Kooyong – Australia 2022

LIB 5.5% vs GRN

Incumbent MP
Josh Frydenberg, since 2010.

Geography
Eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Kooyong covers most of the Boroondara council area and a strip of the Whitehorse council area, including the suburbs of Hawthorn, Kew, Camberwell, Canterbury, Mont Albert, Surrey Hills and Balwyn.

Redistribution
Kooyong expanded slightly to the south-east, taking in small areas from Chisholm and Higgins. These changes reduced the Liberal margin from 5.7% to 5.5%.

History

Kooyong is an original federation electorate, and has always been held by conservative parties, by the Free Trade Party for the first eight years and by the Liberal Party and its predecessors since 1909. It was held from 1922 to 1994 by only three men, all of whom led the major conservative force in federal politics.

The seat was first won in 1901 by Free Trader William Knox. He was re-elected in 1903 and 1906 and became a part of the unified Liberal Party in 1909. He won re-election in 1910 but retired later that year after suffering a stroke.

The 1910 by-election was won by Liberal candidate Robert Best. Best had previously served as a colonial minister and a Protectionist Senator from 1901 to the 1910 election, when he lost his seat in the ALP’s majority victory, and had served as a minister in Alfred Deakin’s second and third governments. Best returned to Parliament, but didn’t serve in Joseph Cook’s Liberal government or Billy Hughes’ Nationalist government.

At the 1922 election, Best was challenged by lawyer John Latham, who stood for the breakaway Liberal Union, a conservative party running to personally oppose Billy Hughes’ leadership of the Nationalist Party. Despite winning the most primary votes by a large margin, Best lost to Latham on Labor preferences.

John Latham was elected as one of five MPs for the breakaway Liberal Party (two of whom had previously been Nationalist MPs and retained their seats as Liberals in 1922). The Nationalists lost their majority due to gains for the Liberal Party and Country Party, and were forced to go into coalition, and the Country Party demanded Billy Hughes’ resignation as Prime Minister. With Stanley Bruce taking over as Prime Minister, the five Liberals, including Latham, effectively rejoined the Nationalist Party, and Latham won re-election in 1925 as a Nationalist.

Latham served as Attorney-General in the Bruce government from 1925 to 1929, when the Nationalists lost power, and Bruce himself lost his seat. Latham became Leader of the Opposition, but yielded the leadership to former Labor minister Joseph Lyons when they formed the new United Australia Party out of the Nationalists and Labor rebels. Latham served as the unofficial Deputy Prime Minister in the first term of the Lyons government (when they governed without the need for support from the Country Party), before retiring at the 1934 election. Latham went on to serve as Chief Justice of the High Court from 1935 to 1952.

Kooyong was won in 1934 by Robert Menzies. Menzies had been elected to the Victorian state parliament in 1928 and had served as Deputy Premier in the United Australia Party government from 1932 to 1934. He was immediately appointed Attorney-General in the Lyons government. He served in the Lyons government until 1939, when he resigned from the Cabinet in protest over what he saw as the government’s inaction. This was shortly before the death of Joseph Lyons in April 1939, which was followed by the UAP electing Robert Menzies as leader, making him Prime Minister.

Menzies’ first term was rocky, with the Second World War being declared in September 1939. He managed to retain power with the support of independents at the 1940 election, but after spending months in Europe on war strategy in 1941 he returned home to opposition within the government, and was forced to resign as Prime Minister and UAP leader. He was replaced as leader by Country Party leader Arthur Fadden, who was followed soon after by Labor leader John Curtin.

Menzies worked in opposition to reform the conservative forces, who suffered a massive defeat at the 1943 election. In 1944 and 1945 he put together the new Liberal Party, which took over from the moribund United Australia Party and a number of splinter groups. He led the party to the 1946 election and won power in 1949.

Menzies held power for the next sixteen years, retaining power at elections in 1951, 1954, 1955, 1958, 1961 and 1963, and retiring in January 1966.

The 1966 Kooyong by-election was won by Andrew Peacock, then President of the Victorian Liberal Party. Peacock rose to the ministry in 1969 and served in the ministry until the election of the Whitlam government in 1972. He served as a senior frontbencher during the Whitlam government and became Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Fraser government in 1975. He moved to the Industrial Relations portfolio in 1980, but resigned from Cabinet in 1981 due to supposed meddling in his portfolio by the Prime Minister. He launched a failed challenge to Fraser’s leadership and moved to the backbench, although he returned to Cabinet in late 1982, a few months before Malcolm Fraser lost power.

After the 1983 election, Peacock was elected leader, defeating John Howard, who had served as Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party for the last few months of the Fraser government. Peacock led the party into the 1984 election, reducing the Hawke government’s majority. With rising speculation of a leadership challenge from Howard (still deputy leader) in 1985, he attempted to replace Howard as deputy leader, but the party room re-elected Howard. This caused Peacock to resign as leader and Howard was elected Leader of the Opposition. Howard led the Liberal Party to a bigger defeat in 1987. Howard was challenged by Peacock in 1989, and Peacock led the Liberal Party to the 1990 election. Despite winning a majority of the two-party preferred vote, Peacock didn’t win enough seats, and he resigned as leader immediately after the election.

Peacock remained on the frontbench under the leadership of John Hewson and Alexander Downer, and retired in 1994. Peacock was appointed Ambassador to the United States upon the election of the Howard government in 1996, and served in the role until 1999.

Kooyong was won at the 1994 by-election by Petro Georgiou, the State Director of the Victorian Liberal Party. Georgiou was a former advisor to Malcolm Fraser and a key proponent of multicultural government policies. Georgiou’s main opposition came from Greens candidate Peter Singer, due to the absence of a Labor candidate. Singer managed 28% of the primary vote, which remained a Greens record until the 2009 Higgins by-election, but it wasn’t enough to seriously challenge the Liberal hold on Kooyong.

Georgiou positioned himself strongly as a moderate within the Liberal Party and despite his impeccable credentials in the Liberal Party and as a policy advisor, he never held a frontbench role in the Howard government. He was openly critical of the Howard government’s refugee policies in the final term of the Howard government. He faced a strong preselection challenge in 2006, but managed to win more than two thirds of votes in the preselection. He managed to win re-election in 2007 with practically no swing against him, despite the Liberals suffering large swings across Australia.

In 2010, Georgiou retired, and he was succeeded by fellow Liberal Josh Frydenberg. Frydenberg has been re-elected three times, and in 2018 was elected deputy leader of the Liberal Party. Frydenberg has served in a number of ministerial portfolios, including as Treasurer since 2018.

Candidates

Assessment
Kooyong has been trending to the left over recent elections, but Frydenberg’s margin is still substantial.

It seems like Monique Ryan is the main challenger to Frydenberg, and may be able to peel off those extra voters who wouldn’t vote Labor or Greens, and has a good chance of winning.

2019 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Josh Frydenberg Liberal 48,928 49.4 -8.2 49.2
Julian Burnside Greens 21,035 21.2 +2.7 21.1
Jana Stewart Labor 16,666 16.8 -3.7 17.5
Oliver Yates Independent 8,890 9.0 +9.0 8.5
Steven D’Elia United Australia Party 1,185 1.2 +1.2 1.2
Davina Hinkley Animal Justice 1,117 1.1 +1.0 1.2
Bill Chandler Independent 669 0.7 +0.7 0.6
Angelina Zubac Independent 539 0.5 -2.3 0.5
Others 0.2
Informal 3,033 3.0 +1.0

2019 two-candidate-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Josh Frydenberg Liberal 55,159 55.7 +55.7 55.5
Julian Burnside Greens 43,870 44.3 +44.3 44.5

2019 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Josh Frydenberg Liberal 56,127 56.7 -6.1 56.4
Jana Stewart Labor 42,902 43.3 +6.1 43.6

Booth breakdown

Booths have been divided into four areas: north-east, south-east, north-west and south-west.

The Liberal Party won a majority of the two-candidate-preferred vote in three out of four areas, polling around 53.1% in the north-west and south-east, and 58.3% in the north-east. The Greens polled 53.8% in the south-west.

The Greens outpolled Labor in three out of four areas, but Labor outpolled the Greens in the north-east.

Voter group GRN prim ALP prim LIB 2CP Total votes % of votes
South-East 21.6 18.9 53.1 18,884 18.1
North-East 17.5 19.3 58.3 13,356 12.8
North-West 23.3 15.0 53.1 12,659 12.1
South-West 27.8 17.1 46.2 10,621 10.2
Pre-poll 20.5 16.8 57.2 29,217 28.0
Other votes 18.8 17.7 59.9 19,496 18.7

Election results in Kooyong at the 2019 federal election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Liberal vs Greens or Labor), two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, the Greens, Labor and independent candidates.

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274 COMMENTS

  1. @NQ View, NZ’s party vote is a bit like Australians voting for the upper house although in a different way as NZ obviously doesn’t have the upper house but rather make the number of seat for each party in the chamber proportional to the national vote.

  2. Well yes, and no. The party vote is everyone in the country determining who they want to lead the government. The electorate vote determines who represents them locally in parliament. There is no analogous system in Australia, especially since the Senate does not determine who forms government. My vote in a safe LNP seat at both federal and state level has virtually no bearing on who forms government, whereas under MMP in NZ my preference (via the party vote) would be valued the same as everyone else’s.

  4. @nether. No. When I joined this forum I lived in Cairns and voted in Barron River/Leichhardt. I’ve since relocated to the outskirts of Toowoomba, meaning I now vote in Condamine and Groom.

    Without getting into super-specifics, I’ve also voted in Cook, Mount Isa and Gregory on the state level, and Flynn and Maranoa for the feds.

  5. It was mentioned on ABC show Insiders since the seat of Higgins was abolished. It changes the make up of the seat, with at least half the electorate (could be more) going into Kooyong. Which has prompted Josh Frydenberg reconsidering standing at the next election it was reported.

    The two big dilemmas for the Liberals. 1) They have already chosen a candidate and its a women in Amelia Hamer. 2) Katie Allen who was already preselected for Higgins may be interested in standing. And there may be a good case to re-open the preselection as there were Liberal members in Higgins (now based in Kooyong if the redistribution happens) who had no say in the Kooyong preselection.

    Liberals are divided on the issue. The dilemma from party insiders is that the preselected candidate Hamer has no chance knocking off Monique Ryan it was mentioned on the panel. But Frydenberg elbowing two women candidates out of the way. Is an awful look for a party that already has a problem with women with the voters, and a lack of women parliamentarians.

    https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-06-02/josh-frydenberg-considering-return-to-politics/103924628

  6. Do you think Frydenberg should just run in a different winnable seat, like Chisholm or Aston?

  7. I suspect people want Frydenberg because they believe Kooyong is more winnable for the Liberals (with old money rich Toorak) and also because there is a sizeable Jewish population in Armadale and Malvern (both to be subsumed by Kooyong). There are some who want him to rescue and/or be an alternate leader of the Liberals.

  8. Really? I’m surprised that party insiders believe Hamer has no chance. If anything, I’d say she has more of a chance than Frydenberg. If Ryan was elected off the backs of individuals who thought Frydenberg was tied to the hip of Morrison and berated them during the Covid era (rightly or wrongly, even if he was targetting Dan Andrews and his state government more specifically than the electorate), then I question why he would win it back easily, as then he should not have lost it in the first place.

    Putting the gender of the candidate aside, I think a fresh candidate would have a better chance, and even if he was to win anyway, that the fresh candidate would improve the margin by a higher degree. Other than prior ministerial and cabinet experience (as comparing that wouldn’t exactly be fair as you’d never allow new blood in that way), Hamer is just as credentialed.

    I suppose some might consider Frydenberg akin to John Pesutto at the state level, where people wanted to send a message and kick out Morrison and unintentionally kicked out the local member in the process, but I would question that logic. Pesutto did regain his seat at the following election, then immediately contested the leadership once it was thrown open by Matthew Guy, but if Dutton got the ALP into minority government come 2025 even if falling short which seems more likely than say the ALP getting further ahead than their 2022 result, I doubt he’d do the same. Frydenberg isn’t really known for political bastardry and backstabbing – he’s loyal to a fault, even if its to his detriment.

  11. In response to Nether Portal’s excellent question what would happen if the Teals did not exists. I will look at this seat. Hopefully the following points help answer that question.
    1. The Liberal primary never fell below 50% until 2019 when an independent Oliver Yates ran
    2. Oliver Yates in essence was a proto-teal while achieved the milestone of getting the Liberal vote below that threshold.
    3. However, Oliver Yates did not get tactical voting from Labor/Greens supporters and the Green vote went up in 2019 even with him. However, i think Greens took from Labor or were new voters in the seat.
    4. Therefore if he did not run in 2019, the Libs would not have needed to go to preferences to win the seat.
    5. This is different from neighboring Higgins where even in the absence of an independent in 2019 the Libs were forced to preferences. This shows that Higgins is a more left-leaning seat than Kooyong as it is more mixed demographically.
    6. Assuming no independent, i still believe the Libs would have lost votes in both 2019 and 2022 just not as much as for many voting GRN or LAB was a bridge too far.
    7. In 2016 the last time there was no high profile independent the Greens were only 0.8% behind the Labor party so some moderate Liberal voters may have switched to Greens as they did in Ryan and Brisbane. However, Chinese Australian voters may have switched to Labor in protest of Morrison’s policies instead of the GRN so maybe it is not clear if Labor or Greens would have come second. My guess is that Greens would have as i dont think Labor would have put as much effort in.

  13. @ NP, i think the Libs would have won in 2022 with no Teals but possibly forced to preferences even without an independent maybe 46% primary but that should be enough. What are your thoughts on my points above

  14. Chinese voters from the post 1975 migration back the strong horse.
    ATM, that looks like Peter Dutton.
    Media reports at the time of the Dunkley byelection were that he is very popular with the Chinese community.

  15. @ Gympie
    There is hardly any Chinese community in Dunkley it is very white. If you look at Nether Portal’s table on languages and LGA both Frankston and Mornington Peninsula have the lowest percentages of Non English speakers for Urban councils.

  17. Sure, but the important fact is Dutton found the time to address the Chinese community in Dunkley, even though it wasn’t substantial enough to affect the result in Dumley in 2023.

  18. I don’t see this falling before seats like Aston and Chisholm. Despite the strong Liberal candidate in Amelia Hamer, Monique Ryan has a good chance of retaining the seat by getting another +40% primary vote from Labor-Green tactical voting or getting a lower primary vote and receiving Labor-Green preference flows.

  19. @ NP
    This is the neighbouring seat to me so i know booths quite well. I have also chosen some small l liberal for you to compare the Lib Primary some overlap with seats that are classic LIB/ALP

    Hawthorn State electorate
    1. Glenferrie- Hawthorn Town Hall most Progressive booth since next to Swinburne uni. However it is still Tealish not Green Left or Ecosocialist
    2. Glenferrie South (aka Kooyong booth). One of the poshest booths right next to Scotch College (one of the most posh schools in the nation)
    3. Hartwell
    4. Highfield
    5. Canterbury South
    6. Auburn

    Kew State electorate
    1. Kew
    2. Studley Park
    3. Cotham (Genzzano College-posh private girls school)
    4. Kew South (next to Trinity and Xavier Colleges-posh private boys schools)
    5. Deepdene- a very expensive suburb
    6. Balwyn North-Chinese community
    7. Chatham PS (Canterbury north)

    Box Hill electorate
    8. Mont Albert
    9. Surrey Hills
    10. Elgar Park

    Ashwood electorate
    11. Burwood West

  20. @Nimalan here are the comparisons (federal vs state Liberal TCP/TPP):

    NOTE: All of these seats are Liberal vs Labor, whereas Kooyong is a teal vs Liberal seat.

    Box Hill:
    * Mont Albert: 43.5% vs 43.4%
    * Surrey Hills: 46.0% vs 51.1%
    * Surrey Hills North: 46.7% vs 47.0%

    Hawthorn:
    * Canterbury: 55.1% vs 63.9%
    * Canterbury South: 45.2% vs 49.7%
    * Glenferrie: 39.2% vs 38.3%
    * Hartwell: 43.8% vs 46.4%
    * Hawthorn: 36.3% vs 41.2%

    Kew:
    * Balwyn: 49.2% vs 49.4%
    * Balwyn Central: 48.7% vs 50.4%
    * Balwyn North: 51.6% vs 54.9%
    * Balwyn North Central: 51.0% vs 60.3%
    * Chatham: 44.4% vs 49.7%
    * Deepdene: 52.7% vs 56.6%
    * Kew: 41.2% vs 41.4%
    * Kew East: 49.7% vs 51.6%
    * Kew North: 43.7% vs 42.2%
    * Kew South: 42.6% vs 49.9%
    * Surrey Hills North: 46.7% vs 65.5%

  23. The Liberal primary in a few booths (federal vs state):

    * Balwyn: 44.4% vs 40.0%
    * Canterbury: 51.5% vs 55.7%
    * Glenferrie: 34.6% vs 30.2%
    * Hawthorn: 33.7% vs 34.4%
    * Kew: 37.0% vs 35.0%
    * Surrey Hills: 42.1% vs 44.1%

    On the federal level, the Liberals finished first in Balwyn, Canterbury and Surrey Hills and second in Glenferrie, Hawthorn and Kew. Meanwhile, on the state level, the Liberals finished first in all six of those booths.

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