LIB 7.5%
Incumbent MP
Julian Leeser, since 2016.
Geography
Northern Sydney. Berowra covers the Hornsby Shire, northern parts of the Hills Shire and a small part of the City of Parramatta. Major suburbs include Berowra, Epping, Hornsby, Cherrybrook, Pennant Hills, and Dural. It also stretches as far north as Dangar Island and Wisemans Ferry.
Redistribution
Berowra took in the remainder of the Hornsby council area from Bradfield and also took in North Epping and parts of Epping from Bennelong. Berowra then lost West Pennant Hills to Mitchell and Murray Farm to Parramatta. These changes cut the Liberal margin from 9.8% to 7.5%.
History
Berowra was created at the 1969 election, and has always been safely retained by the Liberal Party.
The seat was first won in 1969 by Tom Hughes. Hughes had previously held the seat of Parkes since 1963, but its abolition in 1969 saw him move to Berowra. He was Attorney-General in John Gorton’s government, but was dropped from the cabinet when William McMahon became Prime Minister, and he retired at the 1972 election.
In 1972, the seat was won by Harry Edwards, a professor of economics at Macquarie University. Edwards held the seat for the next 21 years, retiring in 1993. He was replaced by Philip Ruddock, who had held other seats since 1973. Ruddock held the seat from 1993 until 2016, serving as a senior minister for the entirety of the Howard government. Ruddock has since gone on to be elected as Mayor of Hornsby.
Berowra was won in 2016 by Liberal candidate Julian Leeser. Leeser was re-elected in 2019 and 2022. Leeser joined the opposition frontbench after the 2022 election, but resigned in early 2023 to campaign for a “yes” vote at the 2023 Voice referendum.
- Tina Brown (Independent)
- Brendan Clarke (Fusion)
- Martin Cousins (Greens)
- Benson Koschinski (Labor)
- Julian Leeser (Liberal)
Assessment
Berowra is a reasonably safe Liberal seat.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Julian Leeser | Liberal | 45,797 | 49.1 | -8.1 | 47.2 |
| Benson Koschinski | Labor | 20,746 | 22.2 | +1.1 | 23.9 |
| Tania Salitra | Greens | 14,536 | 15.6 | +3.7 | 14.9 |
| Rhiannon Bosma | One Nation | 2,972 | 3.2 | +3.2 | 2.9 |
| Christopher Martinic | United Australia | 2,315 | 2.5 | +0.8 | 2.6 |
| Independent | 2.4 | ||||
| Nicholas Samios | Liberal Democrats | 2,307 | 2.5 | +2.5 | 2.0 |
| Benjamin Caswell | Independent | 1,802 | 1.9 | +1.9 | 1.5 |
| Brendan Clarke | Fusion | 1,418 | 1.5 | +1.5 | 1.4 |
| Roger Woodward | Independent | 904 | 1.0 | +0.4 | 0.7 |
| David James Louie | Federation Party | 509 | 0.5 | +0.6 | 0.4 |
| Others | 0.2 | ||||
| Informal | 6,083 | 6.1 | -0.3 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Julian Leeser | Liberal | 55,771 | 59.8 | -5.9 | 57.5 |
| Benson Koschinski | Labor | 37,535 | 40.2 | +5.9 | 42.5 |
Polling places in Berowra have been split into three areas: east, south and west.
The Liberal Party won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 50.2% in the east to 73.4% in the west.
The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 10.4% in the west to 19.0% in the east.
| Voter group | GRN prim | LIB 2PP | Total votes | % of votes |
| East | 19.0 | 50.2 | 22,711 | 20.3 |
| South | 16.8 | 54.1 | 21,677 | 19.4 |
| West | 10.4 | 73.4 | 11,876 | 10.6 |
| Pre-poll | 14.0 | 57.1 | 36,705 | 32.8 |
| Other votes | 12.5 | 61.2 | 18,862 | 16.9 |
Election results in Berowra at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, Labor and the Greens.
Big announcement from the last two weeks that local journalist Tina Brown will be running with backing from the Teals
@Hawkeye I don’t rate her chances as particularly good tbh.
Liberal hold.
This seat is now a better prospect for an IND win than North Sydney was in 2022 – though of course that is after the Liberal primary has already taken an 8% hit so one wonders how much more there could be – another 5-7%? Could be enough to lose.
Although the 2PP margin is less than North Sydney was, the Labor primary vote is lower, therefore easier to get into second and watch the preferences flow home.
Could be one to watch. The cut of 2.3% 2PP margin via additional of the Hornsby booths may have moved this into an IND sweet spot.
I sense Julian Leeser will hold.
@Insider, interesting point. The narrower margin now could be because the trough following a hit to the Liberal primary vote. The ship has sailed for the teal candidate. Add to that, moderate liberals are probably fans of Leeser.
There are teal-ish areas along the eastern edge of the electorate i.e. along Pennant Hills Road and the Northern (Train) Line as well as the Pacific Motorway.
Julian Leeser will easily hold.
I saw in the AFR today that Heather Ruddock, the wife of Philip Ruddock, is openly endorsing Tina Brown – the teal candidate. Heather quit the Liberals last year after Philip lost preselection for the Hornsby mayoralty.
Interesting Labor votes best in.epping and hornsby
No idea why this wasn’t a teal target in 2022 – perhaps it really was the case no strong candidate came forward for Climate 200 funding.
Greens actually do reasonably well here and would have some profile from local government, and Labor have pockets of strength too. But the same is true of the Eastern Suburbs and Northern beaches. The narrative that only a teal can beat the LNP checks out and combines with the aforementioned cracks in the Liberals base, and Dutton potentially having an even worse image than Morrison here.
If Bradfield is winnable for teals then so is this seat.
I don’t think it’s hard to understand why this wasn’t a teal target.
The teals had six main targets in 2022 which was a lot! The fact that they won them all can make us forget what a perfect result that was. Spreading their resources further out wouldn’t have helped them achieve that goal.
Berowra is a bit interesting but I think it’s much less attractive for the teals than Bradfield.
I think Bradfield should’ve been more a serious teal target in 2022 if Climate 200 wanted a more inland pickup. I agree with Ben that Bradfield is more of a target. The teal candidate has been campaigning for years and plus the Liberal, Paul Fletcher, is retiring.
Berowra has teal-ish areas (as I mentioned above) but the semi-rural areas north of Dural are solidly Liberal.
Seems as if the firing gun has already started. Apologies for the paywall link but it appears that the Liberal Party have started off by pulling their advertising from The Post and then accusing Tina Brown of denying them an ability to advertise.
https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=DTWEB_WRE170_a_GGL&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailytelegraph.com.au%2Fnews%2Fnsw%2Fteal-candidates-newspaper-accused-of-pulling-liberals-articles%2Fnews-story%2Fdafecc0b946aa292bf16b752d61d16c5&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium&v21=HIGH-Segment-1-SCORE
Julian Lesser claims that Peter Dutton might put a referendum to deport people convicted of anti-Semitic crimes if the policy is blocked by the High Court. I wonder how would this fare?
@Marh Will fare pretty well in the Jewish committee but lukewarm everywhere else. This will absolutely fail, probably worse than the voice.
I don’t think a referendum or plebiscite is even needed to deport such visa-holding criminals.
I think people have had an enough of referendums for now people will not appreciate the waste of money and it would fail.
Labor have chosen Benson Koschinski again for this seat.
@Tommo9, pretty much assuming referendums might never become successful again given the crossbench is now much stronger meaning it might needs full cross-party support (not even Bipartisan support) which is a challenge given the need to convince both the Greens and One Nation to support the same referendum which only if one party opposes the referendum, it will trigger an official No campaign which history shows at that level, can defeat a Lib-Lab supported Referendums.
All but two of the successful referendums are above 70% (all have non-existent or very small official No Campaign) with two closer successful referendums are because it positively benefited the majority of Australians within a majority of states and all of these referendums had less crossbenchers to contend with.
Philip Ruddock, former Hornsby mayor and former Howard Government minister, appeared in a video for the teal independent candidate Tina Brown. It was regarding Hornsby Bushland. I mentioned earlier that Philip’s wife, Heather Ruddock, openly endorsed the teal candidate.
We can believe John Hewson and Malcolm Turnbull (and Malcolm Fraser before he died) disassociating themselves from the Liberals, but Philip Ruddock is a bit of a surprise.
@Marh, I wouldn’t assume that referendums will never be successful again, even if they are opposed. In this case, if you could frame the argument as the people vs unelected, unrepresentative judges then it becomes much harder to oppose. Easy to argue we need to fix this so we (we as in parliament particularly but we the people in the abstract) are sovereign. This is as opposed to the Voice where not only could you argue correctly this could be legislated now but also that the affect could be to neuter parliament by providing a practical veto, depending on how the High Court ruled on the inevitable challenge.
Not that much of a surprise Votante. Ruddock has always seemed the kind of person who would struggle in a social setting dominated by industrial workers, as opposed to say ScoMo or Tony Abbot, so a Liberal party moving towards non uni educated workers is always going to more uncomfortable for Ruddick than the Teals, which has a sort of Melbourne Club for women kind of vibe.
Ruddock has always been a small l liberal.He supported Amnesty International(I don’t know whether he still does given their left capture).
Greens have announced their candidate as Martin Cousins.
Fusion have announced their candidate as Brendan Clarke, contesting his 4th Federal Election for Berowra. He becomes one of 5 candidates that have run in 4 or more elections for Fusion and the previous amalgamated parties.
@MLV regarding Referendums to change the Constitution due to the High Court Ruling , it would be more like the 1951 referendum to ban Communist (namely to ban the Australian Communist Party) which was narrowly defeated despite being in a period where there was a strong appetite to oppose Communism.
Goes further than that Re: Ruddock. He got rolled for the mayoralty of Hornsby Council by Warren Waddell and the accusation is that it was orchestrated by Leeser and Kean.
There is a lot of Bad Blood in this election.
I’m getting the vibes the Liberals will hold here, Julian Leeser is a strong MP and a credible moderate in the party. I would expect Tina Brown to finish second and make the 2CP, but not win. There should be a slight Labor swing as a result here, but it could also cause a small Liberal swing on the 2PP.
@Hawkeye_au – makes sense. It feels weird that Leeser, Kean and Ruddock do all seem to be moderates, but it’s a bit odd there’s two opposing sides here. I will admit I thought the Ruddocks were supporting Brown off the basis that the Liberals dumped him, but then the fact he’s a small-L Liberal gives further context here. Thanks for your insights.
@Sabena are you saying that supporting Amnesty International is a bad thing? Surely not.