The federal election result in the seat of Bean remains on a knife edge, with only a few hundred votes separating Labor's David Smith and independent Jessie Price.
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00:00Even on polling day,
00:05Your government has said nothing. What have you done? I don't care about listening. What are you doing?
00:09Labor politicians felt a weight of expectation.
00:12It's sometimes easier to be an independent.
00:15The reality, I mean it's not easy to say that, but the reality is it is
00:19because governments have to make decisions for the whole country
00:23weighing up positions that, you know, across our caucus that Labor caucus members have
00:29and at times that makes it difficult in your own electorate.
00:33Labor increased its vote in seats around the country and the ACT was no exception.
00:38With a swing in first preference votes to Andrew Lee in Fenner of around 6%
00:43and Alicia Payne in Canberra of nearly 4%.
00:46In Bean, David Smith got around 41% of the primary vote
00:50with a swing against him of less than half a percent.
00:53In second, independent Jesse Price picked up only 27% of the vote.
00:58But that was enough to push Liberals candidate David Lamerton
01:01into third with a swing against him.
01:03And the Greens' Sam Carter came in fourth with 9%.
01:07It's preference flows that put the first-time candidate
01:10in a position to threaten the incumbent.
01:12I'm not taking anything away from Jesse or the campaign she ran.
01:16She was very highly visible. She ran a good campaign.
01:19It was actually the factor of the Liberal vote actually going through the floor.
01:24The Canberra Liberals, now soul-searching, say policies, including the plan to slash public service jobs, were a tough sell.
01:32I think there are a couple that we could probably point to that didn't go well here in Canberra.
01:37And it's now time to sit back and do what we've been doing here from the Assembly team
01:42and getting out and listening to our community.
01:44The problem for the ACT Party is, I think, that it has been too subservient to the interests of the Federal Party for too long.
01:53With public service cuts off the table, industry groups want to see Labor's promises fulfilled.
01:5840% of our members are telling us they're expecting to make a loss this year.
02:03That points to how difficult it is for the business community.
02:06So we're really looking forward to perhaps government kick-starting its work again and getting back to business.
02:12With thousands of postal votes still outstanding, County will continue for days to come.
02:17But questions about whether the major parties can convince independent voters in Canberra to come back to the fold
02:23will linger long after the final results are declared.