Wills – Australia 2025

ALP 4.6% vs GRN

Incumbent MP
Peter Khalil, since 2016.

• Geography
• Redistribution
• History
• Candidates
• Assessment
• 2022 results
• Booth breakdown
• Results maps

Geography
Northern Melbourne. Wills covers most of the City of Merri-bek, and north-western parts of the City of Yarra. Key suburbs include Brunswick, Carlton North, Coburg, Fitzroy North, Glenroy, Hadfield, Fawkner, Pascoe Vale and Princes Hill.

Redistribution
Wills shifted south, taking in Carlton North, Fitzroy North and Princes Hill. Wills then lost areas west of Pascoe Vale Road to Maribyrnong. These changes cut the Labor margin against the Greens from 8.6% to 4.6%.

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 and 2022.

Candidates

• Sue Bolton (Socialist Alliance)
• Peter Khalil (Labor)
• Jeff Kidney (Liberal)
• Owen Miller (Fusion)
• Samantha Ratnam (Greens)

Assessment
Wills is a very marginal electorate and a key target for the Greens. The redistribution significantly improved the Greens position, and this will be one to watch.

2022 result

2022 two-candidate-preferred result

2022 two-party-preferred result

Booth breakdown

Booths in Wills have been split into four parts: north-east, north-west, south, and Brunswick, which sits between the other three.

The Labor two-candidate-preferred vote varies enormously across the electorate. Labor won 59% in the north-east and 68.3% in the north-west. The Greens polled 54.5% in Brunswick and 66.5% in the south.

The Liberal Party came third, with a primary vote ranging from 8.3% in the south to 22.6% in the north-west.

Election results in Wills at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Labor vs Greens), two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Labor, the Greens and the Liberal Party.

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