Election 2022: Andrew Forrest hails Anthony Albanese’s victory and the end of ‘embarrassing’ climate policy

The Liberal Party suffered key losses last night in its former heartland seats in Sydney and Melbourne amid the wave of teal independents.

France’s outgoing foreign affairs minister, Jean-Yves Le Drian, said he was pleased that Scott Morrison lost the election, a swipe at the sudden decision last year to dump a $90 billion French submarine deal.

“I can’t stop myself from saying that the defeat of Morrison suits me very well,” Le Drian said in Paris during a ceremony in which he handed over to his successor, Catherine Colonna.

Le Drian said he hoped that in the future France would be able to put in place, once again, “a frank and constructive dialogue” with Australia.

Le Drian said in September he felt “stabbed in the back” over the “unacceptable” deal that would hurt French business and shut the country’s military out of a key initiative in Western efforts to build a bulwark against China.

“And I have shared the two principles that will a government that I lead.

That is what my government will do.

The Liberal Party will need to elect more women and embrace diversity and inclusiveness, Senator Simon Birmingham has conceded after the Coalition’s resounding defeat.

“Every seat that the Liberal Party lost was lost to a female candidate, and so there is a real challenge there for us,” he said.

Former Labor senator for Queensland, John Black, said the Liberals lost because they failed to appeal to women

When you’ve got a PM whose attitude to women seems to be rooted in the 1970s it’s not surprising that the Liberals have lost so much support in their safe seats.”

NSW Liberal Party president Philip Ruddock said the party needed to learn from the election result after it lost safe seats to teal independents and several key marginal electorates to Labor

“Obviously, there are lessons to be learnt and the party will obviously have to look at what they are and deal with them in a considered and sensible way,“ he told The Australian Financial Review at the Liberal Party’s election night function

“Obviously, the party organisation will be giving thought to that as we move on.”

--Labor will form government – possibly in its own right – despite garnering less than one-third of the vote, after a night of chaos in which the ranks of the Coalition were decimated by teal independents, the opposition and the Greens, writes political editor Phillip Coorey

--Significant swings away from Liberal MPs in inner-city seats will deliver wins to a clutch of teal independents, writes news director Jessica Gardner

--The election result has thrown Robert Menzies’ Liberal Party into an existential crisis, writes senior writer Andrew Clark

Just hours into vote-counting, it was clear that the Coalition had not just lost government, but the Liberal Party had been decimated in its own heartland