Cause of by-election
Sitting Liberal MP Rory Amon resigned from parliament on 30 August 2024 after being charged with a number of crimes.
Margin – LIB 0.7% vs IND
Incumbent MP
Rory Amon, since 2023.
Geography
Northern beaches of Sydney. The seat covers the former Pittwater council area and northern parts of the former Warringah council area. The seat covers Narrabeen, Warriewood, Elanora Heights, Mona Vale, Newport, Avalon and Scotland Island.
History
The seat of Pittwater has existed since the 1973 election. It has been dominated by the Liberal Party throughout that period. The Liberal Party has won the seat at every general election, although it was won by an independent at the 2005 by-election, and he held the seat until 2007.
The seat was first won in 1973 by Liberal Premier Robert Askin. He had first been elected to Parliament in 1950 as the member for the new seat of Collaroy. He became Leader of the Opposition in 1959, and ended 24 years of Labor rule in NSW when he became Premier at the 1965 election.
Collaroy was abolished in 1973, and Askin moved to the new seat of Pittwater, covering much of the same territory as his former seat. Askin retired as Premier and from Parliament in 1975.
The 1975 Pittwater by-election was won by Liberal candidate Bruce Webster. He held the seat until 1978.
Pittwater was won in 1978 by Liberal candidate Max Smith. He won re-election in 1981 and 1984, but after winning a third term in 1984 he resigned from the Liberal Party to sit as an independent. He resigned from Parliament in 1986.
The 1986 by-election was won by Liberal candidate Jim Longley. He served as a minister from 1992 to 1995, and retired in 1996.
Another by-election was held in 1996, and was won by John Brogden. He was promoted to the Coalition frontbench after the 1999 election. In March 2002, he challenged Opposition Leader Kerry Chikarovski and won a narrow party room vote. He led the Liberal Party to a landslide defeat in 2003, but later in the term appeared on track to win the next election.
Following the retirement of Premier Bob Carr in 2005, Brogden was exposed for offensive comments he made about the retiring Premier’s wife, and he was forced to resign as Liberal leader. Shortly after, he made an unsuccessful suicide attempt, and resigned as Member for Pittwater.
At the following by-election, the Liberals were hit hard by accusations that Brogden’s opponents in the party had pursued him and brought about the end of his political career. The seat was won by independent candidate Alex McTaggart, the Mayor of Pittwater.
At the 2007 election, McTaggart lost to Liberal candidate Rob Stokes, a former advisor to John Brogden. Stokes was re-elected three times.
Stokes served as a Parliamentary Secretary in the O’Farrell government, and served as a minister from 2014 until 2023.
Stokes retired in 2023, and was succeeded by Northern Beaches councillor Rory Amon.
- Doug Rennie (Libertarian)
- Jacqui Scruby (Independent)
- Georgia Ryburn (Liberal)
Assessment
The Liberal Party very narrowly won this seat in 2023 and will be going into this by-election in a weak position. The independent candidate Scruby has a good chance at winning.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Rory Amon | Liberal | 22,137 | 44.7 | -12.6 |
| Jacqui Scruby | Independent | 17,754 | 35.9 | +35.9 |
| Jeffrey Quinn | Labor | 5,039 | 10.2 | -2.4 |
| Hilary Green | Greens | 3,386 | 6.8 | -8.5 |
| Craig Law | Sustainable Australia | 1,195 | 2.4 | -1.3 |
| Informal | 1,139 | 2.3 |
2023 two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Rory Amon | Liberal | 23,365 | 50.7 | |
| Jacqui Scruby | Independent | 22,759 | 49.3 |
Booths in Pittwater have been split into four areas based around key suburbs. From north to south these are: Avalon, Newport, Mona Vale, Narrabeen.
The Liberal Party won a majority of the two-candidate-preferred vote in Mona Vale and Narrabeen, while Scruby won a majority in Avalon and Newport.
The ALP came third, with a primary vote ranging from 7.8% in Avalon to 11.3% in Narrabeen.
| Voter group | ALP prim % | LIB 2CP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| Narrabeen | 11.3 | 52.5 | 9,983 | 20.2 |
| Mona Vale | 10.7 | 50.2 | 5,587 | 11.3 |
| Avalon | 7.8 | 40.1 | 4,821 | 9.7 |
| Newport | 9.1 | 45.5 | 4,386 | 8.9 |
| Pre-poll | 9.5 | 52.7 | 16,647 | 33.6 |
| Other votes | 11.7 | 53.9 | 8,087 | 16.3 |
Election results in Pittwater at the 2023 New South Wales state election
Toggle between two-candidates-preferred votes (Liberal vs Independent) and primary votes for the Liberal Party, independent candidate Jacqui Scruby and Labor.
I’ve seen comments like this coming up everywhere about Georgia. It is absolutely disgraceful what is being said about her.
Labor won’t be fielding any candidates in any of the 3.
@John doesn’t surprise me.
@i understand why on pittwater and hornsby but Epping they could have had a go probly didn’t want to look bad with a swing against them
@John I suppose they wanna focus on defending federal seats. Plus the local elections were pretty bad for Labor, in fact Labor did worse than the Liberals in terms of expected performance. They actually lost ground to the Liberals in several key councils.
@np agreed I think they knowvthey would go backwards and want to save face.
Even if Labor did nominate, they wouldn’t finish in the top two anyway. It might’ve been tactical to avoid splitting the non-Liberal vote and widening the path for Scruby to win.
What might work in the Liberal’s favour is the correction from the anti-incumbent or anti-LNP swing of last state election.
I’m predicting independent gain. But liberals should topple her in 2027
So we only have the Liberals, Scruby and the Libertarians (Doug Rennie) running. That should help Scruby out I would have thought.
I imagine we will see a greens candidate pop up last minute
Nominations have closed.
Candidate order is
1. Libertarian
2. Jacqui Scruby
3. Liberals
Interesting that the Greens aren’t running. They hardly miss a by-election.
I imagine an independent gain. However Rybyrn might have time to throw her hat in the ring for Mackellar whose preselection is underway. Will be interesting to see this result. What are the odds of the libertarians upsetting them both and coming up the middle?
Votante, I think the Greens had they ran in the by election might have also pulled votes from Scruby similar to what happened for the Willoughby by election where Larissa Penn narrowly fell short possibly due to exhausted preferences.
I’m calling it – Scruby will get across the line and win.
@Yoh An, I think so too. The Greens would just split the non-Liberal votes and their voters might exhaust their votes. Greens voters just won’t vote Liberal in the absence of Greens/Labor.
@John “What are the odds of the libertarians upsetting them both and coming up the middle?”
Zero. If they’re still called Liberal Democrats then maybe a slightly higher chance. Both Scruby and Rrburn have much larger profiles.
Even though the Libertarians have an economically right-wing platform, they score quite well in working-class western and south-western Sydney. They tend not to run in wealthy electorates or blue-ribbon Liberal electorates. Vaucluse in 2023 was an exception and they came a distant fourth.
*Fifth. Libertarians came fifth with 2.4% in Vaucluse where a teal ran but a Liberal won.
Originally, I would have thought the election would be line-ball. But, given the greens and Labor aren’t running, I think Scruby is in front, given that the only thing that denied her was the preference flow.
Ryburn will have a swing back to her with the Anti-Liberal Trend dissipating, but there will be expected to be a backlash vote against her on Amon.
I think Ryburn would need to reach around 24000 1st preference votes to be safe.
Amon had a high local profile with years as a local councillor. Local Liberal volunteers mostly absent from the booths. Jacqui has a huge, very visible, local volunteer support team. The Greens and Labor have both stood down. Not living in the electorate will cost the Liberal candidate. Most locals are aware of why Amon resigned this will cost the Liberals votes.
I expect Jacqui to comfortably.
Prediction – IND gain – 51% to 53%. This is a rare election where the non-Liberal has to score above the Liberal on primary votes to win given the risk of preference flows from the Libertarians (which will mainly go to the Libs, if not exhausted).
I’ve been floating around to see the activity at the Pre-Polls and seen some of the material going up. The Pre-Polls are not going well, by the looks of things, for Georgia. Furthermore, at least based on corflute volume, bannering and online media, I think Scruby is easily outspending her, probably about 3 or 4 to one.
The Liberal Party HQ has been, frankly, pathetic with getting everything organised and it shows that the problems run deeper than just the incompetency of the previous State Director
I think Scruby wins, with a 5% 2CP Margin
Prediction – Scruby wins 50.5%-52%
However, Liberals claim a win of sorts since their primary vote does not collapse due to the circumstances of byelection and ALP and Greens not contesting.
Is the ABC computer being biased towards the teals?
Have a look at this: https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/nsw/2024/guide/pitt
“Jacqui Scruby wins in another success for local independents”. Umm, what? Sure, FEDERALLY teals had a big success in Sydney, Melbourne and Perth in 2022. But on the state level no teal who has used the teal label has ever been elected to Parliament until now. Scruby is a teal “independent” while Judy Hannan and Michael Regan are just independents. Same goes for Alex Greenwich, Greg Piper and Joe McGirr. They’re just independents. Local independents? Sure. But the headline should note the historic albeit narrow victory for the teals. I say teals not teal independents because they aren’t independents.
@ NP
I am thinking is that if the Libertarians did not run and only Two candidates Teal and Libs. The Lib primary maybe slightly higher than in 2023. The Libertarians are not pro-climate so they just took from Libs only. It seemed the Teal just hoovered up Greens, Labor and Sustainable Australia vote while holding their own.
@Nimalan I agree and I don’t think the teal will hold this in 2027 regardless of what happens in Mackellar federally since as we know voters are happy voting for the more moderate NSW Liberals even if they vote teal federally which is why I knew the teals wouldn’t do as well on the state level (they even lost this and Manly which federally would be teal seats). If Sophie Scamps loses Mackellar it’s game over for Jacqui Scruby.
“Jacqui Scruby wins in another success for local independents” doesn’t use the word “teal”. She’s an independent.
@ NP
I totally agree that the State Libs are more moderate and appeal much better than Federal Libs. I do think Sophie Scamps will have a great chance to win in Mackellar however. Issues like cost of living are less of an issue in Mackellar due it being much wealthier and older than average. Even compared to other teal seats they are less renters and people dont blame cross bench MPs if there is an issue with an incumbent government. I think the success of independents for Canberra shows that some moderate voters will choose someone like Scamps especially while Dutton is leader and has scrapped the 2030 emission target. If Dan Tehan or Susan Ley were leader and had a 2030 target even if it was lower than Labor’s Libs would have a much better chance to defeat Scamps.
Falinski, Zimmerman, Wilson, Hammond, Frydenburg, Dave Sharma, Trevor Evans, Julian Simmonds all uber Moderates, all lost to candidates even further to the left.
2022 should be looked at as a one offf election, Liberals had a lot of other MPs who didn’t stand for much of anything, they finally got swept away by the Brittany Higgins issue..
Stand for something or fall for anything, that’s the story at the Pittwater and ACT elections too, my opinion.
No one’s saying the CLP in the NT would’ve done better if they swung to the left.
“…for local independents”. The way I saw it, they meant another independent in the Northern Beaches area. Michael Reagan is an independent state MP for Wakehurst. This is in addition to non-Liberal councillors elected and Sophie Scamps and Zali Steggall who are local federal MPs.
@Gympie the NT is less progressive and the CLP there were quite moderate too.
I think what cost the moderate Liberals their seats in 2022 was the things the Morrison government was perceived to have not acted enough on which included things like climate change and integrity, plus the Brittany Higgins saga had an impact. Now the Liberals have no federal seats touching Sydney Harbour and only one seat touching Port Philip Bay in Melbourne (Flinders). They also only have two seats northeast of the Parramatta River (Berowra and Bradfield) and they’ve only got two seats in Melbourne not including Aston (Deakin and Menzies) and one seat in Perth (Moore; the Mark McGowan effect had an impact there) and Adelaide (Sturt). The only capital city where they hold the most federal seats now is Brisbane.
, plus the Brittany Higgins saga had an impact.
You can say that again.
Liberals were slaughtered there and the Moderates took the brunt.
Events since then point to the Liberal Party not being a bad actor in the Higgins saga, meanwhile the Government can’t manage the economy, the pla is to spend like maniacs on select groups and manufacture a win in 2025.
Social cohesion?
It’s a 2 word slogan.
Nether portal is 100% correct this area is more socially progressive than the NT. It is not a religious area etc. I would argue that that Falinksi, Zinnerman, Frydenburg and Sharma did much better than Abbott and Deves so it clearly shows they were a better fit. The State Libs performed even better in 2023 which shows a moderate approach worked. The Sutherland Shire is different it is more socially conservative so you can have a more conservative MP in Cook than Mackellar or Warringah.
The addition of prepoll votes has not shown much improvement for the Liberals with swings comparable to on the day votes, they have been trounced. Georgia Ryburn indeed conceded yesterday afternoon.
Mark Speakman’s leadership now looks on shaky ground anfter their last debacles and I would not expect him to last until the next election.
@Tren doubt it on 2pp they are trailing alright it’s not his fault a certain member allegedly committed certain crimes and resigned. Still they did alright given the nature of the allegations. By elections are always tricky to win especially when they don’t effect whose running the state. I reckon they should be able to recover this especially if the federal teals back a labor minority govt.
By 2027 I think this should flip back to the Liberals (Wakehurst and Wollondilly might too). As for Mark Speakman’s leadership he is still fit for leader but he may face challenges from other members. The socially conservative faction doesn’t have the numbers to oust him so the challenge will come from another moderate.
Despite the fact that they lost the seat, I would not be surprised if the Libs are not losing much sleep over this result. Jacqui Scruby had a profile in the area and the circumstances of Rory Amon’s departure was never going to help. The area is deeply parochial and Georgia Ryburn being slightly outside the area probably didn’t hurt. The Northern Beaches has been a tad fractious for decades and never a lay down for the Libs – as Stegall and Scamps can also testify. Where Scruby might be helped is that the Minns government may provide funding so she can be seen as a ‘can do’ MP.
I don’t think the by-election loss would do any more damage to the Liberal party. It was a symptom rather than the main problem.
The loss was expected given a tumultuous few months. Also, there was a perfect storm, including Labor’s and Greens’s absence.
80.4% counted and Jacqui Scruby has 56.2% TCP. Despite this I still think the Liberals will win it back in 2027.
@Redistributed I agree that this seat would be winnable for the Libs in 2027 although candidate selection will still matter.
Disagree about Wakehurst though – Michael Regan is not a “teal” and has such an enormous personal profile that it would be hard for the Libs to win the seat again until Regan retires (or, say, Regan were to get involved in some scandal). Regan was working the room as an independent well before the teals were a glimmer in Simon HAC’s eyes. The Libs basically gave up on this seat at the last state election.