April 21, 2025 • 20 mins
The threat teal independents pose in this election - to the dominance of the two-party system, to the stability of our parliament and to the Liberal Party’s base - is very real. Today, we focus on two of these seats: Bradfield in Sydney and Kooyong in Melbourne where the teals and the Libs are neck and neck. City reporter for The Age Rachael Dexter and NSW political editor Alexandra Smith join Jacqueline Maley to discuss.
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S1 (00:00):
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is inside politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley. It's Tuesday, April 22nd.
The threat the teal independents pose in this election to
the dominance of the two party system, to the stability
of our Parliament and to the Liberal Party's base, is
very real. They're tricky competitors in an election, not a
(00:22):
political party, but a movement of middle aged professional women
who seem like the kind of people who could run
either a listed company or the school committee, possibly both
at the same time. They're precisely the cohort of female
candidates that the major parties should have been preparing for
preselection a decade ago. But they didn't. And now they're
coming for even more Liberal Party seats this election. Today
(00:43):
we're going to focus on two of those seats, Bradfield
in Sydney and Kooyong in Melbourne, where the teals and
the liberals are neck and neck. We welcome to the pod,
our city reporter for The Age, Rachael Dexter, and our
New South Wales political editor, Alexandra Smith. Welcome to you both.
S2 (01:01):
Thank you. Jack. Thanks, Jack.
S1 (01:03):
Right. You've been covering the highly contested seat of Kooyong
in Melbourne, which turned teal three years ago in a
big upset when Monique Ryan defeated former treasurer Josh Frydenberg.
And Josh Frydenberg is not going to be contesting the
seat again this time. Instead, Ryan is up against Liberal
royalty Amelia Hammer this time around, and the election has
(01:25):
been the location of a fairly acrimonious battle between the two,
hasn't it?
S3 (01:29):
It has Jack. It's not been boring at all in Kooyong,
despite Frydenberg not being around this time. We can get
into it. But there has been a series of highly
publicised incidents from a very embarrassing episode. Just as the
election was being announced, where Monique Ryan's husband was filmed,
(01:53):
essentially taking or stealing one of Amelia Hammer's corflutes from
a nature strip.
S4 (01:59):
Are you are you a Monique Ryan supporter? Ripping down
people's people's, uh, signs? Are you. Is that what you're doing?
S3 (02:06):
That sort of blew up.
S5 (02:08):
Oh, look, it was an unfortunate episode. It shouldn't have happened.
You know, we all make mistakes in the heat of
the moment. It was a one off.
S3 (02:15):
We've apologized in recent weeks. We've also seen another particularly
publicized episode, uh, for, uh, for Amelia. It's definitely not
a dull, dull electorate at all.
S1 (02:27):
I always love a good corflute war. We always get them.
They're always great. And I also love a, you know,
when the the posters get graffitied or defaced. I mean,
I think it's a terrible thing for democracy, but it's probably,
you know, it's all part of the culture. You broke
the wildly popular story. You just alluded to that Amelia
Hammer owns not one, but two investment properties, despite sort
(02:48):
of talking about the fact that she's a renter and
using that as a bit of a way to maybe
gain some kudos as a, as a, you know, someone
who's locked out of the housing market.
S3 (02:57):
Yes, yes. So after Amelia was pre-selected a bit over
a year ago, she did a series of media profiles,
quite sort of flattering sit down interviews with, um, a few, uh, mastheads,
including this one where part of her pitch was, look,
I'm not like, I'm not like the old Liberal Party. I'm.
(03:18):
I'm young, I'm female, I'm a young professional, and I'm
a renter. She also described herself a number of times
as a renter.
S6 (03:26):
With the cost of living there, struggling to pay the mortgage. Um,
they're struggling to pay their rent. I know my rent
has gone up significantly. I'm a renter.
S3 (03:33):
Um, it didn't take too much digging. I had. I
had a couple of tip offs to just have a
look into her property portfolio in the UK. It wasn't
too difficult to find the flat in, uh, the. Yes.
The one bedroom flat in in London that she'd purchased
in 2017.
S1 (03:53):
She'd sort of been chatting about it on Facebook, hadn't she,
because she was trying to rent out the flat so
she hadn't exactly covered her tracks. And it's a very
nice flat too.
S3 (04:00):
It is a nice flat, actually.
S1 (04:01):
It's got a lovely bay window.
S3 (04:03):
Yeah, it's one of those classic London gardens. Yeah, a
classic London garden flat. No. Look, I wish I could
say that it required a lot more journalistic digging on
my behalf, but it really, it wasn't difficult at all. Um,
I think still to this day, there's a very public
couple of very public posts from Amelia Hammer's personal Facebook
page where she was renting out the flat with photos. Um,
(04:27):
it was very pretty easy to marry that up with
the address from the property records.
S1 (04:31):
Just to be clear, we're not. Of course, she hasn't
lied or anything like that, and we're not suggesting it,
but perhaps has left out some of the story.
S7 (04:39):
I think the reality is people, people acknowledge it can
be both. You can be renting and you can also
own a property. We also talk about this.
S1 (04:45):
When you talk about Amelia Hammer having been Liberal Party
royalty or Liberal Party blueblood. What are you talking about?
People outside of Melbourne particularly, who won't know her.
S3 (04:54):
Sure. So it's Amelia, a surname that carries the the
weight in in Victoria. She's the grand niece of Dick Hamer,
who was a Liberal premier of this state in the 70s.
He was a he was a conservative but a socially
progressive premier. Things that happened under his premiership were things
(05:16):
like the decriminalisation of homosexuality in this state, were reforms
by her great uncle. She refers to him as a
as as uncle Dick. So, you know, in Melbourne, one
of our big recital centres is named after the Hamer's,
Hamer Hall.
S1 (05:34):
Hamer Hall? Yeah. So he's kind of in terms of
the liberal brand, he is a moderate liberal. So that brand,
if she's associated with it, would probably be something that
would go up against her till quite well or would
sell quite well for moderate liberals in that electorate who
might have otherwise voted teal. Do you, do you get
the sense of how tight the race is? How much
(05:55):
of a challenge does Monique Ryan have to hold on
to this seat?
S2 (05:57):
Yeah. Look.
S3 (05:59):
It is. It is tight. Monique's camp are. You know,
they say that they're quietly. They're not taking it for granted.
And they concede it's going to be a very you know,
every vote's going to count, but they are confident they
should be able to hold onto it. There has been
a redistribution. Um, the seat of Higgins, which was next door,
(06:19):
has been abolished, and parts of that seat have now
been brought into Kooyong. There's a little bit of conflicting
commentary around what that redistribution means for the Liberal Party.
The sort of traditional thinking is it's taking in places
that are extremely affluent, like Toorak, one of Melbourne's richest suburbs,
and therefore it would be easier for for the liberals
(06:42):
to get up. Um, but actually there are yeah, there's some,
some competing sort of, um, commentary out there from, um,
analysts that say that. Yeah, it was a, it was
a labor held seat of Higgins. Um, all of the
booths that are now being brought into are being brought
into Kooyong. all voted on a two party preferred basis
for for labor. So it's a little bit hard to
(07:04):
kind of translate the labor vote, um, to teals because
it wasn't a teal candidate in Higgins at the 2022 election. Um,
I think there's probably the feeling out there is there's,
you know, if it's tight, there's a few hundred votes
in it.
S1 (07:19):
Wow. It's going to be fascinating. Alex, you've been covering
a somewhat similar or analogous seat in Sydney, the seat
of Bradfield on Sydney's leafy north shore. It's always been
a heartland Liberal electorate held by Paul Fletcher, who's has
been a coalition frontbencher known, you know, quite well known.
He's had a lot of ministerial portfolios but he's stepped down.
(07:41):
Tell me about what's at play and who the two
candidates matching up are.
S8 (07:46):
Yeah. So uh, Bradfield was one of the seats in
2022 that didn't sort of succumb to the teal wave.
Neighbouring seats did. Um, obviously Warringah was already in teal
Entail hands with Zali Steggall, but North Sydney to the south,
closer to the Sydney CBD, went teal with Kylie, Tink
and Mackellar on the northern beaches. But Bradfield bucked that trend.
(08:09):
Paul Fletcher, who, as you said is a well known
high profile moderate Liberal frontbencher, held that seat but only just.
He really came very close to losing it to a
teal candidate called Nicolette Bulla. She managed to really slice
a huge chunk off his margin and it's in a
(08:29):
very marginal seat now. In fact, it's even more marginal
because of the boundary redistributions. But Nicolette Bulla was not
going to give up easily. And even though she didn't
end up in Canberra, along with some of the other teals,
she decided to keep running and not only keep running,
but she set herself up with an office in the
heart of the electorate and sort of styled herself as
(08:52):
the shadow MP. So she's been on the ground in
Bradfield campaigning hard since 2022. Paul Fletcher. We assumed the
Liberal Party assumed would be her opponent at this election.
But just before Christmas, Paul Fletcher surprised his colleagues and
decided that he wouldn't be contesting this election, which meant
that they had to hurriedly find a new Liberal candidate
(09:14):
to go up against somebody who obviously had a really
high profile in the electorate because a she'd nearly beaten
Paul Fletcher in 2022, but then B she'd also been campaigning.
S1 (09:24):
Been hanging around for.
S8 (09:25):
The best part of three years. Yeah.
S1 (09:27):
Before Paul Fletcher resigned, which was a surprise to the public,
I guess, and a surprise to many of his colleagues.
He made quite a controversial speech in November to the
Sydney Institute, didn't he?
S8 (09:37):
Yeah. That's right. The right leaning Sydney Institute often hosts,
you know, Liberal MPs and usually they don't say anything
that's hugely controversial. But Paul Fletcher got up and said
that the teals were nothing but a green con job,
and that basically they tricked voters into voting for them.
You know, they.
S1 (09:57):
Duped liberal voters.
S8 (09:58):
He said that voters thought they were voting for a
nice liberal just dressed up as a teal. And those
comments were actually really quite damaging, I think, for Paul Fletcher,
because what people within the Liberal Party, obviously more broadly
in the teal movement, but in the Liberal Party thought
it was very, um, ill thought out when his biggest challenger,
you know, the person he really had to beat was
going to be a teal. And if he was going to,
(10:20):
I guess, come out and almost ridicule the voters that
supported the teal movement, it was unlikely that he was
going to win them over, and he needed to obviously,
if he was going to retain the seat. Not long
after that was when he pulled up stumps. I am
told that he had been shown some polling which suggested
he was under real threat, and so he decided to
(10:40):
end his long political career.
S1 (10:42):
There you go. Um, be careful what you say at
the Sydney Institute is the moral to that story, but
it has gotten a little bit complicated. We've got Giselle,
who is the Liberal candidate who seems like a very,
you know, acceptable candidate, and Nicolette Bulla, who, as you say,
has been doing a lot of groundwork in the electorate
for many years, kind of stuffed up a bit a
few weeks ago, didn't she, with some widely reported incident?
S8 (11:05):
Yeah, it was really embarrassing for Nicolette Buller. She had
been having her hair washed at a local suburban hair
salon and.
S1 (11:14):
In Gordon, I believe. Lovely.
S2 (11:16):
Yes.
S8 (11:16):
That's right. And leafy Gordon and one of the clients
in the hair salon overheard her say to a 19
year old young girl as she washed her hair. Gee,
that was so good. And I didn't even have to
have sex with you. Now, of course, that is not
an appropriate thing to say. And that client passed on
those comments to a very high profile broadcaster here in Sydney,
(11:41):
Ben Fordham, and that's where the story emerged.
S9 (11:44):
The listener says if that was a man saying that
there would and should be an investigation, so why should
a woman get away with this? My wife is a
customer at the hairdressers, so.
S8 (11:54):
It was hugely embarrassing for Nicolette Buller, and she had
to obviously and rightly come out straight away and apologise
and say that anyone should feel safe in their workplace.
And her comments weren't appropriate. But what it did mean
is that she went to ground for a few days.
She was off social media. She wasn't campaigning. Clearly her
team didn't want her to have to kind of face
tough questions, and they were obviously very worried about the
(12:16):
impact those comments would have on her campaign. She seems
to have moved on from those now, but it was
a really big misstep for somebody who really should have
known better.
S1 (12:27):
Also, be careful what you say in the Hairdresser at
Gordon is the moral to that story. Now, I do
want to ask a question to you both about the
scare campaigns or the attack campaigns we see see, particularly
on teal candidates. They run a lot, I think, in
the News Corp media in particular, and it's all along
the lines of what Paul Fletcher alleged that, you know,
the teals are a giant green con job. They duping
(12:49):
liberal voters. They're a threat to the stability of the
two party system. They hold themselves out to be holier
than thou and above politics, but actually, they're just as
grubby as the next politician. And they really try to
link the teals to the greens and to the radical fringe.
And I know this started with Zali Steggall campaign against
Tony Abbott. The Liberal Party was really trying to link
her to GetUp! You know, the activist organization, she always
(13:11):
said there were no links between them. Do you think
that that is an effective strategy and and have you
seen it bear fruit at all? Alex, I'll go to
you first.
S2 (13:20):
Well, I think it's.
S8 (13:20):
Really interesting that the two major parties and admittedly it's
mainly the liberals against the teals because that's their biggest threat,
keep really strongly saying this line that they're a threat
to democracy, a threat to the major parties. The reality
is people are moving away from the major parties and
looking for something else. So it's not so much that
they're a threat to the major parties. Well, I suppose
(13:42):
indeed they are. But that's through the the major parties
own doing. I think we're now at the 2022 election,
only 37% of people voted for a major party.
S1 (13:52):
I mean, that was that was historic.
S2 (13:54):
So there is a huge group of people.
S8 (13:56):
Yeah, a huge group of people looking for somewhere else
to vote. I think another really interesting thing the liberals
are keep saying to me, oh, the teals, they just
buy elections. Now we know the teals have really strong
fundraising pool, but a lot of that fundraising isn't just
from the likes of millionaire Simon Holmes, a court who
is obviously behind climate 200. They do give a lot
(14:19):
of money to the teal. There's no doubt about that.
But the teals also have this incredible grassroots ability to
campaign lots and lots of small donations. Nicolette Buller told
me she has about 900 different donors donating small amounts,
but they add up, you know?
S2 (14:34):
And the reality.
S8 (14:35):
Is the liberals just can't match it. People are not
donating to the liberals like they once did. And so
it's almost this slight bitterness that they acknowledge that people
will be willing to give to the teals campaign, but
not the liberals. And so to counter that, the liberals say, oh,
it's it's, you know, grossly undemocratic. The teals are buying elections.
I'm not sure you can say they're buying elections when
(14:57):
you know mum and dad donors are just giving some
money towards their campaign.
S1 (15:01):
And they're just doing, I suppose, what the major parties
would do if if they could. Rachel, what about you?
I mean, in, in Kooyong. Do you see Monique Ryan
being really tied to this idea that, in fact, she's
just a sort of, you know, a green or a
labor stooge in disguise in liberal clothing or moderate liberal clothing.
You know, you see a lot of statistics that are
(15:22):
or questionable data that is sort of repeated in some
parts of the media about the number of times the
teal candidates will vote, will have voted with labor or
voted with the Greens for certain votes. Do you think
that's cutting through in Kooyong?
S3 (15:36):
Look, it's certainly the strongest attack line that the liberals
are running against Monique Ryan in Kooyong. But I think
your point about whether this is this has cut through
and whether this this attack has the venom that I
think the Liberal Party wants it to have, I'm really
not sure about that. I mean, Kooyong, Monique Ryan ran
(16:00):
in 2022. Uh, the the previous election. Josh Frydenberg's biggest
challenger at that point, um, was human rights lawyer Julian Burnside,
who finished second in Kooyong for the Greens. I think
that types of voters who are voting for the teals,
I don't think that the idea that Monique's values may
(16:21):
somewhat align with the greens or mostly align with the greens,
but not on everything is not it's not a barb. Um,
there obviously it's very clear what the teal brand is,
which is environmentally socially progressive and economically conservative. And so
I think voters who are voting for the teals would say, yeah,
she stands for the best parts of the greens I
(16:42):
liked and doesn't have the the rabble rousing part that
I don't like. And I don't think it's necessarily, um,
the effective. I think people who were skeptical of the
teals and are hard rusted on liberal voters will always
vote with the liberals. Um, and they'll like they it.
G's up the base for the liberals this kind of attack.
But I don't necessarily think that it is going to
(17:04):
sway people back from voting for independence.
S1 (17:06):
Yeah, I think it's a bit of a misconception that
the teals entire base is, um, former liberal voters. In fact,
the teals base is, um, former or would be Labor
and Greens voters who don't have that candidate in their electorate.
And then they pick up some coalition, some disaffected coalition
votes to kind of be a part of their coalition.
S2 (17:25):
I think.
S3 (17:25):
That's right.
S1 (17:26):
I just want to ask you quickly, both at the end,
I mean, I guess the first teals election, you know,
when Zali Steggall knocked off Tony Abbott in 2019 was
a real upset last election, we saw that the teals
really consolidated their power and picked up a lot more
seats this election. You know, if they do well, it
will really establish them as a political force that's not
(17:47):
going anywhere in Australian politics. I just wonder, I want
to go to you both. I wonder how much you
think there was a protest element in previous elections, particularly
last election when Scott Morrison himself was so unpopular and
the coalition's record on climate was so bad. The teals
don't have either of those sort of electoral assets this time. Alex,
do you think that that's going to hurt them or
(18:08):
will they be able to build on their brand?
S8 (18:10):
I actually think they'll be able to build on their brand. Initially,
I did think that perhaps it was just a bit
of a one hit wonder. You know, there was so
much anger against Scott Morrison. The former Liberal government had
been very weak, as you said, around climate policies. But
I think just looking at the data, which shows so
many more voters don't want to vote for one of
the major parties that each time, as long as the
(18:31):
teals or the community independents, whatever you want to call them,
are adapting to what voters want, I think they will
just keep building on their brand. Sure, there's no anti
Scott Morrison kind of vibe this time. You know, the
coalition is somewhat better around climate policy. But there are
new issues aren't there. You know, and I think that
they're probably tapping into this vast electorate who is just
(18:54):
like Labour and Liberal and the, you know, the coalition
have not been serving the country well and we want
to try something different. So I think I now think
they're not just a one hit wonder. I think my
view in New South Wales anyway, is the existing teals
will hold their seats and Bradfield is so tight like
it's 5050. Both sides say that it could go either way,
(19:15):
you know. So I certainly don't think this is the
end of the teals by any stretch. I think it's
probably them just building on that, on that brand.
S1 (19:23):
Yeah. Rach, just quickly, what do you think on that?
S3 (19:25):
I tend to agree, Alex. Um, in terms of look,
we don't have the Scott Morrison factor, but for the
teals to to go backwards in Victoria is is what
what you're counting on in that scenario is people who
voted for for teals teal candidates to now vote for Dutton.
Um who in terms of climate credentials, I just don't
(19:47):
see those voters opting for what Dutton has on offer,
which is obviously his nuclear policy. The concern about a
climate hasn't, hasn't gone away for, for for these types
of voters, for.
S1 (20:01):
Voters for whom it's very, very important. Yeah.
S3 (20:04):
Indeed.
S1 (20:04):
Yeah. Thanks so much, both of you. That was absolutely fascinating.
Both of those seats, Kooyong and Bradfield are going to
be so interesting to watch on election night, I can't wait.
Thanks again and enjoy the rest of the campaign, ladies.
S2 (20:16):
Thanks, Jack. Thank you.
S1 (20:20):
Today's episode was produced by Julia Katzel. Our executive producer
is Tammy Mills, and Tom McKendrick is our head of audio.
To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop,
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(20:43):
Subscribe to us by visiting The Age or SMH. I'm
Jacqueline Maley, thank you for listening.
From the newsrooms of the Sydney Morning Herald and The Age.
This is inside politics. I'm Jacqueline Maley. It's Tuesday, April 22nd.
The threat the teal independents pose in this election to
the dominance of the two party system, to the stability
of our Parliament and to the Liberal Party's base, is
very real. They're tricky competitors in an election, not a
(00:22):
political party, but a movement of middle aged professional women
who seem like the kind of people who could run
either a listed company or the school committee, possibly both
at the same time. They're precisely the cohort of female
candidates that the major parties should have been preparing for
preselection a decade ago. But they didn't. And now they're
coming for even more Liberal Party seats this election. Today
(00:43):
we're going to focus on two of those seats, Bradfield
in Sydney and Kooyong in Melbourne, where the teals and
the liberals are neck and neck. We welcome to the pod,
our city reporter for The Age, Rachael Dexter, and our
New South Wales political editor, Alexandra Smith. Welcome to you both.
S2 (01:01):
Thank you. Jack. Thanks, Jack.
S1 (01:03):
Right. You've been covering the highly contested seat of Kooyong
in Melbourne, which turned teal three years ago in a
big upset when Monique Ryan defeated former treasurer Josh Frydenberg.
And Josh Frydenberg is not going to be contesting the
seat again this time. Instead, Ryan is up against Liberal
royalty Amelia Hammer this time around, and the election has
(01:25):
been the location of a fairly acrimonious battle between the two,
hasn't it?
S3 (01:29):
It has Jack. It's not been boring at all in Kooyong,
despite Frydenberg not being around this time. We can get
into it. But there has been a series of highly
publicised incidents from a very embarrassing episode. Just as the
election was being announced, where Monique Ryan's husband was filmed,
(01:53):
essentially taking or stealing one of Amelia Hammer's corflutes from
a nature strip.
S4 (01:59):
Are you are you a Monique Ryan supporter? Ripping down
people's people's, uh, signs? Are you. Is that what you're doing?
S3 (02:06):
That sort of blew up.
S5 (02:08):
Oh, look, it was an unfortunate episode. It shouldn't have happened.
You know, we all make mistakes in the heat of
the moment. It was a one off.
S3 (02:15):
We've apologized in recent weeks. We've also seen another particularly
publicized episode, uh, for, uh, for Amelia. It's definitely not
a dull, dull electorate at all.
S1 (02:27):
I always love a good corflute war. We always get them.
They're always great. And I also love a, you know,
when the the posters get graffitied or defaced. I mean,
I think it's a terrible thing for democracy, but it's probably,
you know, it's all part of the culture. You broke
the wildly popular story. You just alluded to that Amelia
Hammer owns not one, but two investment properties, despite sort
(02:48):
of talking about the fact that she's a renter and
using that as a bit of a way to maybe
gain some kudos as a, as a, you know, someone
who's locked out of the housing market.
S3 (02:57):
Yes, yes. So after Amelia was pre-selected a bit over
a year ago, she did a series of media profiles,
quite sort of flattering sit down interviews with, um, a few, uh, mastheads,
including this one where part of her pitch was, look,
I'm not like, I'm not like the old Liberal Party. I'm.
(03:18):
I'm young, I'm female, I'm a young professional, and I'm
a renter. She also described herself a number of times
as a renter.
S6 (03:26):
With the cost of living there, struggling to pay the mortgage. Um,
they're struggling to pay their rent. I know my rent
has gone up significantly. I'm a renter.
S3 (03:33):
Um, it didn't take too much digging. I had. I
had a couple of tip offs to just have a
look into her property portfolio in the UK. It wasn't
too difficult to find the flat in, uh, the. Yes.
The one bedroom flat in in London that she'd purchased
in 2017.
S1 (03:53):
She'd sort of been chatting about it on Facebook, hadn't she,
because she was trying to rent out the flat so
she hadn't exactly covered her tracks. And it's a very
nice flat too.
S3 (04:00):
It is a nice flat, actually.
S1 (04:01):
It's got a lovely bay window.
S3 (04:03):
Yeah, it's one of those classic London gardens. Yeah, a
classic London garden flat. No. Look, I wish I could
say that it required a lot more journalistic digging on
my behalf, but it really, it wasn't difficult at all. Um,
I think still to this day, there's a very public
couple of very public posts from Amelia Hammer's personal Facebook
page where she was renting out the flat with photos. Um,
(04:27):
it was very pretty easy to marry that up with
the address from the property records.
S1 (04:31):
Just to be clear, we're not. Of course, she hasn't
lied or anything like that, and we're not suggesting it,
but perhaps has left out some of the story.
S7 (04:39):
I think the reality is people, people acknowledge it can
be both. You can be renting and you can also
own a property. We also talk about this.
S1 (04:45):
When you talk about Amelia Hammer having been Liberal Party
royalty or Liberal Party blueblood. What are you talking about?
People outside of Melbourne particularly, who won't know her.
S3 (04:54):
Sure. So it's Amelia, a surname that carries the the
weight in in Victoria. She's the grand niece of Dick Hamer,
who was a Liberal premier of this state in the 70s.
He was a he was a conservative but a socially
progressive premier. Things that happened under his premiership were things
(05:16):
like the decriminalisation of homosexuality in this state, were reforms
by her great uncle. She refers to him as a
as as uncle Dick. So, you know, in Melbourne, one
of our big recital centres is named after the Hamer's,
Hamer Hall.
S1 (05:34):
Hamer Hall? Yeah. So he's kind of in terms of
the liberal brand, he is a moderate liberal. So that brand,
if she's associated with it, would probably be something that
would go up against her till quite well or would
sell quite well for moderate liberals in that electorate who
might have otherwise voted teal. Do you, do you get
the sense of how tight the race is? How much
(05:55):
of a challenge does Monique Ryan have to hold on
to this seat?
S2 (05:57):
Yeah. Look.
S3 (05:59):
It is. It is tight. Monique's camp are. You know,
they say that they're quietly. They're not taking it for granted.
And they concede it's going to be a very you know,
every vote's going to count, but they are confident they
should be able to hold onto it. There has been
a redistribution. Um, the seat of Higgins, which was next door,
(06:19):
has been abolished, and parts of that seat have now
been brought into Kooyong. There's a little bit of conflicting
commentary around what that redistribution means for the Liberal Party.
The sort of traditional thinking is it's taking in places
that are extremely affluent, like Toorak, one of Melbourne's richest suburbs,
and therefore it would be easier for for the liberals
(06:42):
to get up. Um, but actually there are yeah, there's some,
some competing sort of, um, commentary out there from, um,
analysts that say that. Yeah, it was a, it was
a labor held seat of Higgins. Um, all of the
booths that are now being brought into are being brought
into Kooyong. all voted on a two party preferred basis
for for labor. So it's a little bit hard to
(07:04):
kind of translate the labor vote, um, to teals because
it wasn't a teal candidate in Higgins at the 2022 election. Um,
I think there's probably the feeling out there is there's,
you know, if it's tight, there's a few hundred votes
in it.
S1 (07:19):
Wow. It's going to be fascinating. Alex, you've been covering
a somewhat similar or analogous seat in Sydney, the seat
of Bradfield on Sydney's leafy north shore. It's always been
a heartland Liberal electorate held by Paul Fletcher, who's has
been a coalition frontbencher known, you know, quite well known.
He's had a lot of ministerial portfolios but he's stepped down.
(07:41):
Tell me about what's at play and who the two
candidates matching up are.
S8 (07:46):
Yeah. So uh, Bradfield was one of the seats in
2022 that didn't sort of succumb to the teal wave.
Neighbouring seats did. Um, obviously Warringah was already in teal
Entail hands with Zali Steggall, but North Sydney to the south,
closer to the Sydney CBD, went teal with Kylie, Tink
and Mackellar on the northern beaches. But Bradfield bucked that trend.
(08:09):
Paul Fletcher, who, as you said is a well known
high profile moderate Liberal frontbencher, held that seat but only just.
He really came very close to losing it to a
teal candidate called Nicolette Bulla. She managed to really slice
a huge chunk off his margin and it's in a
(08:29):
very marginal seat now. In fact, it's even more marginal
because of the boundary redistributions. But Nicolette Bulla was not
going to give up easily. And even though she didn't
end up in Canberra, along with some of the other teals,
she decided to keep running and not only keep running,
but she set herself up with an office in the
heart of the electorate and sort of styled herself as
(08:52):
the shadow MP. So she's been on the ground in
Bradfield campaigning hard since 2022. Paul Fletcher. We assumed the
Liberal Party assumed would be her opponent at this election.
But just before Christmas, Paul Fletcher surprised his colleagues and
decided that he wouldn't be contesting this election, which meant
that they had to hurriedly find a new Liberal candidate
(09:14):
to go up against somebody who obviously had a really
high profile in the electorate because a she'd nearly beaten
Paul Fletcher in 2022, but then B she'd also been campaigning.
S1 (09:24):
Been hanging around for.
S8 (09:25):
The best part of three years. Yeah.
S1 (09:27):
Before Paul Fletcher resigned, which was a surprise to the public,
I guess, and a surprise to many of his colleagues.
He made quite a controversial speech in November to the
Sydney Institute, didn't he?
S8 (09:37):
Yeah. That's right. The right leaning Sydney Institute often hosts,
you know, Liberal MPs and usually they don't say anything
that's hugely controversial. But Paul Fletcher got up and said
that the teals were nothing but a green con job,
and that basically they tricked voters into voting for them.
You know, they.
S1 (09:57):
Duped liberal voters.
S8 (09:58):
He said that voters thought they were voting for a
nice liberal just dressed up as a teal. And those
comments were actually really quite damaging, I think, for Paul Fletcher,
because what people within the Liberal Party, obviously more broadly
in the teal movement, but in the Liberal Party thought
it was very, um, ill thought out when his biggest challenger,
you know, the person he really had to beat was
going to be a teal. And if he was going to,
(10:20):
I guess, come out and almost ridicule the voters that
supported the teal movement, it was unlikely that he was
going to win them over, and he needed to obviously,
if he was going to retain the seat. Not long
after that was when he pulled up stumps. I am
told that he had been shown some polling which suggested
he was under real threat, and so he decided to
(10:40):
end his long political career.
S1 (10:42):
There you go. Um, be careful what you say at
the Sydney Institute is the moral to that story, but
it has gotten a little bit complicated. We've got Giselle,
who is the Liberal candidate who seems like a very,
you know, acceptable candidate, and Nicolette Bulla, who, as you say,
has been doing a lot of groundwork in the electorate
for many years, kind of stuffed up a bit a
few weeks ago, didn't she, with some widely reported incident?
S8 (11:05):
Yeah, it was really embarrassing for Nicolette Buller. She had
been having her hair washed at a local suburban hair
salon and.
S1 (11:14):
In Gordon, I believe. Lovely.
S2 (11:16):
Yes.
S8 (11:16):
That's right. And leafy Gordon and one of the clients
in the hair salon overheard her say to a 19
year old young girl as she washed her hair. Gee,
that was so good. And I didn't even have to
have sex with you. Now, of course, that is not
an appropriate thing to say. And that client passed on
those comments to a very high profile broadcaster here in Sydney,
(11:41):
Ben Fordham, and that's where the story emerged.
S9 (11:44):
The listener says if that was a man saying that
there would and should be an investigation, so why should
a woman get away with this? My wife is a
customer at the hairdressers, so.
S8 (11:54):
It was hugely embarrassing for Nicolette Buller, and she had
to obviously and rightly come out straight away and apologise
and say that anyone should feel safe in their workplace.
And her comments weren't appropriate. But what it did mean
is that she went to ground for a few days.
She was off social media. She wasn't campaigning. Clearly her
team didn't want her to have to kind of face
tough questions, and they were obviously very worried about the
(12:16):
impact those comments would have on her campaign. She seems
to have moved on from those now, but it was
a really big misstep for somebody who really should have
known better.
S1 (12:27):
Also, be careful what you say in the Hairdresser at
Gordon is the moral to that story. Now, I do
want to ask a question to you both about the
scare campaigns or the attack campaigns we see see, particularly
on teal candidates. They run a lot, I think, in
the News Corp media in particular, and it's all along
the lines of what Paul Fletcher alleged that, you know,
the teals are a giant green con job. They duping
(12:49):
liberal voters. They're a threat to the stability of the
two party system. They hold themselves out to be holier
than thou and above politics, but actually, they're just as
grubby as the next politician. And they really try to
link the teals to the greens and to the radical fringe.
And I know this started with Zali Steggall campaign against
Tony Abbott. The Liberal Party was really trying to link
her to GetUp! You know, the activist organization, she always
(13:11):
said there were no links between them. Do you think
that that is an effective strategy and and have you
seen it bear fruit at all? Alex, I'll go to
you first.
S2 (13:20):
Well, I think it's.
S8 (13:20):
Really interesting that the two major parties and admittedly it's
mainly the liberals against the teals because that's their biggest threat,
keep really strongly saying this line that they're a threat
to democracy, a threat to the major parties. The reality
is people are moving away from the major parties and
looking for something else. So it's not so much that
they're a threat to the major parties. Well, I suppose
(13:42):
indeed they are. But that's through the the major parties
own doing. I think we're now at the 2022 election,
only 37% of people voted for a major party.
S1 (13:52):
I mean, that was that was historic.
S2 (13:54):
So there is a huge group of people.
S8 (13:56):
Yeah, a huge group of people looking for somewhere else
to vote. I think another really interesting thing the liberals
are keep saying to me, oh, the teals, they just
buy elections. Now we know the teals have really strong
fundraising pool, but a lot of that fundraising isn't just
from the likes of millionaire Simon Holmes, a court who
is obviously behind climate 200. They do give a lot
(14:19):
of money to the teal. There's no doubt about that.
But the teals also have this incredible grassroots ability to
campaign lots and lots of small donations. Nicolette Buller told
me she has about 900 different donors donating small amounts,
but they add up, you know?
S2 (14:34):
And the reality.
S8 (14:35):
Is the liberals just can't match it. People are not
donating to the liberals like they once did. And so
it's almost this slight bitterness that they acknowledge that people
will be willing to give to the teals campaign, but
not the liberals. And so to counter that, the liberals say, oh,
it's it's, you know, grossly undemocratic. The teals are buying elections.
I'm not sure you can say they're buying elections when
(14:57):
you know mum and dad donors are just giving some
money towards their campaign.
S1 (15:01):
And they're just doing, I suppose, what the major parties
would do if if they could. Rachel, what about you?
I mean, in, in Kooyong. Do you see Monique Ryan
being really tied to this idea that, in fact, she's
just a sort of, you know, a green or a
labor stooge in disguise in liberal clothing or moderate liberal clothing.
You know, you see a lot of statistics that are
(15:22):
or questionable data that is sort of repeated in some
parts of the media about the number of times the
teal candidates will vote, will have voted with labor or
voted with the Greens for certain votes. Do you think
that's cutting through in Kooyong?
S3 (15:36):
Look, it's certainly the strongest attack line that the liberals
are running against Monique Ryan in Kooyong. But I think
your point about whether this is this has cut through
and whether this this attack has the venom that I
think the Liberal Party wants it to have, I'm really
not sure about that. I mean, Kooyong, Monique Ryan ran
(16:00):
in 2022. Uh, the the previous election. Josh Frydenberg's biggest
challenger at that point, um, was human rights lawyer Julian Burnside,
who finished second in Kooyong for the Greens. I think
that types of voters who are voting for the teals,
I don't think that the idea that Monique's values may
(16:21):
somewhat align with the greens or mostly align with the greens,
but not on everything is not it's not a barb. Um,
there obviously it's very clear what the teal brand is,
which is environmentally socially progressive and economically conservative. And so
I think voters who are voting for the teals would say, yeah,
she stands for the best parts of the greens I
(16:42):
liked and doesn't have the the rabble rousing part that
I don't like. And I don't think it's necessarily, um,
the effective. I think people who were skeptical of the
teals and are hard rusted on liberal voters will always
vote with the liberals. Um, and they'll like they it.
G's up the base for the liberals this kind of attack.
But I don't necessarily think that it is going to
(17:04):
sway people back from voting for independence.
S1 (17:06):
Yeah, I think it's a bit of a misconception that
the teals entire base is, um, former liberal voters. In fact,
the teals base is, um, former or would be Labor
and Greens voters who don't have that candidate in their electorate.
And then they pick up some coalition, some disaffected coalition
votes to kind of be a part of their coalition.
S2 (17:25):
I think.
S3 (17:25):
That's right.
S1 (17:26):
I just want to ask you quickly, both at the end,
I mean, I guess the first teals election, you know,
when Zali Steggall knocked off Tony Abbott in 2019 was
a real upset last election, we saw that the teals
really consolidated their power and picked up a lot more
seats this election. You know, if they do well, it
will really establish them as a political force that's not
(17:47):
going anywhere in Australian politics. I just wonder, I want
to go to you both. I wonder how much you
think there was a protest element in previous elections, particularly
last election when Scott Morrison himself was so unpopular and
the coalition's record on climate was so bad. The teals
don't have either of those sort of electoral assets this time. Alex,
do you think that that's going to hurt them or
(18:08):
will they be able to build on their brand?
S8 (18:10):
I actually think they'll be able to build on their brand. Initially,
I did think that perhaps it was just a bit
of a one hit wonder. You know, there was so
much anger against Scott Morrison. The former Liberal government had
been very weak, as you said, around climate policies. But
I think just looking at the data, which shows so
many more voters don't want to vote for one of
the major parties that each time, as long as the
(18:31):
teals or the community independents, whatever you want to call them,
are adapting to what voters want, I think they will
just keep building on their brand. Sure, there's no anti
Scott Morrison kind of vibe this time. You know, the
coalition is somewhat better around climate policy. But there are
new issues aren't there. You know, and I think that
they're probably tapping into this vast electorate who is just
(18:54):
like Labour and Liberal and the, you know, the coalition
have not been serving the country well and we want
to try something different. So I think I now think
they're not just a one hit wonder. I think my
view in New South Wales anyway, is the existing teals
will hold their seats and Bradfield is so tight like
it's 5050. Both sides say that it could go either way,
(19:15):
you know. So I certainly don't think this is the
end of the teals by any stretch. I think it's
probably them just building on that, on that brand.
S1 (19:23):
Yeah. Rach, just quickly, what do you think on that?
S3 (19:25):
I tend to agree, Alex. Um, in terms of look,
we don't have the Scott Morrison factor, but for the
teals to to go backwards in Victoria is is what
what you're counting on in that scenario is people who
voted for for teals teal candidates to now vote for Dutton.
Um who in terms of climate credentials, I just don't
(19:47):
see those voters opting for what Dutton has on offer,
which is obviously his nuclear policy. The concern about a
climate hasn't, hasn't gone away for, for for these types
of voters, for.
S1 (20:01):
Voters for whom it's very, very important. Yeah.
S3 (20:04):
Indeed.
S1 (20:04):
Yeah. Thanks so much, both of you. That was absolutely fascinating.
Both of those seats, Kooyong and Bradfield are going to
be so interesting to watch on election night, I can't wait.
Thanks again and enjoy the rest of the campaign, ladies.
S2 (20:16):
Thanks, Jack. Thank you.
S1 (20:20):
Today's episode was produced by Julia Katzel. Our executive producer
is Tammy Mills, and Tom McKendrick is our head of audio.
To listen to our episodes as soon as they drop,
follow Inside Politics on Apple, Spotify or anywhere else you
listen to your podcasts and to stay up to date
with all the election coverage and exclusives, visit The Age
and The Sydney Morning Herald websites to support our journalism.
(20:43):
Subscribe to us by visiting The Age or SMH. I'm
Jacqueline Maley, thank you for listening.
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