Former Bishop, Payne adviser to challenge Wilson in Liberal battle to wrest back Goldstein

Stephanie Hunt, a lawyer and former staffer to two foreign ministers, will challenge former MP Tim Wilson for the right to run as the Liberal candidate in the Melbourne seat of Goldstein at the next federal election.

Wilson, who held the bayside seat between 2016 and 2022, revealed last month he would seek to take on independent Zoe Daniel in a bid to return the former blue-ribbon seat to the Liberals.

Stephanie Hunt, right, plans to challenge Tim Wilson for the right to run as the Liberal candidate in the Melbourne seat of Goldstein, held by independent Zoe Daniel, left.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen, Penny Stephens, supplied

But Wilson will first need to win a ballot of local party members, which would make him possibly the only one of the six Liberals who lost to teal independents to contest the next poll, due by the middle of 2025. A preselection will be held sometime early this year.

Hunt, a 32-year-old lifelong resident in the area, will start as the underdog but said she was determined to run because “I’ve heard from so many local business owners and residents wanting energetic new candidates with real-world experience”.

“I’m in tune with my community. Locals are saying they want relatable candidates who understand cost-of-living pressures and who can improve outcomes for hardworking Australians and their families,” she said.

“I’m committed to listening to my community, understanding where we need to do better and acting on it to ensure more of us can get ahead.

“It takes major party candidates to advance our interests both locally and globally.”

Hunt was a legal adviser to foreign ministers Julie Bishop and Marise Payne. In these roles, she worked on laws related to tearing up Victoria’s Belt and Road infrastructure agreement with China, Magnitsky sanctions that allow Australia to ban human rights abusers, corrupt officials and malicious cyber hackers from the country and seize their assets, and assisted in the response to the downing of Malaysia Airlines Flight MH17.

She worked in corporate law before shifting to political staffing and now works as a sole practitioner. Hunt is also the vice-president of Bayside Community Emergency Relief.

In an interview last month, Wilson said he had to search “deep inside” his soul to decide whether he should attempt to become only the second candidate to unseat an independent at a federal election.

“Can I be brutally honest? I think defeat was a gift the community gave me,” he said at the time, adding that his loss provided a greater sense of perspective about what mattered in public life and an improved ability to listen.

Wilson, former treasurer Josh Frydenberg (Kooyong), Jason Falinski (Mackellar), Trent Zimmerman (North Sydney), Dave Sharma (Wentworth) and Celia Hammond (Curtin) all lost once-safe Liberal seats to progressive independents at the last election.

Sharma recently returned to politics but via a Senate vacancy; Hammond will not run again; Zimmerman and Frydenberg have opted for corporate careers; while Falinski is still considering whether he will run again.

Winning back the former Liberal seats will be key to the Coalition being able to secure a majority at the next election.

Political analysts and some Liberal MPs believe Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is running a two-term strategy that would see teal seats targeted at the subsequent election, but Dutton told his party room in November that the Coalition was in a “strong position” to seize power at the next election.

Daniel, a former ABC journalist, holds the seat by a margin of 2.9 per cent. She won with a primary vote of 34.5 per cent, while Wilson’s primary vote dropped by more than 12 per cent.

The Liberal-on-Liberal contest in Goldstein means there will be two contested preselections in key Victorian seats. In Kooyong, at least three candidates will seek to run as the Liberal candidate: Transgender Victoria chair Rochelle Pattison, surgeon Susan Morris, and former start-up worker Amelia Hamer.

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