ALP 0.6%
Incumbent MP
John Kennedy, since 2018.
Geography
Eastern Melbourne. Hawthorn covers central parts of the Boroondara local government area, and specifically the suburbs of Hartwell and Hawthorn and parts of the suburbs of Burwood, Camberwell, Canterbury and Surrey Hills.
Redistribution
Hawthorn shifted to the east, taking in part of Surrey Hills from Burwood and Box Hill, and losing the remainder of Glen Iris to Ashwood. These changes slightly increased the Labor margin from 0.4% to 0.6%.
History
Hawthorn has existed as an electoral district continuously since 1889. In that time, it has been dominated by conservative MPs, and had only been won by the ALP at one election prior to the Labor win in 2018.
The seat was won in 1902 by George Swinburne. He ended up serving as a member of the Commonwealth Liberal Party before his retirement in 1913.
He was succeeded by William Murray McPherson. McPherson served as Treasurer in the Nationalist state government from 1917 to 1923, and as Premier from 1928 to 1929. McPherson resigned from Parliament in 1930.
He was succeeded by Nationalist candidate John Gray at the 1930 by-election. Gray served as Member for Hawthorn until his death in 1939.
His seat was won at the 1939 by-election by the United Australia Party’s Leslie Tyack. He lost the seat at the 1940 state election to independent candidate Leslie Hollins, who had links to the Social Credit movement.
Hollins held Hawthorn for two terms, losing in 1945 to the Liberal Party’s Frederick Edmunds. He also held the seat for two terms, until in 1950 the Liberal Party replaced him with his predecessor Leslie Tyack.
Tyack was defeated in 1952 by the ALP’s Charles Murphy, the only ALP member to ever win Hawthorn. He left the ALP in the split of 1955, and lost his seat at that year’s election to the Liberal Party’s James Manson.
After one term, Manson moved to the new seat of Ringwood in 1958, and was replaced in Hawthorn by Peter Garrisson. He was re-elected in 1961, but in 1963 he resigned from the Liberal Party, and lost his seat as an independent in 1964.
Walter Jona was elected as Liberal Member for Hawthorn in 1964. He served as a minister in the Liberal government from 1976 to 1982, and retired in 1985.
Hawthorn was won in 1985 by the Liberal Party’s Phillip Gude, who had previously held the seat of Geelong East for one term from 1976 to his defeat in 1979. He served as a minister in the Kennett government from 1992 until his retirement in 1999.
Since 1999, Hawthorn has been held by Ted Baillieu. Baillieu won re-election in 2002, 2006 and 2010.
Ted Baillieu was elected Liberal leader shortly before the 2006 election, and led the Coalition to defeat in 2006 and victory in 2010.
Baillieu served as Premier from 2010 until March 2013, when he resigned as Premier and Liberal leader under pressure from his party’s MPs. He retired at the 2014 election, and was succeeded by Liberal candidate John Pesutto.
Pesutto held Hawthorn for one term, losing the seat to Labor’s John Kennedy with a big swing in 2018.
- Faith Fuhrer (Animal Justice)
- John Kennedy (Labor)
- Ken Triantafillis (Family First)
- Richard Peppard (Liberal Democrats)
- Melissa Lowe (Independent)
- Nick Savage (Greens)
- John Pesutto (Liberal)
- Stratton Bell (Democratic Labour)
Assessment
Hawthorn has traditionally been considered a safe Liberal seat, but a cumulative swing of 17.1% to Labor since Ted Baillieu’s retirement in 2014 saw them grab the seat. It wouldn’t take much of that vote swinging back to restore the Liberal hold here, but if the Liberal Party doesn’t receive much of a bounce back Labor could hold the seat.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| John Pesutto | Liberal | 17,231 | 43.9 | -10.6 | 43.9 |
| John Kennedy | Labor | 12,646 | 32.2 | +8.0 | 32.9 |
| Nicholas Bieber | Greens | 7,167 | 18.3 | -3.1 | 17.7 |
| Sophie Paterson | Sustainable Australia | 960 | 2.4 | +2.5 | 2.4 |
| Catherine Wright | Animal Justice | 885 | 2.3 | +2.3 | 2.2 |
| Richard Grummet | Independent | 367 | 0.9 | +0.9 | 0.8 |
| Informal | 1,462 | 3.6 | -0.2 |
2018 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| John Kennedy | Labor | 19,793 | 50.4 | +9.0 | 50.6 |
| John Pesutto | Liberal | 19,463 | 49.6 | -9.0 | 49.4 |
Booths have been divided into three areas: central, east and west.
The Labor Party won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, with just over 52% in the centre and east and 57% in the west. The Liberal Party narrowly won the pre-poll vote and won the remaining vote more convincingly.
The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 12.3% in the east to 21.5% in the west.
| Voter group | GRN prim % | ALP 2PP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| Central | 17.0 | 52.1 | 9,807 | 22.7 |
| East | 12.3 | 52.2 | 6,135 | 14.2 |
| West | 21.5 | 56.9 | 5,796 | 13.4 |
| Pre-poll | 18.1 | 46.5 | 13,503 | 31.2 |
| Other votes | 19.3 | 49.6 | 8,018 | 18.5 |
Election results in Hawthorn at the 2018 Victorian state election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, Labor and the Greens.
Some big questions now:
1. Will John Pesutto recontest Hawthorn?
2. Will David Southwick recontest Caulfield?
3. Will Matthew Guy recontest Bulleen?
Also I don’t understand why everyone keeps using former cop as a title to criticise Dutton and Battin. It seems very left-wing and anti-police which is a Greens thing.
Criticism should be on policies not the lives of individuals.
Interestingly, Battin supports increasing the age of responsibility to 14 which even Jacinta Allan scrapped the pledge
@NP out of those three Matthew Guy is the biggest ? since hes been there since 2006
@NP – I wasn’t using former cop as a criticism, just a trait of Battin that will make people compare him to Dutton, who is disliked for various reasons by moderate, centrist swinging voters (not because he was a cop).
@Marh – A former cop who has experience in law & order supporting that policy shows that it’s a good one, and I commend him for not exploiting fears about it for political gain. I think Jacinta Allan is weak for backtracking on it out of fear of it being politicised against her.
I think there’s a good chance all 3 may not recontest in 2026. Southwick would feel especially on the “outside” after leaking the recordings and now his allies no longer have the control.
Josh Burns unsuccessfully contested Caulfield in 2014. If he loses Macnamara and Southwick doesn’t recontest Caulfield, Burns could run and have an incumbency advantage over the new Lib. That’d be a tight contest.
@NP There probably won’t be abortion scare campaigns in Victoria. Around the nation, leaders of state and federal Liberal and National parties have ruled out changes to abortion laws. Any anti-abortion voices in these parties were quickly rebuked by the party’s leadership team. Even Peter Dutton, probably the most right-wing Liberal leader in the country right now, has ruled out changes to abortion laws and blasted his own colleagues who raised them as an issue. I think Brad Battin will do the same and stear clear of cultural war issues, and instead focus on issues such as cost of living, economic management, health and housing, issues that Victorians care about.
In Queensland, the KAP proposed to introduce a bill to roll back abortion rights ahead of the 2024 state election in order to undermine the LNP and potentially push the LNP into minority government so that the KAP can hold the balance of power. LNP leader David Crisafulli refused to rule out a conscience vote for his party. The vast majority of LNP MPs in the pre-election party room voted against the decrimialisation of abortion in Queensland back in 2018, and many LNP candidates also expressed anti-abortion views. This was how the abortion scare campaign in the 2024 Queensland state election came about.
Unlike Queensland, there’s no right-wing minor party in the lower House of the Victorian Parliament that can introduce anti-abortion bills. Although some Liberal MPs like Moira Deeming and Renee Heath did expressed anti-abortion views, there’s no push to change abortion laws in Victoria. If anti-abortion MPs like Moira Deeming and Renee Heath were given frontbench positions there may be some basis for an abortion scare campaign, if not there will be no basis at all since there’s no prospect for anti-abortion bills to be introduced.
Waiting to see what Battin’s frontbench will look like. As I have said, John Pesutto will not be given a frontbench position and is highly unlikely to recontest Hawthorn in 2026 after he lost the leadership. If David Southwick or Matthew Guy are not given frontbench positions they will likely retire in 2026 as well. If Moira Deeming and Renee Heath are given frontbench positions, the Liberal Party will have no chance in holding onto Hawthorn or Caulfield in 2026, and teal candidates may well succeed in Hawthorn and elsewhere.
The Abortion scare campaign saved Labor seats in metro Brisbane, possibly Cairns and Bundaberg too.
The numbers from memory, Labor has 33 seats in Brisbane/Ipswich, LNP has 3.
Outside of Brisbane/Ipswich, LNP has 49 seats, Labor has 3.
In Victoria, where the majority of seats are in the metropolitan area, it would make it very difficult for the coalition to form Government.
Moira Deeming is likely to raise abortion as an issue a few months out from the ’26 Election imo, her LC predecessor Bernie Finn did the same in the run up to the 2018 and ’22 Elections.
The Victorian Liberals have just elected an all-male leadership team with four men, deposing the only woman (Georgie Crozier) in their leadership team, while three out of four members of Victorian Labor’s leadership team are women. How can one expect the Victorian Liberals to govern 7 million Victorians when they can’t even agree on having one of the 50.8% of Victorians who are women on the team? Having four white men running the party seeking to govern a diverse state is a monumental mistake. The Victorian Liberal Party is the only state or territory branch of the Liberal Party to have never had a female leader. They still haven’t realised their problem with women in 2024/25. Certainly not a party that reflects modern Victoria.
@ NP
Further to Trent’s point the population spread of Victoria with a more Centralized population means a law and order based campaign will not work in Victoria. In QLD, the law and order based campaign helped in Townsville etc but LNP won no new seats in the BCC area which contains inner and middle ring suburbs. In Victoria, that is not possible since there is no path to Victory for the Coalition without gaining highly educated middle class seats such as Bentleigh, Mordiallic, Ringwood, Box Hill, Ashwood and Glen Waverley. Also a law and order based campaign like what the Coalition did in 2018 with African gangs could backfire badly in ethnic outer suburbs including the neighboring seats for Brad Battin such as the Narre Warrens and Cranbourne which have a growing Muslim and African community.
@ Joseph, the DLP is probably the perfect party for an Abortion scare campaign especially if Adam Somreyek threatens to introduce an Abortion repeal bill, i think some in the Labor party will egg him on closer to the election.
Calling it now, Labor rules Victoria indefinitely until the Greens become the opposition. I’m certainly not joking.
@Joseph, I think Dutton focuses more on Nationalism than Social Conservatism given he rarely talks and campaigns on LGBT issues but is willing to start culture wars about Australia Day and Indigenous Issues like the recent Indigenous Flag issue and potentially Welcome to Country
@ marh
I agree Dutton is not a religious conservative but more nationalist and is focused on white working class than religious CALD voters. in Victoria seats like Greenvale and the Narrre Warrens have religious CALD voters but not Nationalist as they have a below average percent of Anglos. I actually thought a couple of years ago that Dutton will focus on trans issues but he does not seem to be interested. I don’t know if Dutton is religious himself
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/victoria/a-fleeting-moment-of-calm-before-an-unreturned-phone-call-reignited-liberal-loathing-20241226-p5l0s8.html
“In the hours after the judgment…Crozier made calls of her own to sound out the possible return of Michael O’Brien as leader.”
Of everything that has happened in this entire saga, this has to be the most insane thing that has ever been proposed. Michael O’Brien being returned to the leadership is crazier than giving Guy a third go. Reinstalling the worst Liberal leader since Robert Doyle defies explanation.
I feel like the moderates are about to be cleansed of any influence in the Liberals. It will be very shocking to see a moderate get a high cabinet position with the standing of the VIC Liberals right now.
Also predicting Pesutto and Southwick will retire next election/resign mid term.
@Nimalan Adem Somyurek quit the DLP in March, which means the DLP now has no MPs in the Victorian state Parliament.
@ Joseph
Oh i missed that for some reason.
@Joseph – furthermore, I believe the DLP was actually deregistered in Victoria by the VEC a few months ago as it was unable to prove it had at least 500 members.
It’s probably a bit over the top to say that the Victorian Liberals will be cleansed of any moderate influence, it’s likely that a couple of them will get shadow ministerial portfolios, but there is a real chance that Brad Battin could move the party to the right and focus on issues that are out of touch with everyday Victorians.
@Nimalan
Unfortunately Labor seems likely to win the next state election after todays leadership spill… if the Libs knew what was good for them, they would have kept Pesutto on. Only a moderate Liberal party can win in Victoria and thats a fact
I’ve definitly lost faith in the party after this. They have to realise that their membership ‘base’ does not represent Victorian voters and Liberal Victorians as a whole and need to stop thinking that moving to the right will do them any good