ALP 8.5% vs GRN
Incumbent MP
Peter Khalil, since 2016.
- Geography
- Redistribution
- History
- Candidate summary
- Assessment
- 2019 results
- Booth breakdown
- Results maps
Geography
Northern Melbourne. Wills covers most of the City of Moreland. Key suburbs include Brunswick, Moreland, Coburg, Pascoe Vale, Oak Park, Glenroy, Hadfield and Fawkner.
Redistribution
Wills lost part of Brunswick East to the seat of Melbourne, increasing the Labor margin from 8.2% to 8.5%.
History
Wills was created for the 1949 election as part of the expansion of the House of Representatives. Apart from a period in the early 1990s, it has always been held by the Labor Party.
Wills was first won in 1949 by the ALP’s Bill Bryson. He had previously held the seat of Bourke from 1943 to 1946. Bryson served as a member of the ALP until the split of 1955, when he joined the new Labor Party (Anti-Communist), which became the Democratic Labor Party. He lost the seat at the 1955 election.
The seat was won in 1955 by the ALP’s Gordon Bryant. Bryant served as a minister in the Whitlam government from 1972 to 1975, and retired in 1980.
Wills was won in 1980 by former President of the ACTU, Bob Hawke. Hawke was in the rare position of a politician who was already a significant national figure in his own right before entering Parliament, and he was immediately appointed to the Labor frontbench. Hawke failed in an attempt to replace Bill Hayden as Labor leader in 1982, but was successful in another attempt on the very day that Malcolm Fraser called the 1983 election, and he won that election, becoming Prime Minister.
Hawke won re-election at the 1984, 1987 and 1990 elections, but in 1991 he was defeated in a caucus leadership ballot by Paul Keating, and he resigned from Parliament in 1992.
The 1992 Wills by-election was a remarkable campaign, with 22 candidates standing. The seat was won by former footballer Phil Cleary on a hard-left socialist platform. Cleary’s victory was overturned in the High Court due to his status as a public school teacher on unpaid leave, shortly before the 1993 election. He was re-elected at the 1993 election, and held the seat until his defeat in 1996.
Wills was won back for the ALP in 1996 by Kelvin Thomson, a Victorian state MP since 1988. Thomson was appointed to the Federal Labor shadow ministry in 1997, and remained on the frontbench until early 2007. Thomson retained his seat until his retirement in 2016.
Labor’s Peter Khalil won in 2016, and was re-elected in 2019.
Assessment
The Greens would need to do very well to have a chance in this seat, although a change in Liberal preference policy would get the Greens much closer to winning.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Peter Khalil | Labor | 42,355 | 44.1 | +6.2 | 44.3 |
| Adam Pulford | Greens | 25,575 | 26.6 | -4.3 | 26.3 |
| Peter Killin | Liberal | 17,241 | 17.9 | -3.6 | 18.1 |
| Sue Bolton | Victorian Socialists | 4,344 | 4.5 | +4.5 | 4.5 |
| Chris Miles | Animal Justice | 3,596 | 3.7 | +2.1 | 3.8 |
| Manju Venkat | United Australia Party | 2,979 | 3.1 | +3.1 | 3.1 |
| Informal | 4,243 | 4.2 | -2.6 |
2019 two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Peter Khalil | Labor | 55,898 | 58.2 | +3.2 | 58.5 |
| Adam Pulford | Greens | 40,192 | 41.8 | -3.2 | 41.5 |
2019 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Peter Khalil | Labor | 72,888 | 75.9 | +4.2 | 75.7 |
| Peter Killin | Liberal | 23,202 | 24.1 | -4.2 | 24.3 |
Booths have been divided into three areas:
- North-East – Coburg, Fawkner and other suburbs.
- North-West – Glenroy, Pascoe Vale and other suburbs.
- South – Brunswick and other suburbs.
Labor won a majority of the two-candidate-preferred vote in the north-east (60.8%) and the north-west (67.4%). The Greens polled 51.9% in the south.
The Liberal Party came third, with a primary vote ranging from 10.3% in the south to 22.4% in the north-west.
| Voter group | LIB prim % | ALP 2CP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| South | 10.3 | 48.1 | 17,167 | 18.4 |
| North-East | 14.9 | 60.8 | 16,736 | 17.9 |
| North-West | 22.4 | 67.4 | 16,392 | 17.6 |
| Pre-poll | 19.9 | 58.9 | 27,500 | 29.4 |
| Other votes | 22.1 | 57.2 | 15,583 | 16.7 |
Election results in Wills at the 2019 federal election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Labor vs Greens), two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Greens and the Liberal Party.
@ John
Caulfield is the strongest Liberal area in Macnamara and you can see on postal vote/prepoll the Liberal vote is strongest most Jews do not vote on Saturdays. There is no chance the Libs could get back to 2016 results with Dutton as leader it is an area pro climate, Pro- LGBT anyway. The Libs need to do well around Albert Park/Port Melbourne.
@nimalan they did alright under Abbott. besides it depends how badly the CoL crisis is hitting come election time.
@john, the areas that swung most from Liberal to Labor/Greens in the last 8 years since 2016 in Macnamara are the most affluent suburbs like Albert Park & Caulfield, so I doubt the cost of living crisis would be hitting them as hard as in other seats like the mortgage belt and growth areas.
Most of the lower income voters who would be hit by the cost of living crisis in Macnamara are young renters, a solidly Greens voting demographic, who would have zero reason to swing from Greens to Liberals over the cost of living crisis, especially when the Greens are specifically campaigning on rent reform in this area. I live in St Kilda and there are Greens ‘Freeze Rents Now!’ posters absolutely everywhere.
Backlash about cost of living would usually hurt the incumbent government, not a minor party who is neither in government, or the incumbent MP for that seat.
The Libs might get back to 2019 levels in Macnamara but not 2016 levels. That result was really all about two things which are no longer a factor: an endorsement of Malcolm Turnbull with the hope of him reforming the Libs back into a “small l” party, and a rejection of Michael Danby who was a deepy unpopular (I’d almost say “hated”) MP with most of the electorate.
Danby is gone, and the Libs moved in the opposite direction of what Malcolm Turnbull represented, so for those two reasons, the Liberals really have no chance of matching that 2016 level of support.
@ Trent
my point about Josh Burns and the LGBT census question was more about i feel Josh Burns is trying to win/not least not loose socially progressive non Jewish voters. Josh Burns has also spoken out on Live Exports, Gas Policy, Mental Health funding etc. I feel apart from Foreign Policy he is quite different to Danby eventhough he started off as Danby staffer.
In some ways Peter Khalil is like Michael Danby a foreign policy Anti-China Hawk which is increasingly the wrong fit for a seat like Wills but i think Peter Khalil is trying to soften that image but speaking out on renewable energy, he was Anti-Adani and now the LGBT census question.
Big Pro-Palestine protest in the City today against the Weapons Expo. This may embolden the campaign against Peter Khalil as he is a national security hawk.
@Nimalan i iwhs it was open to the public
@ John
Agree it was an expo that was open to the public but if there is any seat that the Pro-Palestine campaign would target it would be Wills given the demographics and also Peter Khalil is more Hawkish and pro-American in his foreign policy stances.
@nimalan it wasnt open to the public you had to be invited and have a professional/business interested in attending 🙁
@ Darth Vader
Ok my mistake i know it was organised by a Private organisation i was just going off what John mentioned. i have just seen the footage of the rally.
@nimalan i believe he said “i wish it was open to the public” meaning he wanted to go
@ All good Darth Vader, i misread it
Horrendous behaviour by a group of thugs because of what they did to the sitting members office.
Regardless of your political beliefs we can agree that this is unacceptable and these people are a direct threat to our democracy.
Everyone is allowed to have their own opinions but vandalism is not acceptable.
what happened?
@John: https://www.abc.net.au/news/2024-10-14/labor-mp-peter-khalils-office-vandalised/104469220
@ NP
So similar to what happend to Josh Burns office earlier this year.
@john Pro-Palestine nutcases being nutcases as usual
@nimalan both of whom are likely to be out of work come the next election i think, but yea totally unacceptable. wills has slowly drifted to the left after taking in greens voting areas and will likely fall in 2025 though khalil may be saved my lib preferences. josh burns only help on by like .5% of voters picking him over the bgreens which may change in 2025.
@ John
The Dynamics of each seat are different though eventhough both are face challenges and good chance pick ups. In Wills, yes Liberal preferences will be crucial but a lot of the Liberal friendly parts of the seat has been cut out by the redistribution. In Macnamara, there will be some Jewish Liberal voters who are very Pro-Israel and actually like Dutton and hate Albo but they may tactically vote for Josh Burns to stop the Greens winning it. Josh Burns is one of the few Labor MPs that Sky News is friendly with it. That is Josh Burns best bet by convincing Liberal voters to stop the Greens.
@nimalan that is probably his only hop of winning the seat. alternatively it might also mean that people who normally vote labor might preference the libs in order to keep the greens out as well. that could also have the effect of making it a labor vs greens contest in which he will benefi from liberal preferences but how long can he keep that up?
@ John
Agree, I think Josh Burns and the Jewish community want it to be ALP V GRN seat because they want to keep the Greens out. It may only last in 2025 though i agree. Caulfield is the most reliable Liberal part and Orthodox Jews are often socially conservative and support the Libs but will be willing to vote Labor to keep the Greens out.
The Jewish community newspaper is encouraging tactical voting for Labor
https://www.australianjewishnews.com/keeping-macnamara-in-safe-hands/
If it becomes Labor vs Greens (which I doubt it will the Liberal vote is too high around Caulfield and there’s a small-l-liberal vote around Port Melbourne too) then that would be the fastest big shift possibly in history. As I pointed out on the Macnamara thread the Liberals nearly won it in 2016 but in 2025 it’s safe for Labor and Labor’s biggest opponent is the Greens.