Polls have just closed in South Australia and the Northern Territory.

Results are immediately counted after polls close, and unofficial early results will give us a sense of who might win.

Stay with us as we bring you the latest.

Yvette Tan
Live editor

Image source, Getty Images

It's just past 18:30 in New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland, where polls closed half an hour ago. If you're just joining us now, here's what you need to know:

• Polls are still open in parts of the country, which has three key time zones. The last polling booths in Western Australia close in 90 minutes
• However, counting has already begun in the populous eastern states and unofficial early results from the electoral commission are likely to trickle in soon - giving us a sense of who could form the next government
• Young voters are playing a crucial role in the race between PM Anthony Albanese of the Australian Labor Party who is seeking a second term, and opposition leader Peter Dutton of the Liberal-National coalition
• Also on the ballot are a range of independents, and candidates from theleft-wing Greens, who could become kingmakers in case of a hung parliament

• The key issues looming over the elections include housing, immigration, and healthcare

Kelly Ng
Reporting from Queensland

Kenneth King is a campaign volunteer for Peter Dutton in the opposition leader's home seat of Dickson, Queensland where polls have just closed. Earlier today, he told us he was feeling hopeful that Dutton would win.

"It's a really important day for the country, and I'm really looking forward to Peter Dutton being a prime minister to get the country back on track."

"We know him not only as a great local member, but we also know he will be a great prime minister," he added.

The first polls have closed in Australia - with polls in a few states left to go. Counting has started and we'll soon start to get a sense of the results in the coming hours, reports our Australia correspondent Katy Watson.

Vote counting has started and as a reminder, here is how the composition of the House of Representatives looked like before today's election.

Stay with us as we keep track of the results.

It's 18:00 local time (08:00 GMT), which means the first polls have closed in the eastern states of Australia - New South Wales, Victoria and Queensland.

Wherever you are in Australia, polls close at 18:00 - but the country's three different time zones means there isn't one standard time where all polls shut.

The last polling booths- in the far flung Australian territory of the Cocos (Keeling) Islands - will close by 20:00 AET, or 10:00 GMT.

Counting in each state begins straight after polls closed, and results are updated in real time on the Australian Electoral Commission website.

The AEC also provides an "indicative count", which gives citizens a quick indication of who could form the government. It's also what the media and parties can base their calls on.

More to know about the Australian election here.

It's a significant day for brothers Howard Ong and Ong Ye Kung, who are both contesting for a seat in their respective elections - one in Australia, and another thousands of miles away in Singapore.

Ong is challenging former cop Sam Lim in Labor’s marginally held seat in Tangney, Western Australia, while his brother Ong Ye Kung stands for Singapore’s long-governing People’s Action Party. Lim holds Tangney with a razor-thin 2.8% margin.

Howard Ong, who was born in Singapore, completed national service before moving to Australia for his undergraduate studies. In recent weeks he has been vocal on social media, vouching that Liberal will “get Australia back on track”.

Over in Singapore, more than 2.5 million people are set to cast their vote by the end of the day.

Image source, Getty Images

Kelly Ng
Reporting from Queensland

Dickson resident Michelle has been busy barbecuing democracy sausages at the Pine Rivers High School polling station since 6:30 this morning.

Michelle strongly believes "a change of government is needed". "They will be able to manage the economy better," she says.

Here the sausage sizzle is run by parents of the school's students and alumni. Funds raised go back to activities for the students, including a biannual music tour to Sydney.

Evanthia Smith, president of the school's Parents and Citizens Association, is backing Labor candidate Ali France who she believes will do more to improve public education and accessibility to healthcare.

Dutton "has done a good job", she says, but some of his policies "don't align with my thinking".

Victoria Bourne
Reporting from Sydney

After writing so much about democracy sausages, it seemed amiss not to try the novelty of ordering one to the BBC Sydney newsroom.

Described on a food delivery app as a "delicious" sausage wrapped in a slice of the "most populist" white bread, it arrived in a box emblazoned with the words "a tasty pillar of democracy". The proceeds from the $3.50 order go to Australian Red Cross partners.

Being a Brit in Sydney, this was probably an unconventional way to try my first snag on election day but I was pleasantly surprised.

It's a 7.5/10 from me, and 8/10 from my colleague Kellie - though she adds this could just be because she's hungry.

Finbar O'Mallon
Reporting from Melbourne

I'm in the seat of Wills, in Melbourne's inner north. Here, Tash Clough is hosting a garage sale to take advantage of the nearby polling booth.

Clough, 29, said she's nervous about the election: "Some of the commentary, particularly what the more right-leaning parties are saying, makes me scared, especially after what's happening in America."

She's also concerned about Labor incumbent Peter Khalil's seeming lack of criticism of Israel in the war in Gaza.

“I just don't know why they're [the government] not condemning it, it's very clear what's happening there,” Clough said.

Wills candidate for the left-wing party the Greens, Samantha Ratnam, is looking to capitalise on that anger.

At Brunswick East Primary School, where Ratnam’s party got almost one in two votes at the last election, Annie Gehling, 43, was helping raise money for the school by selling jams, plants and baked treats.

The big issues in Wills?

“I would say the big issues include: housing crisis, the cost of living — it's super important to people,” Gehling said. “And climate action.”

A major challenge facing the winner of the election will be how to handle the US and China's increasingly tense relationship.

So we asked voters in Sydney - if they were the new prime minister, how would they handle relations between Australia's two key partners?

Here's what they told us.

Sakshi Venkatraman
Reporting from New York

Image source, Reuters

Earlier this week, we covered Canada's elections, where Liberal Prime Minister Mark Carney ultimately won the day.

The defining issue of the election was Canada's neighbour to the South, particularly US President Donald Trump.

Some experts credit the distaste around Trump for putting a dampener on the Conservative opposition Pierre Poilievre, who was gaining momentum for much of the lead-up to election day. After Trump's aggressive tariffs dropped in April, the election became about who could best stand up to him, and the incumbent Carney pulled ahead.

Now the US president seems to have become a factor in Australia's election too - and it remains to be seen if the same will happen today.

Just like in Canada, the conservative Dutton was gaining ground before Trump retook office, especially as cost of living is a top concern for voters.

In recent polls, though, he trails incumbent Albanese.

Katy Watson
BBC News, Sydney

Image source, BBC/Katy Watson

“Climate change is real, it’s happening,” says Damien Criddle as he prepared to cast an early vote this week in Curtin, an electorate in the city of Perth. “The parties are addressing it and both parties have good policies on it so I am pretty comfortable.”

Criddle doesn’t worry too much about international politics in these elections. For him, the focus is very much domestic.

He won’t be drawn on who he’s voting for, but says he wants one of the main parties to secure a majority government.

“My hope is we get a government that is not a minority government, and we don’t get a government that is influenced by parties that have agendas that aren’t mainstream.”

Adam McWhirter though, says he’s voting Liberal.

“We need someone strong that can [communicate] and achieve the best outcome for us Australians,” says McWhirter. “I think they have a stronger feel on the economy as a whole.”

The business owner is also worried about the economy, immigration and defence.

“Making sure we’ve got strong ties with our closest defence partners and to make sure that’s shored up – I guess in the current climate, that’s a little bit iffy,” he says, adding that it comes back to economy. “It’s about trading partners and tariffs and what impact they are having on our economy as a whole.”

As election day begins to wind down, we asked everyday Australians for one word to sum up their experience of the electoral campaign over the past few weeks.

Here's how they responded.

Tiffanie Turnbull
BBC News, Sydney

This has simultaneously been an unpredictable and unexciting campaign.

In the opening days of the campaign, Albanese stumbled off a stage - not fell, something he says is an important distinction. And opposition leader Peter Dutton booted an AFL ball into a cameraman’s head - cheering for a moment, then profusely apologising when he realised the guy was hurt.

But that’s about as lively as things got.

There have been announcements about health, vows to cut fuel tax and proposals from each side to fix the country’s housing crisis.

But as the campaign dragged on, both leaders struggled to compete for Australia’s attention.

They had to contend for headlines with Donald Trump and his sweeping tariffs scheme, weave their campaigns around Easter, and suspend them briefly to mark the Pope’s death.

"It has been hard to cut through... but the major parties have lost the trust of the voters which has amplified their problems of communication," says John Warhurst, an Emeritus Professor at the Australian National University's School of Politics.

Summing up the campaign, he says: "The government has been timid and the opposition has been shambolic."

Image source, Getty Images

Anthony Albanese was thankful to his Labor campaign team who have been plugging away to try to secure his re-election as prime minister.

In the final public comments of his campaign, Albanese praised Australia's voting system, saying “we live in a vibrant democracy where everyone gets their say and every one gets one vote, one value”, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

His message for Australians was to not take democracy for granted.

"We should cherish it, nourish it, and for everyone handing out today and participating in the democratic process as well, no matter who they’re handing out for, it’s a good thing they’re participating.”

We hit the streets of Sydney to ask everyday Australians about the issues that matter most to them this election.

Here's what they had to say.

Victoria Bourne
Reporting from Sydney

The man trusted by millions of Australians to keep them up to date with results is the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's chief election analyst, Antony Green.

Today will be the last time he presents election coverage after more than three decades of providing insights for Australia's national broadcaster.

Speaking on the eve of today's election, he told me that Anthony Albanese's hopes for re-election didn't look good in 2024.

Image source, ABC News: Matt Eaton

"At the end of last year, you would have thought the Labor government was in serious trouble. 
He would lose his majority and potentially be well short of a majority."

Green believes that prospect has now diminished.

"It looks like either Labor will just fall short, but still be comfortably in government with the size of the cross bench, or that they may actually get a majority again," he said.

We will all have to wait and see how it pans out after polls close.

Image source, Getty Images

After casting his ballot, opposition leader Peter Dutton told reporters, "I'm confident Australians have seen through a bad government".

"There are a lot of families who are really doing it very tough at the moment and Australians can't afford three more years of Labor", he added.

He stressed the Coalition had a "positive plan" to manage the economy and help people "now".

With just hours to go before polls close, Dutton said he was "looking forward" to seeing the outcome of how Australians voted.

Simon Atkinson
BBC News

One of the tightest races in the country could be in the Melbourne seat of Goldstein.

Zoe Daniels, a former journalist and Independent Teal candidate, is fighting to win re-election. Her rival is the Liberal’s Tim Wilson - the man she beat in 2022.

If the Coalition are to have any hope of getting power in Canberra, this is the sort of seat they need to pick up.

When we visited a polling station in the bayside suburb of Brighton on Friday, placards for the pair swamped all others, with Ms Daniels among those handing out flyers and making a final pitch - complete with Diamante studs on her cap that spelled out ZOE.

“People are so sick of partisanship, sick of short-term-policy thinking and of the two major parties throwing the ball between each other every three years, tinkering around the edges and not making structural change,” she said.

She reckons this explains the rise of the independent MP.

“Because I am not part of a party machine, I’m not thinking about trying to get my party in to hold government for the next decade. I’m thinking what can I do for my community for the next three years.”