‘Not just a win for Bradfield’: Libs’ Kapterian seizes seat on a razor-thin margin

The Liberal Party has managed to hold the once blue-ribbon seat of Bradfield on Sydney’s north shore, with Gisele Kapterian just edging out teal Nicolette Boele after more than a week of counting.

Kapterian, a former international trade and human rights lawyer, is expected to join the federal party room meeting in Canberra on Tuesday, when MPs will vote to choose a new leader after former leader Peter Dutton was ousted from parliament.

Gisele Kapterian has held Bradfield for the Liberal Party despite the Coalition’s sweeping loss.Credit: Sam Mooy

One of the leadership hopefuls, Angus Taylor, opposed Kapterian’s preselection, instead supporting anti-Voice campaigner Warren Mundine, despite Bradfield being the only Liberal-held seat in the country to vote yes in the referendum.

Absentee and postal votes ultimately favoured Kapterian, which pushed her ahead of Boele despite the independent being marginally in front on election night.

NSW Liberal senator and former party president Maria Kovacic said Kapterian’s win demonstrated the standard of candidate that voters demanded of the party.

“Gisele Kapterian is exactly the kind of voice we need at the table if we are serious about winning back metropolitan Australia,” Kovacic said.

“This is not just a win for Bradfield, this is a clear step towards restoring the type of centrist and credible politics we need in our party and that our country demands from us.”

NSW shadow attorney-general Alister Henskens, who was the Bradfield federal electorate conference president for many years before entering state politics, said if Kapterian had more time on the ground to campaign, she would have secured a bigger win.

“Gisele is incredibly smart, she has a Master of Laws from Cambridge University, has worked as a human rights lawyer in Africa and also at the World Trade organisation,” Henskens said.

“She has an incredible range of skills and is a really accomplished professional woman and, on top of that, she is fantastic with people. The only reason Gisele didn’t do better was because she didn’t have the time to meet more people but when she did, she won votes.”

Henskens said many people were drawing comparisons between Kapterian and former premier Gladys Berejiklian. Both women share Armenian heritage and Berejiklian entered politics after winning her seat of Willoughby by just 144 votes.

Kapterian is likely to win Bradfield by 200 to 300 votes.

“But Gisele is her own person,” Henskens said. “Although I have every confidence that Gisele will make a long-term outstanding contribution to the party, the short term for her will be establishing herself in the electorate and making sure she has a solid foundation to make what will be a great contribution to our local area and the nation.”

Kapterian, also a former federal Liberal staffer, was hastily installed as the candidate late last year after securing the backing of Berejiklian and former federal treasurer Joe Hockey.

She beat Mundine for preselection for Bradfield, despite Mundine having the backing of Taylor and former prime minister Tony Abbott.

Former Bradfield MP Paul Fletcher surprised colleagues by announcing his retirement in early December, leaving Kapterian less than five months to campaign in the seat. She had expected to run in North Sydney, but it was abolished in the redistribution of boundaries.

Kapterian will be joined in the party room by fellow Armenian Tim Wilson, a moderate who unseated teal Zoe Daniel.

Despite Nine and the ABC calling the seat in Kapterian’s favour on Monday, Boele’s team maintained it was too close to concede defeat.

Liberal sources speaking on the condition of anonymity said they understood Boele was considering legal action, which would involve going to the Court of Disputed Returns, which deals with disputes over the results of elections.

Boele’s team was contacted for comment.

Boele built on her 2022 election loss with a 3 per cent swing to her, but it was not enough to seize the seat from the Liberals, with Kapterian ahead by 205 votes on Monday afternoon.

The independent had more than 1000 volunteers working on her bid to win the seat, but Boele’s campaign was disrupted after it emerged she had made a sexual joke to a 19-year-old female hairdresser at a local salon.

Boele was banned from the Gordon salon Envy Room after she allegedly told the hairdresser that her hair wash “was so good and I didn’t even have sex with you”.

She apologised for making the joke but the Liberals seized on it, using it in their advertising on social media and on mobile billboard trucks driving around the electorate.

Until 2022 Bradfield had long been considered a safe Liberal seat, when the teal wave swamped Sydney’s north shore, taking the seats of Warringah and Mackellar, as well as the now-abolished North Sydney.

A teal independent, Allegra Spender, won the eastern suburbs seat of Wentworth.

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