2 days Ago By Clay Lucas, Cara Waters, Rachael Dexter, Charlotte Grieve
The focus will be on Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese’s national campaigns over the next five weeks, but the true contests will be on the ground in local communities. Today we launch our Victorian hot seats blog. Over the next five weeks we will take an in-depth look at several Victorian seats – including Wills, Goldstein, Kooyong and Bruce – examining the candidates, hot-button issues in the communities and, importantly, the parties’ campaign and policy responses.
All will be crucial in shaping the national result. These seats – with distinct demographics and local challenges – promise to be unique contests. They also illustrate scenarios unfolding across Australia this federal election.
Can Liberal candidates wrest control of the party’s once blue-ribbon seats back from the teals? Will the Greens continue their march into Labor heartland, and what role will the Gaza war play in the vote? And, crucially, can Labor reinforce enough seats to stop the Coalition gaining the seats they need to form majority government? The Age will have senior reporters on the ground in these electorates through to the May 3 poll date, explaining the national campaign through the prism of these communities. More on these key seats from our reporters now. To follow the national campaign, read our live federal election blog .
To explore how close the contest is in your neighbourhood, search our interactive electorate map . And to read about other close battles around Australia, here are the 12 seats to watch closely . Hi, over the next five weeks, I’ll be blogging about the seat of Wills as the 2025 federal election unfolds.
I’m normally an investigative reporter for The Age – investigative reporters never miss an opportunity to push their stories, so please read my most recent reporting on Australia’s $4 billion cosmetic injectables industry here . But during the federal election, I’ll follow full-time Labor MP Peter Khalil, the Greens’ Samantha Ratnam, Liberal Jeff Kidney, Socialist Sue Bolton, and all of the other candidates in this northern suburbs seat. Victorian Labor MP Peter Khalil.
Credit: Alex Ellinghausen Wills covers progressive northern suburbs like Brunswick and Coburg and Labor-leaning areas like Pascoe Vale, Fawkner, Oak Park and Glenroy. But a redistribution has added some of Australia’s most green booths — in North Fitzroy and North Carlton — to Wills for the first time. This will likely hand Ratnam and the Greens an advantage.
However, as I moved around the seat in the last week, preparing for the launch of this blog today, I noticed plenty of Peter Khalil signs on house fences in both North Carlton and North Fitzroy. Maybe that advantage, like so many Greens predictions of victory here, will be an illusion again: it’s been a phenomenon in this seat for more than a decade that the Greens talk up their chance of snatching Wills from Labor and then ultimately a win fails to materialise. At the 2022 election, I spent six fascinating weeks in the seat of Chisholm , roaming its suburbs which include Box Hill, Burwood, Glen Waverley and Mount Waverley.
There, it was clear a few weeks out that Liberal MP Gladys Liu would struggle to hold the seat from Labor’s Carina Garland. Ultimately, Garland won easily with a 7 per cent swing to her and Labor. So far in Wills, it’s hard to tell whether the Greens’ talk of this being a potential win is just that – talk – or if the voters of this economically and ethnically diverse seat will finally turn out for them.
Or will they Khalil and the status quo? Ratnam has stood in Wills against Khalil before, in 2016. Then, she came close to ending the party’s near-continuous hold on the seat since its creation in 1949. Ratnam secured 45 per cent of the vote that year.
Khalil ultimately won but had to rely on preferences from other parties. Since then, no Greens candidate has come near Khalil, who has expanded his majority in the seat on a two-party preferred basis to 9 per cent. Khalil, 52, was born in Melbourne to Egyptian parents and grew up in public housing.
Ratnam, 47 and born to Sri Lankan parents who left that country because of civil war, is a strong candidate in her own right. In the nine years since she last ran, Ratnam’s profile has grown and grown – first as the mayor of Moreland (now Merri-bek) Council, and then as the state leader of the Greens in Victoria. Wills, famously represented by former Labor Prime Minister Bob Hawke from 1980 until his retirement in 1992, is named after William John Wills who, alongside Robert O’Hara Burke, perished on their ill-fated expedition from Victoria to the Gulf of Carpentaria.
At the centre of Wills is Bell Street, the major arterial road which once acted as the so-called hipster proof fence in previous elections, with Labor voters to the north and Greens voters to the south. But rising house prices punched a hole in that fence, with younger, Greens-voting progressives increasingly settling in suburbs such as Pascoe Vale and Coburg North. The big issues here, like everywhere in Australia right now, are housing, the cost of living, health policy and particularly whether people can afford it.
But the vicious politics over Israel and Palestine is the really significant factor in this suburb – just like it is in many of Sydney’s most ethnically diverse seats. Ten per cent of Wills was Muslim at the 2021 Census, so Palestine is sure to be a big focus. The first time I chatted to both of the campaign teams for either side, they talked up what I can only assume is their hoped-for outcome on this issue Labor argues Israel-Palestine is of vastly less importance to most voters in this seat than the more mainstream issues like health and the cost of living.
The Greens says Israel-Palestine is the first thing many residents talk about when Ratnam and her team doorknock homes here. So we will see. It’s going to be an exciting five weeks.
Please, send any tips you’ve got relating to this seat, to any of the candidates, or really anything a voter in Wills might be interested in, to my email, [email protected], my Proton mail, claylucas@protonmail.
com, or via Signal on +61439828128. This really will be one of the most fascinating battles in Australian politics in 2025 – I hope you will follow it with me. Bruce has been a safe Labor seat since 1998.
It’s held by Julian Hill, the assistant Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Affairs, who won the last election by a margin of 6.6 per cent. Hill’s viral TikTok account spends a lot of time criticising Peter Dutton, who he perceives as an unpopular candidate to locals.
Hill takes aim at everything from Dutton’s “fake smile” to his record on Medicare. From left: The Liberal Party’s Zahid Safi, a street scene in Noble Park and incumbent Julian Hill (ALP). Credit: Marija Ercegovac Bruce is located in Melbourne’s south-eastern suburbs, taking in Dandenong, Narre Warren and Berwick, where many voters have kids, cars and a mortgage.
The Liberal Party is targeting the seat’s hip-pocket, highlighting cost-of-living pressures and promising to get Australia “back on track”. The seat is one of the country’s most multicultural – home to Victoria’s largest population of Australians of Afghan heritage, including Liberal candidate Zahid Safi, who hopes to become his party’s first Muslim MP. Safi has already been on the campaign trail, promising support for small business owners like himself and claiming Labor has “taken Bruce for granted”.
The Greens have put forward academic and local councillor Rhonda Garad, while One Nation and Family First will also field candidates. If the swing against Labor is on come election day, then Bruce could be among those to fall. G’day readers.
I’m Rachael Dexter and I’m thrilled (and bracing myself) to be your guide to the Kooyong election showdown for the next five weeks. This is going to be big. Independent Dr Monique Ryan, the face of the “teal” wave, rocked the Liberal Party in 2022, snatching the blue-ribbon seat of Kooyong from former treasurer and deputy Liberal leader Josh Frydenberg.
It was a ferocious fight. Camberwell is in the heart of the Kooyong electorate, a long-time conservative stronghold which the Liberals lost in 2022. Credit: Wayne Taylor Now, the Liberals are back with a vengeance.
After some serious soul-searching, they’ve tapped Amelia Hamer, grandniece of former Victorian premier Rupert Hamer, to reclaim the crown. She’s been pounding the pavement for over a year, and they’re throwing everything at this. It was a tight margin when Ryan won, but it’s even tighter now.
The boundaries of Kooyong have slightly changed and now include the conservative-leaning Toorak, which has pared Ryan’s notional margin down to just 2.2 per cent. Ryan’s rallying her volunteer teal troops, pitching another term of independent power for Kooyong to hold a minority government to account and push for things like dental in Medicare, gambling reform and tackling HECS debt.
Hamer has cost-of-living, housing affordability and crime at the top of her policy platform. She is a Millennial renter, which may have currency among younger voters moving into suburbs like Hawthorn, which hosts Swinburne University. Policies aside, let’s not forget the drama.
Kooyong was fair and square in the limelight last week when Ryan’s husband was filmed removing a sign backing Hamer from a Camberwell nature strip . An embarrassing apology ensued, but on the campaign rolls. I’ll be reporting from the corflute-covered streets of Kew, Balwyn, Canterbury, Hawthorn, Camberwell, Armadale, Toorak, Malvern, Surrey Hills and Prahran during the campaign, but I am also relying on you – our readers – to be my eyes and ears.
Got a burning local issue? Seen some corflute chaos? Received a “shit sheet” in your mailbox? Political drama blowing up your local Facebook group? Drop me a line at [email protected].
au . Tim Wilson is a man on a mission this election, seeking to reclaim former Liberal heartland seat Goldstein, from teal independent Zoe Daniel. Four years ago, Daniel ended the Liberal party’s dominance in Goldstein, which stretches along the bay from Brighton to Beaumaris, and is one of a handful of seats which has never been held by the Labor party.
Zoe Daniel and Tim Wilson. Credit: Marija Ercegovac The former ABC journalist was one of a wave of Teals elected in the 2022 election and campaigned with a focus on climate and integrity in politics. This time around Daniel says these issues are as relevant as ever but she’s also keenly aware that even in one of Victoria’s wealthiest electorates, where the median weekly income is $1068 compared to the state median of $803, cost of living is front of mind for many Goldstein residents.
Wilson sees this as his opportunity with economics typically a sweet spot for Liberals. Alongside Wilson other challengers to Daniel in the seat are Alana Galli-McRostie for the Greens, Andrew Montgomery for the Family First Party and David Segal for the Libertarian Party. The Labor party is yet to select a candidate.
This election will determine whether the Liberal party has lost some of its blue ribbon electorate like Goldstein for years or whether Daniel can hold it for the Teals. The focus will be on Peter Dutton and Anthony Albanese’s national campaigns over the next five weeks, but the true contests will be on the ground in local communities. Today we launch our Victorian hot seats blog.
Over the next five weeks we will take an in-depth look at several Victorian seats – including Wills, Goldstein, Kooyong and Bruce – examining the candidates, hot-button issues in the communities and, importantly, the parties’ campaign and policy responses. All will be crucial in shaping the national result. These seats – with distinct demographics and local challenges – promise to be unique contests.
They also illustrate scenarios unfolding across Australia this federal election. Can Liberal candidates wrest control of the party’s once blue-ribbon seats back from the teals? Will the Greens continue their march into Labor heartland, and what role will the Gaza war play in the vote? And, crucially, can Labor reinforce enough seats to stop the Coalition gaining the seats they need to form majority government? The Age will have senior reporters on the ground in these electorates through to the May 3 poll date, explaining the national campaign through the prism of these communities. More on these key seats from our reporters now.
To follow the national campaign, read our live federal election blog . To explore how close the contest is in your neighbourhood, search our interactive electorate map . And to read about other close battles around Australia, here are the 12 seats to watch closely .
.
