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The Greens insist their leader can still win the hotly contested seat of Melbourne and are refusing to concede defeat.
The ABC and Sky News are projecting Labor’s Sarah Witty will win the seat from Bandt, after he suffered a 4.4 per cent drop in his primary vote.
However, Greens deputy leader Mehreen Faruqi told ABC’s Radio National the party is still hopeful that thousands of uncounted votes can get its leader across the line.
“As many as 15,000 absentee and declaration votes that have yet to be sorted and counted,” she said on Thursday morning.

“And often those votes have a swing towards the Greens, so we are waiting for all those votes to be counted, to declare the result.”

Bandt is trailing in the count by a few thousand votes and a loss in Melbourne will leave the party leaderless.
Faruqi has denied she has been canvassing leadership votes behind closed doors as the Melbourne seat hangs in the balance.
“That is absolutely not correct. We are still waiting for the result of Melbourne,” she said.
“Adam has done a fantastic campaign … and we will wait for all the results to be declared, have a party room and then start the process of electing a leader.”

It is understood Greens senators Sarah Hanson-Young and Larissa Waters are also leadership contenders, although neither has officially declared their candidacy.

Greens voters deliver mixed results

In 2010, Bandt was the first Greens member to be elected to the House of Representatives.
While holding the balance of power in the Senate, Bandt finally witnessed the party’s presence in the lower house grow with the addition of three Queensland MPs in 2022.

However, these gains appeared temporary with Brisbane’s Stephen Bates and Griffith’s Max Chandler-Mather conceding defeat following Labor’s landslide victory.

Three men and a woman in black suits stand in front of a long table with people wearing masks sitting behind them on a green couch.

In 2022, MPs Stephen Bates, Elizabeth Watson-Brown, and Max Chandler-Mather joined leader Adam Bandt in the lower house in what was dubbed a “Greenslide”. Source: AAP / Lukas Coch

Chandler-Mather acknowledged the party had fallen short when it came to lower house seats — which was “bitterly disappointing”.

“But I think there is a lot of reason for hope,” Chandler-Mather said.
“We need to work out how to do better. Two days out from the election, [I] don’t have all the answers.”
Greens MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown is in a tight three-party contest in Ryan, making it too close to call.
The minor party has attributed part of its loss to the collapse in the Liberal vote, which meant Coalition preferences flowed through to Labor.
Bandt maintains the party has received a record Senate vote this election and is on track to take 11 upper house seats.
As Labor expands its presence in the Senate, with a projected increase from 24 to 28 seats, it will only require the Greens to pass legislation.
This would mean previously influential crossbenchers like independent David Pocock won’t be as critical to passing legislation through the Senate.
 For the latest from SBS News, and .
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