
Firebrand Tasmanian senator Jacqui Lambie has defeated Pauline Hanson’s daughter after a nail-biting count, as election contests continue to go down to the wire.
Senator Lambie faced a tight race to retain her Senate seat against One Nation’s Lee Hanson, whose mother Pauline founded the party.
On Tuesday, the Australian Electoral Commission declared Senator Lambie had triumphed, scraping into Tasmania’s fifth upper chamber spot as Liberal Richard Colbeck took the sixth seat and left Ms Hanson out in the cold.
Senator Lambie thanked her supporters and vowed to help those doing it tough over the next six years.
“Representing Tasmania and bringing the voices and concerns of the people to Canberra is what gets me out of bed in the morning!” she said in a statement.
Tasmania’s other senators include Labor’s Carol Brown and Richard Dowling, the Liberals’ Claire Chandler and Nick McKim from the Greens.
In the House of Representatives, two seats are undergoing recounts after close races.
Election officials in the north Sydney seat of Bradfield are undertaking a full recount after eight votes separated Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian from independent challenger Nicolette Boele.
In a cavernous warehouse 40km from the Sydney CBD, the vote counters – armed with bare fingers or perhaps a rubber thimble – flicked through wads of green ballot papers as scrutineers loomed.
As of Tuesday afternoon, Ms Kapterian was ahead by 11 votes.
A partial recount will soon be under way in the inner-Melbourne seat of Goldstein, where independent Zoe Daniel attempted to fend off Liberal candidate Tim Wilson.
The full distribution put Mr Wilson ahead of the incumbent by 260 votes.
The Bradfield recount could take up to two weeks while the tally in Goldstein is expected to take four days and will begin on Wednesday.
The Senate will also be home to some new faces after Labor’s landslide May 3 election win.
Charlotte Walker will become Australia’s youngest-ever senator at just 21 after she was preselected in the usually unwinnable third spot on Labor’s South Australian ticket.
The youngest person to be elected to an Australian parliament was Liberal Wyatt Roy, who was 20 when he became a member of the lower house in 2010, while Ms Walker will be the youngest holder of an upper house seat.
Tasmanian Labor senator Anne Urquhart, who vacated her spot to run for and eventually win the Tasmanian lower house seat of Braddon, will be replaced by former union representative Josh Dolega.
He will become the Apple Isle’s second openly gay senator after Bob Brown.
AAP
