The green shoot from last night’s catastrophic election result was the re-emergence of Family First after a nine-year absence from the federal scene.

Of the 92 House of Representative seats contested, Family First polled more than four per cent of the primary vote in 13 electorates.

This is extraordinary and exceeded expectations. It qualifies Family First for significant electoral funding which otherwise would have gone to the major parties.

Your support made this possible – thankyou!

The eight Family First Senate candidates achieved close to, or just over 2pc, in Qld, NSW, Victoria and South Australia.

Senate counting will take some time and these results are preliminary.

While not successful this time, a solid base is being built, and this was the great achievement at this election made possible by you.

I said the election result was “catastrophic”.

While the Prime Minister deserves congratulations for Labor’s win, it will mean a doubling down on the harmful woke agenda pursued over the past three years.

Former Prime Minister Tony Abbott put it best in an interview last night where he said he feared:

• The energy self-harm will continue
• The economic stagnation will accelerate
• The social division will get worse
• The strategic peril will continue

Family First fears this too and posits that Peter Dutton lost because the Coalition was timid on these issues.

Without vision, people perish.

In short, the Coalition, which (like Labor) has wandered far from its roots, failed to put forward an adequate vision to address the energy crisis, reign in our $1 trillion debt, restore eroded freedoms and adequately protect Australia from external threats.

Neither leader addressed these and other key issues confronting the nation. Instead, voters were offered a grab bag of hand-outs paid for on the nation’s credit card.

We now have a citizenry that expects and even rewards this behaviour from politicians.

Our malaise is not completely the fault of our political leaders, as terrible as the current crop is.

Bizarrely, both parties went to this election with policies that said a man can be a woman and gave no guarantees about religious freedom and freedom of speech.

The one consolation from yesterday, thanks to the work of campaign group Advance, is that the Greens have gone backwards and do not share power with Labor.

All this makes us at Family First even more determined to continue to build a political movement that will put courageous and principled men and women into our Parliaments.

This election was a huge effort for a largely volunteer team at Family First.

I want to thank the 100 candidates and our incredible team of campaign directors and volunteers who stood at polling places over the past two weeks.

Thank you to everyone who donated to resource the campaign. Thanks to those who prayed.

But this is just the beginning. With results like last night, state Upper House seats are within our grasp and up-coming elections in South Australia, Victoria and New South Wales are now our focus.

Our nation’s drift into economic and social decline does not have to be inevitable.

That’s why, emboldened by your party’s strong showing last night, Family First is determined to keep fighting for family, faith, freedom and life.

The nation has suffered another big set-back. That’s all the more reason for you and I to step up and continue to provide the political leadership Australia desperately needs.