This was published 9 months ago
Tim Wilson’s preselection win locks in Goldstein rematch against Zoe Daniel
By Paul Sakkal
Tim Wilson, the former Coalition assistant minister who lost the prized federal seat of Goldstein at the last election, will set up a highly anticipated rematch with journalist-turned-teal-MP Zoe Daniel after narrowly winning a Liberal Party preselection on Sunday.
There is no love lost between Wilson and the independent Daniel, and the ambitious Liberal has spent months forming a strategy on how to win over the 12 per cent of electors in Brighton, Sandringham and Bentleigh who abandoned the Scott Morrison-led party in 2022.
Independent Zoe Daniel took the Liberals’ blue-ribbon seat of Goldstein from Tim Wilson at the 2022 federal election.Credit: Chris Hopkins
Wilson, who is studying for a PhD in economics, on Sunday defeated young lawyer Stephanie Hunt, a former adviser to foreign ministers, and right-winger Colleen Harkin of think tank the Institute of Public Affairs.
He did not win a majority of votes in the first round of voting, which meant a second vote was required for him to claim the win.
In an unexpectedly tight result, Wilson beat Harkin by about 160-130.
In a statement afterwards, he said: “Our community is facing enormous challenges like cost of living, and home ownership getting further out of reach. Households are under real cost-of-living pressure. Families are struggling to pay their mortgages. Grandparents are having to pick up their grandchildren’s school fees. I will fight every day to deliver real cost-of-living relief.”
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, which diminished the party’s prospects of forming governing majorities at future polls.
Sharma recently returned to politics but via a Senate vacancy, Hammond will not run again and Zimmerman and Frydenberg have opted for corporate careers. Falinski is still considering whether he will run again, which leaves Wilson as potentially the only member of the group fighting the well-funded teal machine to try to reclaim any of the seats lost.
Winning back seats that have traditionally sided with the Liberals will be key to the Coalition being able to secure a majority at the next election. Leader Peter Dutton has faced questions about whether the opposition is doing enough to win back the types of voters – urban and tertiary educated – whose support the Coalition previously relied upon.
A Liberal source familiar with the party’s early planning for the next election, speaking anonymously to detail private talks, said it was likely the party would spend big in about two of the seven teal seats. Those targets would be determined close to the election and selected based on polling and candidate quality.
Daniel, a former ABC journalist, holds Goldstein by a margin of 2.9 per cent.
Hunt was a legal adviser to Julie Bishop and Marise Payne during their respective stints as foreign minister.
On Saturday, the Liberal Party selected 31-year-old former staffer Amelia Hamer to run in Kooyong.
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