Bradfield – Australia 2025

@Mick that’s opposed to the labor policy which is just ill thought out and based on the ideology of a few left win nutjobs in the inner city who dump their solar and wind farms out in country seats that will never vote for them to win votes in inner city seats to stave off the greens. Meanwhile the coalition is putting forward policies that are winning over outer suburban voters who would normally be keeping labor in office. The liberals are on the precipice of achieving something that hasn’t been done since 1932. Although it really should have occurred in 2010 however Abbott was robbed at the finish line by two turncoat regional mps whose electorate would have installed Abbott if given the choice

The “Labor policy” has actually been the action of the market over , O, the last 15 years since any private investor built a coal plant… The entire electricity industry are “left win nutjobs in the inner city”, are they? “What left win nutjobs in the inner city” actually want is immediate closure of coal and gas plants and no heavy industry. That is NOT WHAT THE LABOR GOVERNMENT IS DOING!
The reason the solar and winds farms are in country seats is because the population density is like <50x the city and regardless, plenty of city folk – in the western suburbs of Sydney especially, have solar PV on their roof.

Abbott was robbed! My heart bleeds. Would "sell his arse to be PM", and still didn't work on the two MP's elected as IND. The nation missed a bullet there given how crap he was when he actually did get the role…

Very interesting finding by the Redbridge/Accent analysis here:
https://redbridgegroup.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/Accent-RedBridge-MRP-ideology-report-v2.pdf

Out of all the divisions in the nation, Bradfield is the seat that is most in the zone currently held by the “other side” of the left/right spectrum. Other seats in NSW also interesting from their position are Berowa, Warringah, Benelong and Wentworth.

Thanks for posting that, that’s fascinating!

So the most left-leaning (by self-identification) seats in the country appear to be in this order:

1. Wills (VIC)
2. Melbourne (VIC)
3. Sydney (NSW)
4. Cooper (VIC)
5. Canberra (ACT)
6. Grayndler (NSW)
7. Macnamara (VIC)
8. Perth (WA)
9. Fremantle (WA)
10. Newcastle (NSW)

Maranoa, unsurprisingly, is by far the most right-leaning seat and it’s not even close.

I’m not sure how accurate that is to be honest.

I’m always suspicious of MRP myself, but those top 7 in particular look pretty spot on to me in terms of how “left” they identify.

Yeah, but no matter how accurate it may or may not be – the self identifying left seats are held by GRN and ALP and the self identifying right seats are held by LNP. It is interesting that Labor holds so many seats that have a majority of self identifying right voters.
Buts is the seats that buck the state trend that are the most interesting.
Wentworth is pretty amazing – Spender should be at more risk of defeat by labor than by Liberal

Preselection is set to be held soon, with three candidates:
– Gisele Kapterian (presumptive candidate for North Sydney 2025 until the seat was abolished, director at Salesforce and lawyer)
– Warren Mundine (former Labor president, candidate for Gilmore 2019)
– Michael Feneley (candidate for Maroubra 2011, Kingsford Smith 2010, 2013, 2016, Dobell 2022, cardiologist and surgeon)

Personally feel Mundine could be a serious threat but Kapterian is the logical choice and likely to win. Mundine is anti-voice in the only Liberal electorate to vote yes, Kapterian has a name brand in the southern part from campaigning for North Sydney. A moderate Liberal would be the best to defend against the teal candidate who albeit arrogant has been campaigning hard.

Mundine has been endorsed by Tony Abbott, John Anderson, and Jacinta Price, while Kapterian has been endorsed by Joe Hockey and Gladys Berejiklian. I haven’t heard of anyone has endorsed Feneley or which candidate Paul Fletcher is supporting.

If the Liberals pick Mundine they can kiss this seat goodbye

@James (irelxnd) – thanks for the update. I thought Barbara Ward (former Deputy Mayor, current councillor for Gordon Ward on Ku-ring-gai Council) was also running for pre-selection, unless she has pulled out?

Think the Libs might pick Mundine but agree Kapterian is their best choice.

@Politics_Obsessed – all good. I found the preselection candidates on the Preselection Updates table here at this link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/u/0/d/1boH2Unx9x0Wi_EGTwWYAgJcY8SMrF-SUaXRb5Aav9KE/htmlview#

Agree with your sentiment that Mundine will likely win, but Kapterian is the far better choice and should hold the seat IMO. Not saying Mundine is done for but his stances on stuff like Voice will hurt deeply here.

Regarding who Fletcher might be supporting, he mentioned he would like a woman to succeed him. Since he’s a moderate, I’m guessing he’s supporting Gisele Kapterian.

What about the Liberals who preselected Kapterian for North Sydney (before the seat abolition was confirmed)? How are they feeling about or involved in the Bradfield preselection?

@James (irelxnd) thanks for the link to that informative table.

The relevant SMH article (paywalled) from 9th January states the following:
“Mundine is in a field of four for a vote to be held on an unconfirmed date in the middle of the month: moderate faction candidate and technology executive Gisele Kapterian, local councillor Barbara Ward and cardiologist Michael Feneley.” @Hawkeye reported in the Tallyroom Hornsby by-election incoming post that Barbara Ward was rumoured to be interested in the Hornsby pre-selection before trying her hand her (more natural fit).
Relevant Link (paywalled): https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/anti-voice-band-back-together-as-price-abbott-back-warren-mundine-for-key-seat-20250108-p5l2qy.html
The other interesting tidbid from that article:
“Mundine, backed by the right faction, and Kapterian, supported by the moderates, are considered frontrunners, with Kapterian seen by most as the favourite. Mundine’s chances are boosted by right-wing branches moving into Bradfield in a redistribution of electoral boundaries of the seat that takes in suburbs such as Chatswood, Lindfield and St Ives.”

So the article really is having an each way bet on who’ll win. Feeney and Ward will probably get a few votes each with main contest between Mundine and Kapterian. Regardless of who wins, Nicolette has been campaigning the past 3 years… going to be hard to beat that in the space of 2-3 months.

My understanding is that Barbera Ward pulled out at the last minute, and that the preselection is being held this Saturday, 18 January.

Feneley is a serial candidate (previous Liberal candidate in Dobell and I think Kingsford-Smith) and ran for preselection in Robertson recently, only receiving a handful of votes. Considering his constant seat-changing and age, I would be surprised if he’s able to draw many votes at all.

My understanding is that Gisele Kapterian should be seen as the favorite. The party members in the seat are mostly pretty stereotypically old and right-wing, but I think they also recognise the wide electability chasm between Kapterian and Mundine in an affluent seat where a teal (who got closer than anybody expected last time) has high name-recognition and will be very cashed-up. Having said that, Mundine’s high name recognition and anti-voice credentials, and the endorsements of Tony Abbott and Jacinta Price could make the preselection competitive (if not the election should he be the Liberal candidate).

My understanding is that the conservatives control the branches in the old Bradfield (I’m not entirely sure how Fletcher won pre-selection in 2009 – I am not sure he was actually moderate back then) and Artarmon and Northbridge are the two main branches that have moved in. Artarmon is conservative and Northbridge is not (being home branch of St. Glady’s). So you would think Mundine is in with a big shot just on the basis of branch leanings.

It would seem a possibility that the boundaries of the old North Sydney electorate were ideal for a Liberal moderate to win pre-selection, but they struggle on nearly all other boundary configurations (state and federal) on the north shore . Happy to hear Liberal party views on this.

What are the factional leanings of the state MPs? – for Willoughby, Davidson and Wahroonga. As two have only been in parliament since 2022 and 2023 – that presumably would give a clue to the leanings.

@High Street most branches in the old Bradfield are nominally under Moderate control, in that the office-holders are generally aligned with the Moderates, however the rank-and-file members in the branches are generally pretty independent and don’t like being told who to support. I would expect a lot of Mundine’s support to come from the Roseville and Artarmon branches which are known to be strongly conservative.

@redistributed- Tim James (Willoughby) is on the Right, Matt Cross (Davidson) is a Moderate (although he won preselection with the support of the Right (excluding Perrottet) against the endorsed Moderate candidate Natalie Ward) and Alister Henskens is generally seen to be on the Right now but was factionally unaligned when originally preselected.

Upshot is that the members are generally quite conservative but the Moderates have some institutional advantages arising from being office-holders in most branches such as access to membership lists, postal and email addresses etc.

Dutton has provided no detail his claim is ” vote for us we are not labor”
A real statesman would have supported the voice.. but know We can dive down the darkest sewers and score a win.
The Dutton nuclear plan is a side hustle which expires the day after the next federal election. Why did Chris Pine say it was a “fantasy “.
They don’t get Why the teals exist.. it is b3cause those electorates see people with their views being ignored or sidelined. By the over overwhelming right wing shift of the liberals and nats

Maybe Bradfield deserves Mr Mundine…
But i suspect his pre-election will make a teal win all but certain.

Mick Q, are you worried that Dutton is cutting through with the workers, leaving Labor fighting with the Greens and Teals for the uppers classes?

I just find it so funny when people elevate the political ambitions Labor had with the voice to be so noble and selfless – they misread the room at the wrong time and the coalition (who’d have been absolutely lashed by their base if they supported it) simply took the opportunity handed to them and made the case well. Neither major party is above underhanded political games or opportunistic manoeuvres that serve political ends rather than the country’s interests.

Dutton has promised no cost of living adjustments. Dutton is no friend of the trade union movement.
Areas which elected or could elect the teals will never elect a alp member.
There is an argument as to how the Voice vote was handled.
But What if Dutton said ” We do not want to put the voice in the constitution but rather We will support it being passed through parliament with a review in 5 years time”
There would then be no need for a coalition win… and a grubby down the sewer argument.
I wonder…..

@Mick, Dutton’s speech yesterday reiterates he has likely change his mind and now might go even against Constitutional Recognition (that is without the Voice) as he said about opposing ‘symbolic’ and activism’ for Indigenous issues and even criticised Welcome to Country by borrowing recent culture war arguments about being ‘too costly’. So even Constitution Recognition without the Voice is probably now seen as a Third Rail in Australian Politics let alone The Voice, Truth Telling and Treaties

I reinterate what I said:

What if Dutton acted as a statesman rather than a fighter in the zero sums world? In zsw there need to be winners and losers.
Why not. Have a win./;win situation?

I am not so sure Mick Q – the ALP is trending very quickly away from the old working class (what there is left of it) and becoming a party of the professional (particularly Government) workers.

I also think the Voice and being anti Nuclear (in the context of all renewables) are actually really anti working class. Both of these are policies of the (over) educated professional classes, not the workers, and it won’t be people in seats like Bradfield that would have had the Voice vetoing policies (yes I know there wouldn’t technically be a veto (probably)) or be subject to rolling brownouts on hot cloudy windless days.

The reason there won’t be constitutional recognition any time soon is because we just had a referendum.

@MLV, I tend to agree that the Voice and 100% renewables aren’t policies that would sit well with the working-class.

@MLV – your 2nd paragraph make little sense to me.

@NP & @MLV – I can’t see why you would say that. There’s a zillion jobs in the renewable roll out – there’s none from extending the life of coal fired powers stations for another 10-15 years. Ausgrid reps will tell you that there is more solar PV on rooftops in western Sydney, than in the east.

Support for indigenous recognition and the Voice is totally aligned with the founding principles of the ALP – which has always included more than just “working class” people.

@High Street so why did most Labor voters vote No? The only voter groups that mostly voted Yes were Greens and teal voters.

That’s called the ecological fallacy – it is quite possible that what occurred is almost all Liberal voters in safe Labor seats voted No and this was complemented by a large proportion, but not necessarily a majority, of Labor voters. In some seats this would have been the case but you have no actual evidence it was true in total.
In Teal held a some marginal Liberal seats (Bradfield, Deakin, etc), a very high percentage of Labor voters voted Yes while significant proportions of Liberal voters also voted Yes.

Anyway, we all know why it failed – the majority of low information voters who had never heard of the Voice simply decided to believe what they were fed by the No campaign. It’s happened almost every time we’ve had a referendum

You can’t run industrial plant on renewables High Street, and that is more important than temporary jobs in the roll out. And if there are a zillion jobs in the renewables roll out, doesn’t that mean it will be a lot more expensive than we are being told? Meaning our power prices are going to remain very high for the foreseeable future as we will be paying for the roll out through the connection charge at the very least.

If you work in an office with fairly modest levels of power usage, or WFH, this won’t affect you much if at all, but that doesn’t apply to the working class.

Actually High Street, the mis and dis information in the Voice campaign came just as much, if not more, from the Yes side. And a lot of the so called misinformation came about because the Yes side refused to release the bill they must have had ready to go, allowing the No side to argue for the most expansive version of the Voice and all the Yes side could do was ‘Trust me, they’re wrong’.

A zillion jobs High Street? Subsidise anything and you will get more of it. What happens when the Federal Treasury runs out of money to pay cost of living hand outs as the price of energy keeps increasing?

The issue with the Voice was not misinformation or disinformation – it was no information.
There was an assumption that everybody would vote for it but there was no detail on how it would work and what it would mean – a ‘nice to have’ that will make us all feel better – there was a why but not a how. The Yes campaign relied on people having ‘faith’ that it would work and that there be no unintended consequences. The Australian voter is cautious on constitutional change and they will vote NO when they are in doubt. It was a noble idea but badly sold from the get go. I can see why people were upset with a No vote but I can understand why the people voted No.

@redistributed, Leave Campaign didn’t even have information on which model of Brexit to implement and yet they won so I think even it there was information, it might only make a little difference.

I say even in a alternative history it was Constitutional Recognition (without The Voice) that went ahead, at least a third of Australian would still vote No as Pauline Hanson One Nation as already say she opposes and potentially even some Maverick Coalition MP’s which leads to a Significant No Campaign (the reason for the 90% support for 1967 Australian Aboriginals Referendum is because it didn’t have an official No Campaign and all parliamentarians supported it) which at this level of Opposition, it can still make referendum’s fail like the 1967 Referendum regarding increasing House of Reps without increasing the senate (happened on the same day) where there was a Bipartisian support but not supported by DLP and a Maverick Coalition MP and the referendum failed.

The voice was not something evil.
It was a very modest proposal which involved only consultation. This change was something like 30 years overdue. There were arguments as to whether it was better to pass legislation or enshrine it in the constitution. The trouble was the lnp did not act in good faith.. the nats were opposed so most liberals felt they had to do the same. What would happen if Dutton had approached the government and said what can we do to implement the voice? But no… they decided to be partisan and score a win. To win at all costs is never a win but in reality a loss

@mick apparently 60% of Australia disagrees with you

The result was a function of Dutton ‘s inability to act as a statesman. He decided just to go for a win. In an alternative reality
He spoke to Albanese we don’t want the voice in the constitution but will support it being legislated

@mick so this reality?

This reality Dutton played politics and stopped the voice and a scored a pyrrhic victory. So sad.

@mick he read the room and felt the pulse of the Australian people in a cost of living crisis people aren’t concerned with token gestures that ultimately do nothing. The voice would just add another layer of beaucracy and would not have helped the people on the ground. How do you how far their power could go? Anything in the constitution is open to interpretation of the high court. Any supercedes any laws made by govt. The people who would be on this panel wouldn’t be the ones needing help in the town camps camps of Alice Springs or the Kimberley or Cape York it would be the well elites who live on the north shore of Sydney. How come and decades and decades and 100s and 100s of billions of taxpayer money is their still a problem. Because the money doesn’t go to where it’s needed on the ground it goes to aboriginal corporations and into the pockets of people like Noel Pearson. Peter Dutton is a political genius he has been performing one political masterstroke after the other so much so he stands on the verge of achieving something not achieved since PM Scullin. Really Abbot achieved it in 2010 but had it stolen at the finish line. The only reason Albo was not in Minority in 2022 was because of the snafu by Morrison who failed to win both Gilmore and Lyons in 2019. Due to internal screw ups. Dutton doesn’t want the teal seats he wants the Labor heartland the workers who run this country. And he stands on the verge of winning them. He may not win them all or any but he will get close in a whole swath of seats. The voice was designed to be Albos legacy. But he took the Australian people for granted and when the time came he lost. Dutton and the liberals listened to the base of the party and middle Australia.

@Mick Except Albo didn’t want bipartisanship, he probably wanted Dutton to vote no so he could have an easy boogeyman to depict the no campaign.

And it was hardly a pyrrhic victory as it ended Albo’s honeymoon, and I doubt it will be the single biggest factor that screws them in the teal seats. Mundine would likely fail to win Bradfield given that his primary shtick is being anti-Voice/anti-Woke but I doubt any teal seats would be above electing a moderate Liberal who happened to vote no, especially considering that some 60 Labor seats voted no, yet a majority of them will probably still re-elect their Labor MPs who all voted yes.

@scart agreed he wanted it to be his victory his legacy.

Agreed I love Mundine as much as the guy but I think Kaspertairan is the best candidate this time around

Pyrrhic victories are where you snatch defeat from Victory.i think the voice was good government which a statesman would try to implement. ………
We will see what happens in the future

@mick good luck trying to get it done until.the next half of the century. One referendum per generation is enough for I think. Probably killed the Republic off too.

@Darth Vader and @Mick , I don’t the Voice necessarily kill the any more referendums as I think referendums on election days for issues like four year terms can still happen in this generation but what the Voice did do is that it made Australians more Conservative regarding Indigenous Issues so I expect any new major Indigenous Reforms will be viewed as a third rail for the foreseeable future and even expect some reversals such Welcome to Country and Indigenous Flags to be demoted (although the latter might require a plebiscite).

@marj il get voting against four year terms. Last thing we need is giving them guaranteed power for which they get paid.

I don’t think people have become any more conservative on indigenous issues Marh, maybe at worst people are more willing to voice concerns around welcome to country, dual flags etc.

@john
4 year fixed terms is good govt
Remember them become us with the passing of time

@mick then if your stuck with a shit govt your stuck with them for four years

I see that fixed terms have both good and bad points. Obviously, if you have a ‘bad’ government they are in power until that fixed date. But at the same time, you won’t have a leader who can opportunistically call an early election for their benefit (one example being Peter Gutwein in Tasmania 2021, when his government was forced into minority). Besides, an opposition leader cannot trigger an election themselves as they must launch a no confidence motion and without a majority it will fail.