Liberal senator James McGrath is taking some cope-ium on the ABC coverage as early numbers come in:

No, there are some local circumstances there and I agree with Jim about Bass and Bridget is a maverick but she is a popular maverick. She held the seat of the last election for the first time ever for a long time that either Labor or Liberal held the seat for two elections.

In Braddon, Gavin Pearce retiring, we have a very popular local member retiring and there are additional candidates at the last election. The issue there is with salmon and this is one of the seats I suspect we will not know the result tonight, we may not know it until the week after next. It will be a close seat. And the seat in Lyons shows the brutality of the Labor Party which we can never get away within the Liberal Party is that the sitting member there was tapped on the shoulder and said out of the way because we have a really good candidate in Susie Bauer and Rebecca White, who I agree is a popular member, was installed as the candidate.