The gamechangers: New political faces who could sway federal election
Doctors, CEOs, an engineer and a local mayor are among the candidates who will join parliament after this Saturday’s election, according to the polls. Meet the fresh new faces of Aussie politics.
Federal Election
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Think of them as the class of 2022: a diverse cohort of candidates who will be joining federal parliament after Saturday’s election, if recent YouGov polling is accurate.
According to the snapshot of voters, the Liberal Party is on track to lose 11 seats – nine to Labor candidates, and two to the independents backed by Climate 200.
This would result in a Labor majority government, and an expanded crossbench.
The 11 likely victors include nine women and two men. One is a former federal MP seeking to return, and another is a candidate with extensive local government experience, but several are newcomers to politics.
Their number includes three medical doctors, an engineer and a journalist, and several from the business sector.
It should be remembered that Australian politics is famous for its surprises, but as of now, these are the candidates who should be chilling the champagne for their election night parties.
Labor candidates expected to win
Sally Sitou
The Sydney electorate of Reid was identified as a key battleground in this election, as it was the most marginal NSW seat held by the Liberals, but the contest never really made national headlines until MP Fiona Martin appeared to confuse Labor’s Sally Sitou with another ALP politician of Asian appearance during a radio interview.
Martin denied she had done this, but people made up their own minds, internet meme-makers had a field day, and suddenly all of Australia was being introduced to Labor’s Sally Sitou via TV interviews.
A mum of one and doctoral researcher at Sydney University, Ms Sitou was born in Australia to parents of Chinese heritage who fled Laos as refugees during the Vietnam War.
In a Facebook post earlier this year, Ms Sitou revealed her earliest political memory was asking her mother whom she voted for at the 1993 federal election.
“She turned to me and said: ‘Don’t ever talk about politics and never tell anyone who you are voting for’. Because where they came from talking about politics had real consequences,” Ms Sitou wrote.
“So you can imagine what it means for my parents that their daughter is the Labor candidate for such a critical seat … It means they have come to embrace the very best of this country, our freedoms and our responsibilities. Our freedoms to speak out, to hold a faith, to build the life we want. And our responsibilities to those around us, so that we may all prosper together.”
Dr Gordon Reid
Robertson is the second-most marginal Liberal-held seat in NSW, and it is one that Labor will win, if the sentiment picked up in recent YouGov polling continues on election day. The Central Coast electorate is an interesting one, the bellwether seat since the 1990s – an ominous sign for Liberal MP Lucy Wicks, who has represented Robertson for three terms now.
Labor’s Gordon Reid is a Wirudjeri man and a local emergency department doctor, who has lived on the Central Coast his entire life – so, pretty much the candidate from central casting.
Carina Garland
Chisholm was always regarded as one of the most likely seats to fall to Labor in this election, as it was held on a margin of just 0.5 per cent.
Former Victorian Trades Hall assistant secretary Carina Garland, who also holds a PhD in gender and cultural studies, is set to win the seat for Labor, convincingly outpolling incumbent Liberal MP Gladys Liu.
Ross Hart
Ross Hart will not be a completely new face if he wins the seat of Bass on May 21: he previously held the seat between 2016 and 2019.
Bass is the slippery little sucker of Australian electorates, with no MP lasting for more than one term since 2004.
A barrister and father of one, Hart is a bit behind Liberal Bridget Archer on primary votes in recent YouGov polling, but he is expected to narrowly defeat her once preferences are allocated. A narrow victory for Labor will likely keep Bass in play in 2025.
Madonna Jarrett
Labor has not held the seat of Brisbane since 2010, but that is set to change if recent YouGov polling is accurate.
The party’s candidate Madonna Jarrett is a business executive and mother of two, who previously stood for the state seat of Aspley in 1995.
YouGov’s polling has Ms Jarrett winning 54 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote, against Trevor Evans of the LNP on 46 per cent, thanks in part to a strong local Greens vote.
Extreme weather events in Brisbane have boosted concern about climate issues in the electorate.
Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah
After Kooyong and Goldstein, Higgins could be the third Liberal stronghold the party could lose on May 21, but this one will be Labor’s gain, at least according to YouGov polling.
Higgins has been held by Dr Katie Allen for a term, after high-profile members Kelly O’Dwyer and Peter Costello. Dr Allen is currently anticipated to receive 40 per cent of the primary vote, but that will not be enough to hold the seat where about one in five voters are expected to vote Green, with most of their preferences flowing to Labor.
Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah has been a medical doctor for 25 years, most recently spending 13 years in infectious diseases at The Alfred.
She was active during the Covid-19 pandemic, co-founding the advocacy group Healthcare Workers Australia.
Louise Miller-Frost
The electorate of Boothby has long been tipped as the South Australian seat most likely to change hands at this election, although Sturt is also an outside chance of tipping.
Sitting Liberal MP Nicolle Flint is retiring after two terms, but her replacement Dr Rachel Swift is current trailing Labor’s Louise Miller-Frost in the primary vote.
Ms Miller-Frost is the former chief executive of domestic violence shelter Catherine House, and the CEO of St Vincent de Paul South Australia.
Zaneta Mascarenhas
According to recent polling, Swan is the most likely seat in Western Australia to fall to Labor at this election, with Zaneta Mascarenhas leading Kristy McSweeney by 53-47 on the two-party-preferred vote. (Sitting member Steve Irons is retiring after representing the seat since 2007.)
The poll by Utting Research found Ms McSweeney was slightly ahead in terms of the primary vote, but with 10 candidates in the contest, preferences are set to play a big role in determining the outcome.
Born in Kalgoorlie, Labor’s Zaneta Mascarenhas is a former mining engineer and a mum of two.
She played a starring role in Labor’s campaign launch in Perth on May 2.
Tracey Roberts
Recent polling by Utting Research suggested Labor’s Tracey Roberts was on track to win 52 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote in Pearce, the seat most recently held by former Attorney-General Christian Porter.
While such a result would be a convincing win for Labor, the Utting poll showed there has been a definite narrowing of the vote in WA in recent months.
Born in the UK, Roberts has been the mayor of the City of Wanneroo since 2011, and only joined the Labor Party shortly before being preselected.
Independent candidates expected to win
Dr Monique Ryan
Dr Monique Ryan has quickly catapulted to national attention thanks to the extraordinary media attention given to the battle for the seat of Kooyong.
The former head of the neurology department at the Royal Children’s Hospital in Melbourne, who is backed by Climate 200, Dr Ryan is a mum of three and a former member of the Labor Party. (She says she joined shortly before the 2007 election, but quit in 2010, disillusioned with the party’s stance on climate change.)
Kooyong has been a Liberal stronghold since 1949, with Josh Frydenberg as the local member since 2010. But the Liberal Party’s grip on the seat was loosened in 2019 when human rights lawyer Julian Burnside and Oliver Yates, a high-profile independent running on a climate platform, both contested it.
While Dr Ryan has refused to say which side of politics she would back in the event of a hung parliament, she has said she would insist upon a formal written agreement.
Zoe Daniel
Zoe Daniel already had a national profile, thanks to her work as a radio and TV journalist with the ABC, but the Climate 200-backed independent has clearly been one of the most high-profile candidates of this year’s election.
The mum of two has cited climate, a national integrity commission and greater respect for women as her key policies, and describes herself as “socially progressive” but “economically conservative”. Goldstein has been held by the Liberals since 1984, and MP Tim Wilson for the past two terms.
Daniel has said she will wait until the outcome of the election is clear before she makes any deals in the event that no party can form a majority in its own right.
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Originally published as The gamechangers: New political faces who could sway federal election
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