The ambush appears out of nowhere. Tim Wilson is just explaining his second coming, which I term a rarity and he upgrades to “unprecedented”.
Now he is (once again) the Liberal MP for Goldstein, the only Liberal to vanquish a teal independent, a rare metropolitan Liberal and the new opposition spokesman for small business, he has new responsibilities to speak up.
Tim Wilson at Little Sister Cafe.Credit: Eddie Jim
The political comeback kid is holding court at his regular election campaign stop of Little Sister Cafe in Brighton, the venue of that fateful coffee photo op with Peter Dutton on the morning of the federal election before the world turned.
Neither of us realise, but we are seconds away from Wilson’s political skills being exactingly put to the test.
The born-again local MP is in full flow explaining that his “responsibility in every single part of my role from standing up and speaking out and pushing back ...”
Suddenly, a grey-haired woman, dressed in jeans, a brown flannel shirt and a white puffer jacket, fleece lined, materialises at our table with such speed I had no notion she was even approaching. She is simply there, in our faces.
Tim Wilson pictured with then opposition leader Peter Dutton at Little Sister Cafe on election day. Dutton lost his seat later that night.Credit: James Brickwood
“Proudly Zionist are you?” she says rapidly, in an English accent.
“Yes, I am,” replies Wilson, wearing a yellow ribbon lapel badge for the safe return of Israeli hostages, his hackles clearly rising.
The Goldstein constituent who confronted new MP Tim Wilson.Credit: Stephen Brook
“Proudly Zionist are you?” she asks again. “So you like all those children being killed in Gaza?”
Wilson’s tanned skin turns a deeper shade. I notice our unexpected guest has a plastic loop on her mobile phone case around her middle finger, making it very easy to film us as she fires questions. She’s feisty, but her hands are trembling slightly.
“You want nuclear in Australia, and you are a Zionist?” she asks for a third time, not waiting for an answer. “And you want people killed, and you want babies killed?”
Wilson tells her that he is having lunch, and this is grossly inappropriate. Nevertheless, she persists – for a full five minutes.
This being Brighton, a well-do-to suburb south-east of Melbourne’s CBD with a strong sense of self-worth (think Mosman in Sydney), the discourse soon turns to housing.
Our anti-Wilson activist is bitter that her daughter and granddaughter (“who went to Brighton Primary”) were forced to move two hours away because of housing affordability. She also says Wilson was invisible on the streets of Goldstein.
Wilson at the Little Sister Cafe in Brighton.Credit: Eddie Jim
The antagonists start to align on criticism of the Victorian state Labor government’s massive underinvestment in local education.
The temperature calms. Wilson masterfully suggests a visit to the local state MP, James Newbury, just down the road. But he can’t help himself, slyly querying if bowling up and filming people without permission and verbally abusing them is really the best way to win friends and influence.
“No, no, I do need to do more letter writing, yes,” is her withering rejoinder.
A man at the next table decides enough is enough and in a thick European accent tells the local activist to move on. She disappears down the side street.
“Save my love to Zoe,” is Wilson’s slightly garbled postscript to break the tension. It’s a joking reference to teal independent Zoe Daniel, from whom he has just regained the affluent seat with a significant Jewish community situated on Port Phillip Bay.
Wilson asks his cafe neighbour for validation – he is indeed a recognised local face.
“I don’t know who you are,” the man replies. “I just don’t like people bothering each other.”
The whole thing was excruciating. Who would be a politician? Tim Wilson, that’s who.
Wilson is 45, a Liberal, and a liberal, one-quarter Armenian, a happily married gay man, carrying a few extra kilos but, frankly, for someone who has just engaged in a gruelling election campaign, a man with pretty great skin.
“It’s politics, right,” Wilson says a short time later between mouthfuls of the cafe’s signature Abundance Bowl, an enormous pile of salad greens, sweet potato, quinoa, seeds and a poached egg, to which he has deleted the halloumi and added not just avocado but pan seared salmon. He ordered it almost every day of the campaign.
I have the similar salmon bowl. The flavour mix is terrific, the mouthfeel excellent. But wine is waved away – it’s a Monday – in favour of a double espresso, which sits largely untouched.
Today Melbourne feels on the precipice of winter. It is allegedly going to reach 18 degrees, but locals are mistrustful. One passer-by is in a puffer jacket, the next in T-shirt and shorts. Wilson is wearing his campaign uniform: jeans, blue blazer, a crisp shirt, bright-yellow pin lapel. And to be fair, during our 90 minutes together, 14 well-wishers come up to congratulate him.
The Bountiful Bowl at Little Sister Cafe.Credit: Eddie Jim
Earlier in our conversation, he says going from civilian life to winning an election and straight into the shadow ministry is “feeling like you’re being shot out of a catapult and haven’t quite hit the ground yet. Still from election night there are SMS that I haven’t even read. It is not an unwillingness, it’s a simple incapacity.”
I want to know about winning – and losing.
“I can tell you there are two winnings,” Wilson says.
For him, nothing beat the feeling of winning his first preselection in 2016 after Liberal veteran Andrew Robb had retired. “Everybody expected me lose”, but Wilson went all in, resigning from his post as human rights commissioner just to contest.
“Bold,” I venture.
“Bold, but welcome to Tim Town,” he agrees, opening his hands as if to demonstrate “voila!” – but only for a split second.
“I remember that adrenaline rush, and also quite frankly shock.”
This time, victory was not a shock but rather “a mountain to climb”.
Tim Wilson is the new/old MP for Goldstein. Credit: Eddie Jim
At which point he turns to losing.
“Pretty much from the last election day I had a personal and professional purgatory. It feels violent,” he says, describing the post-loss businesslike phone call from the bureaucracy to losing MPs.
“You’re out, this person’s in, pack up the office, sort that out – bang, bang, bang, bang.
“All of a sudden nothing – and you are out.”
A lot of people were very worried. A psychologist friend suggested a chat. He went.
“Part of it is just to vent and get things off your chest,” he says. “And somebody to listen. I found that very helpful.”
The morning after the loss, his husband, Ryan Bolger, a school teacher, told him: “You can look at this as the moment that ends you – or you can look at this as a gift.”
His purpose taken away from him, the couple left Goldstein so Wilson could find his space and his place, moving back to their old apartment in South Yarra, where Wilson undertook a PhD in the carbon economy. “I don’t find making money something that excites me,” he says.
His voice quickens in summary mode: “It’s an awful, horrific experience. But anyone who experienced a big professional setback will know those experiences. The difference is you do it in full public glare. And of course, you are known for the last thing you did.”
Which in his case, was to lose.
The 2025 Goldstein campaign was controversial. The very morning of our lunch, Daniel was on ABC radio talking about dirty tricks and a personal campaign directed at her.
Wilson says the campaign was intense. “We both had very passionate supporters. No one’s trying to pretend otherwise.”
Ryan Bogler and Tim Wilson during the counting of votes after the May 4 poll. Credit: Penny Stephens
As to her accusations about attacks on her from groups supporting Wilson, he sits there, anger clearly rising.
“I’m really resisting in light of the difficult circumstances she is facing and living right now – fighting back.”
One political commentator describes Wilson as “charming but very egotistical”. I realise I have known him for a decade, back when I was media editor at The Australian and he was a member of the free market think tank the Institute of Public Affairs and had a higher profile than many Liberal MPs.
For Wilson, liberalism – the philosophy that promotes individual rights and freedoms – is the foundation of society.
“I hate the term ‘moderate’, because my liberalism doesn’t come in moderation. I believe in that very strongly,” he says.
“I think what people are used to is this kind of idea that you have these kind of moderates who don’t fight, and then they have these conservatives who fight very aggressively, whereas I’m somebody who fights very aggressively and not afraid to.”
Which included contacting The Age at 3.45am one morning to protest at one aspect of the paper’s coverage, which he is a little sheepish about, explaining he couldn’t sleep that night.
“I don’t particularly enjoy a fight, but I definitely enjoy a crusade and to be able to go and achieve change,” he says. “I’m also not afraid of failure.”
Wilson played a key role in defeating Labor’s policy to change franking credits under Bill Shorten; now he is fighting against Labor’s proposed tax changes on superannuation.
Wilson compared the transition from civilian life to the shadow ministry to being shot out of a catapult.Credit: Eddie JIm
I ask if there could ever be a gay leader of the Liberal Party (subtext – him).
“It’s yet to be tested,” he says. “I don’t feel anyone is sitting there thinking this is an insurmountable barrier to anybody.
“There’s a time where my relationship with my husband would have found me in jail, and now it finds me, frankly, barely able to tick a diversity box.”
How did the couple – who married in 2018 – meet?
“We actually met at Liberal Party State Council.”
“How romantic,” I reply.
Here, Wilson looks down to apparently study his lunch and says something softly to himself.
It occurs to me that Wilson might be more confident attacking Labor’s superannuation policy than discussing affairs of the heart.
But he reasserts himself, not pretending it was the most romantic of settings. “It wasn’t, but nonetheless it is what it was.”
Ryan and he have common values, he says, brightening. “As he says, at least he knew what he was getting himself in for.”
Wilson admires Margaret Thatcher, has a poster of Ronald Reagan on his wall, and loves Milton Friedman “because he explained economics with a charm and a smile”.
He name-checks two little known political women, Pauline Sabin, who fought against prohibition, and Katharine Stewart-Murray, a distant British relative, who tried to topple her own prime minister, Neville Chamberlain, over his appeasement of Adolf Hitler in 1938.
“I like Menzies a lot as well because, in the end, he’s a man of rebirth, and perhaps like me, he’s a man who failed first,” Wilson says with a smile.
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