Federal election 2025: Peter Dutton confident Liberals can beat ‘teals’ on northern beaches
During a surprise visit to a former blue ribbon stronghold in Sydney, federal Opposition leader Peter Dutton predicted two Liberal candidates and “champions” would beat the “teals”.
Manly
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Opposition leader Peter Dutton is confident of a Liberal resurgence on the northern beaches at next year’s federal election.
Mr Dutton, speaking during a surprise visit to Dee Why on Wednesday, predicted his two recently selected candidates would retake Warringah and Mackellar from independent “teal” MPs and form part of his government.
He was on the beaches to meet his candidates for Mackellar, James Brown, and Warringah hopeful Jaimee Rogers. He attended a roundtable discussion with the pair and a dozen local voters at the Stella Blu Italian restaurant on The Strand.
“In James and Jaimee, we have two exceptional candidates who I think will do a great job for the local community,’’ he said.
“If we win these seats back, we win government and we can stop the Albanese Government from destroying the livelihoods of many Australians.”
Mr Dutton was asked, afterwards, what the Liberal Party had to do to regain the faith of the northern beaches public, given the area had no Liberal federal MPs, no Liberal members on the council and two Liberal state MPs: Manly’s James Griffin and Matt Cross in Davidson.
He said, firstly, the party had to pick the best candidates available.
“In James and Jaimee, we’ve got two local champions who will be part of a government which will fight for the northern beaches, get the infrastructure funding that we need, provide support to families and small businesses so that the local economy can thrive,’’ he said.
“Under Labor, they’ve been left with a failing economy, businesses closing, people losing their jobs, electricity bills you can’t afford, and teals have been completely and utterly hopeless at providing any solution to the local residents.”
Mr Dutton said local voters should be reminded that a vote for the independents – Zali Steggall in Warringah and Sophie Scamps in Mackellar – “was a vote for Prime Minister Anthony Albanese”.
“They will not support the Coalition in a minority government after the next election,’’ he said.
“They will only support the Labor Party and the Greens.
“At the moment, we’ve got two ‘teal’ candidates in these seats. We know that in the case of the teal candidates, they’re voting between 75 and 80 per cent of the time on legislation with the Greens and Labor.
“When you look at Jaimee and James and what they have to offer the community, they’re genuine, they’re real, and they’re not pretending to be someone they’re not.”
Mr Brown said the community roundtable showed that cost-of-living pressures were hitting local families hard.
“This is a community where the first thing we do in the morning is check the temperature of the water, check the direction of the wind and check what the tide is doing,” he told reporters.
“But increasingly, the first thing a lot of families in this community are doing in the morning is checking their bank balance, checking for the latest bill and checking whether interest rates have gone down.”
Ms Rogers said the issue of housing affordability was a major concern in Warringah “in terms of letting the next generation down”.
She said that if younger people could not afford to live in the area they grew up in, they “move away from their family and their support”.
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