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.
If Labor were interested in keeping this seat out of Liberal hands, they would run dead and let a Teal take it, as in my opinion, teals will have more staying power in these sorts of seats. Obviously, deliberately losing a seat is not an easy decision but such a small price to pay to keep the Liberals’ ace in the hole out of Parliament for another 4 years. Regardless of what Labor decides to do, this seat was lost in 2018, when the Liberal image, bruised as it was by the then-recent removal of Turnbull, was in a better state than it is now. The people have seen that Guy hasn’t changed his stripes, and as was demonstrated in Kooyong, these electors have no problem with rejecting a potential leader of the Liberal party to get what they perceive to be better representation.
Labor retain, or Ind gain if the Teal runs a strong campaign.
@douglas I agree with all of that.
There’s a lot of talk about 2018 being a low point for the Liberals but I don’t agree. It may have been a high point for state Labor’s popularity but the Liberal brand has only taken a further beating in the past 4 years since then.
While 2018 may have, at the time, seemed like a temporary backlash against Turnbull’s dumping, the idea of the Liberal Party moving further right, focusing less on its affluent inner city base, and becoming more populist has only been cemented, to the point where the party – including locals like Tim Smith – openly talk about abandoning this area.
So if Hawthorn (and Brighton, Sandringham, Caulfield, etc) voters didn’t feel like the Liberal Party represented them in 2018, I imagine that feeling would only have been further cemented & confirmed now in 2022.
Also, as much as the Turnbull dumping in 2018 was a negative factor, Scott Morrison as PM at that time was seen as “At least it’s not Dutton”. Well…. If any party will be “federally dragged” in November it will be the Liberals in inner Melbourne.
Some very good points made here. Even if Pesutto runs here, I do not see him getting more than 49% of the 2PP. Trends would indicate that Labor will make massive inroads in the inner east this cycle and we’re reaching a point that the Liberals may indeed have to abandon these seats and look at other marginal/rightward trending seats if they want a majority within the decade.
Trent, if I may just quote myself to clarify things:
“[I]n 2018, when the Liberal image…was in a better state than it is now”
I agree that the Liberal image is at its lowest point, since the war in my opinion. Sorry for the confusion of my appositive phrase (which I just learned the name of!).
Probably agree that overall Victoria 2022 will be like SA 2010 or Brisbane Council 2016, two elections where there was an overall swing against the government, but concentrated/wasted in safe seats thus doing minimal damage and not focussed into the key marginal seats.
In fact Brisbane council 2016 Labor lost 2 seats (one to LNP and one to the Greens) without netting anything in return, so Victoria 2022 could easily play out in a similar manner with the Liberals ending up with a net loss of seats.
@douglas, no I understand the point you were making, and was agreeing with you that as bruised as the Liberal image was in 2018, it was in a better state than it is now. 🙂
My comment about disagreeing that 2018 was a low point was directed at previous comments by other posters which state that 2018 was a low point for the Liberals and assume they will recover ground this time. My view is that in 2018 it seemed like a low point, but in 2022 their brand is even more damaged.
Boof Head, the only way Hawthorn ever becomes unwinnable for the Liberals is for the VEC to replace Camberwell and Surrey Hills with Richmond. Until that happens then Hawthorn will remain a marginal Liberal lending seat.
Hawthorn is different to Prahran due to substantial demographic change around South Yarra station and that seat extends into progressive St Kilda, whereas, Hawthorn is being pushed further east and the largest demographic change is a growing Asian population meaning that Hawthorn shares more in common with Box Hill than Prahran. Box Hill is depending on boundaries, a typical eastern suburb marginal seat.
@Pencil, I guess it all comes down to if and when anti-Liberal trends stop. Labor probably won’t be getting more than 55% of the 2PP within the decade, but the trends seem long term. An example of a state seat with similar trends is Sydney, historically Liberal leaning but becoming increasingly unfavourable against Labor (also held by a leftist independent but independents in these seats tend to outperform the ALP)
The Age just reported that Melissa Lowe, 52 year old manager of student equity at Swinburne University and a volunteer in the Monique Ryan campaign, will be the teal candidate in Hawthorn.
Genuinely curious as to why a teal would run here. The Liberals no longer hold this seat, thus it would be more prudent for Voices of groups in the area to divert resources to Kew, where the Liberals are favoured to win as of now, albeit narrowly.
@Boof Head I have the same feelings about Caulfield too, which is already a notional Labor seat now too, and to a lesser extent Sandringham & Brighton which while still Liberal seats, Labor are within 0.5% of winning.
I feel like Labor can win all 4 on their own in the current climate, and I also feel that because of that, a teal can’t actually make it into the 2CP count in any of those 4 seats anyway (remembering that most of a teal’s vote does not come from the Liberals, it comes from Labor & Greens voting changing their vote strategically to unseat a Liberal).
So all a teal is probably going to do in any of these seats is complicate them, and make the final count more unpredictable due to unknown preference flows.
In May the Teals had the momentum from the visceral anger that had built up against the Morrison government and Scott Morrison in particular. This does not exist at the state level. Funding laws are also tighter so they won’t have the huge amount of cash to splash either. The endorsed candidate for Hawthorn doesn’t even live in the electorate though neither do lots of Labor MPs. It has to be remembered that in May, Kooyong voted 54% Liberal in the Lib vs ALP count so even then it is odds on that the Lib vote in Hawthorn was over 50%.
In the 2019 federal election (yes, 2019, not 2022), Hawthorn district (new boundaries) was 51.2% Liberal versus Greens. That’s almost six percentage points less than Kooyong as a whole. So it’s not hard to believe that Labor may have won Hawthorn district on the 2PP in 2022. (Unfortunately, I cannot find 2PP figures by polling place for 2022.)
@Nicholas, I believe the 2PP count in Hawthorn was around 56-44 IND v. LIB. Weirdly enough, this shows that the seat trended around 3% to the Liberals relative to the total vote. The regional totals are also interesting; most of the teal vote was around Hawthorn proper (consistently >60% 2PP) whilst the Liberals got their best results around Canterbury and Toorak North.
On paper, Hawthorn is probably the most winnable seat for the LNP because of its small margin. John Pesutto is perhaps the most seasoned and well-known out of all Liberal candidates in marginal Labor seats.
Kooyong overlaps the state seats of Kew and Hawthorn more or less. At the federal election, the Hawthorn part voted more strongly for Monique Ryan than the Kew part. Like mentioned before, the federal teal-slide has shown that voters are willing to toss out a prospective future Liberal leader. I doubt there’ll be a teal slide at the Vic election. Most of Monique’s support came from ex-Labor and ex-Greens voters and to a lesser extent, small-l liberals who just couldn’t stomach voting for a Labor candidate.
The other issue in Hawthorn is that John Kennedy is 74 years old and not in the best of health (having had a heart attack early this/ late last year). I have met him and he is a very nice guy but to be perfectly honest he is doddery. I would not be surprised if he has a last minute replacement or they decide to let the seat go. That would not help Labor at all.
Labor might let this seat go and instead let the teals distract the Libs while they focus instead on consolidating their grip on the other eastern suburb seats they’ve won like Box Hill and Ashwood while picking up Glen Waverley, minimising the damage in the growth corridors and giving the Libs a scare in seats like Bulleen, Bayswater and Croydon.
I did not realise Kennedy was that old; this could potentially put a spanner in the works. Thus, as mentioned above, if he retires, Labor should let the teals do the dirty work here whilst trying to knock off Liberal incumbents the mid-eastern suburbs.
It’s likely Labor would suffer a 2PP swing statewide but there’ll be seats flipping in all directions, with LNP likely picking up some of what it lost in 2018 (e.g. Hawthorn) and the Greens possibly picking up a Labor seat. Labor could pick up a seat or two in eastern or south-eastern metro Melbourne.
On election night in 2018, Hawthorn was the surprise/upset of the night. A 70 year-old retirement village resident won a blue-ribbon seat that was Liberal-held forever. His entry into politics was quite accidental. The Liberals, following that shock loss, would put up a huge fight this time around.
Boof Head, the reason why I’m cautious about calling a trend in Hawthorn is due to Hawthorn having gone to the ALP in 1952 and nearly went to the ALP in 1982, and only 12 years ago the Liberals won it by 16% and the demographics have not changed enough to explain the collapse in the Liberals vote. Hawthorn’s safe Liberal status was possibly overrated and has gradually declined before flipping in 2018, and at federal level Kooyong had been drifting away from the Liberals since the 1994 by-election however it had remained solid until Monique Ryan came along as the perfect candidate with the prefect campaign.
The Liberal Party of Deakin and Menzies is close too, if not politically dead. This leaves open the question of what becomes of its former heartland, up until now they had appeared to be trending towards the Greens but the Greens are not a perfect fit. The Teals look to be a better fit however its too soon to tell if they can cement their gains or if the ALP or Greens can adapt enough to replace the Teals or do the Liberals find a way to reconnect.
Melissa Lowe has been announced as the Teal for Hawthorn. She meets all the criteria of a teal:
– Woman
– Professional
– Talking about integrity
– Former member of Labor
My feeling is that the top teal candidates ran at the federal election, and the remnants are running now, like that one in Caulfield who was working for Mark Drefus 5 minutes before nominating as a teal.
Lab retain
In 1952 I think Hawthorn included half Richmond which then was very solidly alp
The boundaries are very different now but so are the demographics. What were the federal.figures here?
I wouldn’t be surprised if Labor holds here & improves but loses seats in outer suburbs.
@Mick, federal figures are really hard to judge here because it was an IND v LIB contest, with about two-thirds of the IND vote coming from Labor & Greens; so Labor finished in single digits but that obviously won’t be the case in the state election. Across all of Kooyong the LIB to ALP 2PP swing was only about 2% but there’s no 2PP data by polling place, only LIB v IND data.
@douglas I tend to agree, the teals in the state election are unlikely to finish in the 2PP for any of the races they’ve currently been announced for. I’ve mentioned it before but the main reason is that in the federal election, two-thirds of their vote came from ALP & GRN voters (not LIB voters), a lot of which would have been a strategic vote only because the ALP & Greens had no chance of winning so the IND was their best chance of unseating a LIB.
That won’t be the case in November because Labor either hold (Hawthorn), notionally hold (Caulfield) or are within 0.5% of winning (Brighton & Sandringham) these seats, so the strategic ALP/GRN swing to IND will disappear.
The teals will most likely finish third in all 4 of those seats, so the impact of the preference distribution will be the great unknown.
I think Kew and Malvern are the only two inner-metro seats where a teal might have a chance of making the 2PP count. I just can’t see the IND overtaking ALP in any of the others, especially after GRN preferences which are far more likely to go to ALP than IND in the state election.
@ Trent
Exactly what I’ve been saying about this seat. I’m liking Pesutto’s chances very much.
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/vic2022/hawthorn2022/comment-page-2#comment-775501
Hawthorn didn`t cross the Yarra until 1955, when the 2 for 1 redistribution (dividing Victoria`s 33 Commonwealth electorates into 2 Legislative Assembly electorates) caused it to cross the Yarra for the first time.
The teal candidate Melissa Lowe has been outed as using Swinburne students for campaigning by offering extra credit.
News broke yesterday. If teal only manages to stay third and this race is Lib vs Lab, high chance that Pesutto wins back this seat.
Hawthorn should be a obvious win for the libs the fact that it is not says a lot.. if Labor and the teals poll say 56% then the libs are in big trouble
It really shows you how much trouble the LNP is in if they are struggling here
23% went to left of centre parties alp 33%.. it amazes me the seat went so close. There must have been a big leakage from the minor left parties. I can not see on the vector website where preference flows are shown for each candidate it must be there.. but appears assuming a roughly equal vote to last time that the libs will be struggling… Mr Pesutto seems saner than the average liberal candidate
Vec
If John Pesutto wins he’ll become leader of the LNP, he seems to be the only realistic choice at this point.
The only polling for this seat was based on dubious questions from Kos Samaras’ RedBridge group which asked “would you vote for a candidate LIKE Monique Ryan?”
I won’t be explaining the massive error in doing that because it should be obvious. He then extrapolated the skewed data resulting from such a question over the entire electorate (and other electorates), despite the current electorate having an incumbent Labor MP.
Really hard to see why anyone takes polling from that group or remarks from that guy seriously.
@Mark, I agree.
When Redbridge’s polls has results such as 37% LIB, 25% ALP, 19% IND in Caulfield and he concluded that “would translate to a 56-44 IND win”, it just made me think he has no idea how preferential voting works because those results don’t even remotely indicate that the IND would make the 2PP, especially after Greens preferences would most likely increase the gap between ALP and IND.
My view is the teal narrative is way overblown.
Kew could very likely be LIB v IND, and if a strong teal were to run in Malvern that probably would be too.
But I firmly believe Hawthorn, Caulfield, Brighton & Sandringham will all remain classic LIB v ALP contests.
Why would the teals do well here anyway if the Liberal candidate is a “small l” teal liberal?
This whole “go woke” “too far left to win” talk on Sky News about the liberal party is utter ridiculous, name ONE right-wing liberal leader in the last 50 years who won a state election other than Askin in NSW.
moderates win better over swing voters and red-tories. Moderates still lose yes, but that is because the government is unpopular or the Labor party is popular with voters. Not because the liberals are “too progressive to win”
Pesutto can win a state election in 2026 or 2030 if he is fortunate enough to be elected here in November and he runs for leader.
If the Liberals want to stay out of power forever and lose with the exceptions of when Labor is extremely unpopular then be my guest, move to the right. The reason the TEALS won in the first place was because the Liberal party is drifting too far to the right,
I agree with Trent. I doubt there’ll be a federal-style “teal wave” at the VIC election. I still see Hawthorn as a classic LIB vs ALP battle.
@Daniel The teal independents defeated federal small l-liberals like Dave Sharma and Trent Zimmerman. My guess is that they lost because their electorates didn’t think they stood up against conservative side of the LNP on social and climate issues and/or their electorates disliked Scott Morrison.
I also think that their electorates had some love for small l-liberals and hence the new teals didn’t win in 2022 by a huge margin. Most won by less than 3%. If their electorates had a hard right Liberal like Tony Abbott, they probably would’ve won by a larger margin. Zali Steggall won 57:43 2PP in 2019.
@Daniel The whole thing about abandoning their traditional base and moderates to appeal to the “outer suburbs and region” that Sky News and the hard right faction love talking about is really just a euphemism for lurching the party further to the right and being more socially conservative. It’s true that the Libs need to start expanding more into the rapidly growing outer suburbs to remain competitive but it shouldn’t come at the expense of their traditional affluent heartland.
Further updates on the Teal candidate here;
The Swinburne campaign extra credit scandal has now been referred to IBAC
i was in the area last Friday i saw posters for the Teal and John Pesutto but none for Labor.
Labor probably has given up on this seat which isn’t a surprising given they could very well drop to 3rd place as shown with the federal election result, which is different from seats like Caulfield where it’s unlikely the teal will make it to the 2CP.
Let me pose this just as some food for thought – Labor gave up on Hawthorn in 2018 even more so than they are now, and they still won.
Does anyone know how competitve this teal candidate is in Hawthorn?
If John Kennedy (Labor) comes third, he would unfortunately have the dishonour of being a sitting MP who doesn’t even finish in the final 2 at an election. *Excludes MPs who defected or became independent.
@Votante
That would be an unfortunate piece of history, but I’m sure such “dishonour” would be thoroughly overshadowed by his achievement of having won Hawthorn as a Labor candidate when no one expected it.
Good points above. i agree with Nicholas that Labor themselves did not campaign in Hawthorn in 2018 and won it. No one expected i remember watching it on election night and the when the result came in Antony Green used to highlight why first results are often unreliable and no one on the panel took that seriously until later in the night. In terms of sitting members not finishing in the top 2 well that happened in May with Terri Butler.
I am not making any prediction, i would like to know from any local how they expect the Teal to do. Only point is that the much of the Labor vote is soft and much of them could be Turnbull Liberals who may prefer a Teal if one was there. It could be like North Sydney where the Teal and Labor are roughly 25% each and competing for second place. It is still possible for Labor to be returned IMHO but the PV will be very low.
I don’t think the support for Labor in this seat in 2018 is particularly strong and more of an anti-Lib protest vote which the teal can benefit this time around. Obviously the teal candidate is not on par with Monique Ryan and has to deal with the Swinburne extra credit scandal but since the state Libs’ increasingly socially conservative direction and UAP-like policies isn’t popular at all here, I’d say the teal would be pretty competitive.
What i am keen to know is what the Greens will preference will they preference Teals over Labor or Vice versa, this will be key to determine who ultimately wins. Does anyone know what they did at a federal level in North Sydney is May?
@Nimalan I don’t know about North Sydney in particular but I believe the Greens generally preferenced the teals above Labor since the teals were more ambitious in their emission reductions targets than Labor.
@Nimalan
I haven’t been able to find the HTV card, but when the Greens were eliminated, 46% went to Tink, 41% to Renshaw (Labor), and 13% to Zimmerman (Liberal).
The 2018 thread for Hawthorn had a single comment before election day:
“My prediction: Easy Liberal hold.”
The same commenter then had this to say a few days after election day:
“[A] sad day for my side, seeing Hawthorn go red… the equivalent would be Nedlands here in Perth going Labor.”
Ouch!