Allen among potential challengers as redraw kicks off jockeying for seats

Liberal moderate Katie Allen is expected to seek a return to politics in the suburban Melbourne electorate of Chisholm at the next election and progressive independents may target senior NSW Liberal Angus Taylor after a proposed redistribution triggered a round of jockeying for seats.

The Australian Electoral Commission’s draft seat boundaries have given more certainty to party officials about the territories in which the next election, due by May 2025, will be fought, prompting a hardening of plans among political aspirants from all sides.

Katie Allen lost the seat of Higgins to Labor at the last election.Credit: Eddie Jim

In Victoria, Allen’s former inner-Melbourne seat of Higgins is set to be abolished, with much of the area expected to move into the Labor-held Chisholm, where the margin of Labor MP Carina Garland is estimated to have been halved to 3.3 per cent. Allen will continue to campaign as the preselected candidate in Higgins in the faint hope the electoral commission changes course.

But Allen is keen to run in Chisholm – where a Liberal candidate has been picked – and has support from top party figures to do so, according to senior Liberals not authorised to speak publicly.

In NSW, teal MP Kylea Tink’s seat of North Sydney is set to be scrapped, with part of it subsumed into Bradfield, held by Liberal Paul Fletcher.

Many political observers expect Tink to run against Fletcher, but teal sources also not permitted to speak on the record said the 2022 Climate 200-backed candidate Nicolette Boele was keen to run again in Bradfield. Some community independent figures think Tink should run for the Senate if Boele does not stand aside. Tink’s office did not comment on the prospect of a Senate run.

Liberal sources said former NSW treasurer Matt Kean was interested in the seat of Bradfield but would only run if Fletcher retired. The proposed seat redraw would cut the Liberal margin from 4.2 per cent to 2.5 per cent, according to election analyst Ben Raue’s The Tally Room website.

The draft boundary changes have put Labor within striking distance of forcing the Liberal Party out of all 23 seats in the area defined as metropolitan Melbourne by the electoral commission.

The former safe Liberal seat of Menzies, held by first-term MP Keith Wolahan, would become notionally Labor and Deakin, held by frontbencher Michael Sukkar, would become a dead heat. After Labor won Aston in a byelection, Menzies and Deakin are the Liberals’ only urban Melbourne electorates. (It holds three peri-urban seats: Casey, Flinders and Latrobe).

“Significant resources will be put into Menzies and Deakin,” one senior Victorian Labor figure said, noting the number of marginal seats held by Labor in Victoria – such as McEwen, Aston and Dunkley – meant the party would also be in a defensive posture in what has become a key progressive state for Labor.

Nicolette Boele (left) and North Sydney MP Kylea Tink.Credit: Social media

However, this masthead’s latest Resolve Political Monitor shows Labor’s primary vote has sunk to its lowest level in three years, hinting at an increasingly competitive race for power that would put some of Labor’s Victorian seats at risk.

In states unaffected by boundary changes, Labor is confident its vote is holding up in Tasmania and believes it could win Braddon, where an incumbent Liberal is retiring. The Liberals will fight hard to defend Sturt in South Australia, hope to win multiple seats from Labor in Western Australia, and think they could win Blair in Queensland.

The proposed NSW electorate redraw represents the third phase, after Victoria and WA, of an electoral commission process designed to make sure states have the right number of seats to reflect their population growth.

Raue said last week the overall impact narrowed the margin for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to hold on to power.

“For Labor to lose their majority, they need to lose two seats on a uniform swing of 0.4 per cent, down from 0.9 per cent on the old boundaries,” he said on his The Tally Room site.

Shadow treasurer Angus Taylor’s seat of Hume would shift much closer to the city, losing the town of Goulburn to the Labor seat of Eden-Monaro. His margin is estimated to drop slightly to about 7 per cent.

Simon Holmes a Court, convenor of the Climate 200 group that partly funded the community teal movement, believes Taylor would be vulnerable to a community independent.

“Hume’s proposed new boundaries make it look a lot like the state seat of Wollondilly, where an independent won 25.9 per cent of the vote a year ago, taking the seat from the Liberals,” he said.

“The redistribution suggests his primary would now be below 40 per cent – well into the ‘death zone’.”

Liberal sources said the proposed seat of Hume would not pick up some of the parts of Wollondilly that were less favourable towards the Liberals and would add some Liberal-voting areas nearer to Sydney.

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