The seats to watch in the 2019 federal election: Kooyong, held by Josh Frydenberg
Political experts doubt that Greens candidate Julian Burnside will wrest Kooyong from Josh Frydenberg, but the ‘protest vote factor’ and recent state swings mean the Federal Treasurer has a fight on his hands.
Federal Election
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Kooyong
Incumbent: Josh Frydenberg
Margin: 12.8 per cent
Candidates:
Liberal: Josh Frydenberg
Greens: Julian Burnside
Independent: Oliver Yates
Labor: Jana Stewart
Local issues:
Congestion, climate change, the economy, negative gearing, retiree tax.
PROTEST VOTES AND STATE SWINGS
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg could be in trouble on election night with high-profile human rights barrister Julian Burnside running against him.
The Greens candidate’s profile and platform could be what people in the affluent inner Melbourne electorate are looking for if they want to make a protest vote in May.
THE OTHER SEATS TO WATCH IN VICTORIA:
CORANGAMITE: Trouble ahead for Libs
CHISHOLM: Banks exit could determine result
DEAKIN: Sukkar’s seat could go either way
FLINDERS: The ugly fight of the federal election
HIGGINS: Wentworth-style battle for O’Dwyer’s seat
INDI: Indi’s key question: stay independent?
LA TROBE: Seat set to go to preferences again
MACNAMARA: ‘Anything can happen’ in Danby’s old seat
MALLEE: Nats face fight after ‘sugar baby‘ scandal
Kooyong is a traditional Liberal stronghold, held by conservatives for more than a century, but it also has a growing Greens’ vote.
At the last election, the party claimed almost 19 per cent of the primary vote, compared to Labor’s 19.8 per cent and Frydenberg’s 58.2 per cent.
Swings against the Liberals of between 5.9 and 9.1 per cent in four state seats in Kooyong at the 2018 state election will also be cause for concern for Frydenberg.
Burnside, who acted on behalf of asylum seekers trying to reach Australia on the Tampa before the 2001 election, will attack the Coalition over climate change, the treatment of asylum seekers and “the level of dishonesty in politics”.
Frydenberg has a fairly safe margin of 12.8 per cent, as well as a strong profile as the federal Treasurer, the Deputy Liberal leader and the Member for Kooyong since 2010.
But he will be vulnerable to negative campaigns about instability in the Coalition after last year’s leadership spill to oust Malcolm Turnbull, as well as attacks over cost of living pressures, energy policy and climate change.
Frydenberg is also facing a challenge from former Liberal Party member Oliver Yates, who will run as an independent, and Labor’s Jana Stewart, a state Labor political staffer and family therapist.
Election analyst Dr Kevin Bonham doesn’t believe the Liberals will lose Kooyong but thinks the party will be forced to put up an expensive fight to hold it, which will drain resources from more vulnerable seats.
“It seems to me that a lot of the noise is trying to make the Liberals defend these blue-ribbon seats and then they don’t have the resources to defend elsewhere,” he told News Corp.
“It seems a lot of the strategy from opponents of the government is to ... have them panicking all over the place and they won’t know what to do.
“Obviously they’ll be mortified at the prospect of losing it so they’ll throw resources at it.”
Dr Bonham said it was unlikely the Greens could achieve a 12 per cent swing to win the seat.
Veteran psephologist Malcolm Mackerras, a visiting fellow at the Australian Catholic University, also predicted the Liberals would win Kooyong.
He gave Mr Frydenberg an 80 per cent chance of reclaiming the seat.
Griffith University political expert Paul Williams also said he was “almost certain” the Liberals would keep the seat.
“Despite Burnside’s profile, the Green vote, after a small swing in 2016, may actually decline a little on the back of a recent slide across Victoria,” Dr Williams said.
“These voters would go back to Labor, but that would push Labor’s vote only into the 20s - not enough to hurt Frydenberg.”
HOT ISSUES IN KOOYONG: INFRASTRUCTURE AND CLIMATE CHANGE
Local infrastructure, climate change and anger at the major parties will be key issues in Kooyong.
Burnside is outstripping both Frydenberg and independent Oliver Yates in the response he is getting from punters online, a social media analysis shows.
His posts about action on climate change are being seen, shared and liked by hundreds of Facebook users, along with his posts about improving health and education outcomes for indigenous Australians and anger at the major parties.
Voters have also reacted strongly to Frydenberg’s posts about Labor’s plan to axe tax refunds for franking credits, and his posts about infrastructure commitments.
Yates has failed to cut through with punters via his official Facebook with only a small number of voters responding to his posts about climate change and refugees.
WHAT WILL SWAY THE VOTE IN VICTORIA
Monash University Political Scientist Dr Zareh Ghazarian says issues within Victoria’s state Liberal party could spill over as people decide who they will vote for federally.
“Voters tend to be aware of the difference between state and federal governments and party leaders, so we would expect them to vote on what federal Labor has promised rather than their experience of the Andrews government,” he said.
However the bitter public divisions within Victorian Liberals since last November’s election loss would not endear them to voters, he said, and that instability - coupled with similar ructions at the federal level - “will play a big role in deciding who people vote for”.
Dr Ghazarian says infrastructure, the economy and employment will be the issues residents want to hear about pre-election.
“The trend in opinion polls over the last few months has been showing a swing towards the Labor Party. This means that any Liberal MP who holds their seat with a margin of five per cent or less is in for a hard time to keep their job,” he said.
“There is also a complication at this election. The Electoral Commission has undertaken a major redistribution of federal seats which has resulted in at least two Victorian seats currently held by the Liberal Party to be notionally Labor (ie. if the seat boundary was used at the 2016 election, Labor would have won it).”
- Additional reporting by Natasha Christian
Originally published as The seats to watch in the 2019 federal election: Kooyong, held by Josh Frydenberg
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