Deputy Liberal leader backs female tech exec over Mundine for blue ribbon seat

Deputy Liberal leader Sussan Ley has thrown her weight behind tech executive Gisele Kapterian to beat anti-Voice campaigner Nyunggai Warren Mundine in the race to be the party’s candidate for a blue ribbon Sydney seat under threat from the teals.

Ley’s intervention before a preselection vote on Saturday displays the depth of concern in the party about picking the right candidate to replace retiring MP Paul Fletcher and hold Bradfield, which covers a wealthy area of Sydney’s north shore and is held on a slim margin against a repeat teal independent candidate.

Gisele Kapterian is the slight favourite to gain Liberal preselection in Bradfield.Credit: James Brickwood

Despite the Liberal Party losing several seats to female professionals running as teals at the last election and Fletcher’s public call for a woman to replace him, Ley’s letter of endorsement for Kapterian does not emphasise her gender.

Reflecting the party’s distaste for identity politics, it focuses on Kapterian’s credentials as a lawyer, executive and political staffer, attributes that could help her attract voters who deserted the Morrison government in the six seats it lost to teals at the last election.

Ley, the opposition’s spokeswoman on women’s issues, said Kapterian was “the right candidate for Bradfield at the right moment”.

“With experience across so many key economic and national security policy areas, Gisele is clearly an impressive candidate, ready to serve,” Ley said in a statement to this masthead. “Like so many people in Bradfield, Gisele is a first-class example of Australia’s multicultural success story.”

Kapterian, who worked as a senior staffer to former ministers Michaelia Cash and Julie Bishop, is now a senior director at software company Salesforce. Ley said Mundine was an “ideological powerhouse” in the party and noted she had backed him in the 2019 election when he ran for a NSW south coast seat.

“However, at this critical juncture, it is my judgment that Gisele Kapterian represents the future of Bradfield,” Ley said. “I believe she affords us the greatest chance of success in what will be an extremely closely contested marginal seat, where the teal machine could potentially pour millions of dollars into trying to unseat us.”

Former prime minister Tony Abbott told this masthead last April the party needed to preselect more women and ethnically diverse MPs, and the party’s official 2022 election review also concluded more diversity would aid the party.

Abbott, along with other prominent conservative figures including senator Jacinta Nampijinpa Price, are now lobbying members to pick Mundine, an Indigenous businessman with a high profile, from leading the No campaign at last year’s Voice referendum.

Former NSW premier Gladys Berejiklian and former treasurer Joe Hockey are backing Kapterian in Saturday’s ballot of party members. Hockey told The Australian this week that Mundine’s harsh criticism of the Voice created a risk of losing the only Liberal-held seat that voted yes at the referendum.

Liberal sources said some of Kapterian’s local opponents had disparaged her in recent weeks by claiming she would be a copycat teal candidate unable to create differentiation with progressive independent challenger Nicolette Boele, who ran against Fletcher at the last federal election in 2022.

Bradfield candidate Nicolette Boele is running for a second time.Credit: Edwina Pickles

Boele won 20 per cent of the primary vote, cutting Fletcher’s margin to 4.5 per cent, and she is expected to receive far more money from teal funding vehicle Climate 200 at this election. A redistribution that abolished the seat of North Sydney has moved the suburb of Chatswood into Bradfield and cut the margin to an estimated 2.5 per cent.

Mundine was national president of the Labor Party between 2006-07 but quit the organisation in 2012, saying it was “not the party I joined”.

Cardiologist Professor Michael Feneley is also running in Saturday’s preselection, but Kapterian is viewed as the slight favourite ahead of Mundine.

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