Election 2025: Bradfield teal Nicolette Boele apologises to teen hairdresser for sexualised joke at salon

Nicolette Boele, the teal independent challenger for the Liberal-held seat of Bradfield, has been banned from a hair salon after making an inappropriate comment to a 19-year-old female worker.

Bradfield independent candidate Nicolette Boele.

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Nicolette Boele, the teal independent challenger for the Liberal-held seat of Bradfield, has apologised for making a sexualised comment to a 19-year-old staff member at a hair salon.

Ms Boele was banned from her local hairdresser, Envy Room salon in Gordon, after she told the teenager after having her hair washed, “that was amazing, and I didn’t even have sex with you”, 2GB’s Ben Fordham reported on Tuesday morning.

Envy Room salon. Picture: Jeremy Piper

Fordham said Ms Boele had been banned from the salon as a result of the exchange.

Ms Boele told The Australian it “was a poor attempt at humour and I’ve apologised”.

“Everyone deserves to feel respected in their workplace and I’ll do better.”

Staff at the Envy Room declined to comment when approached on Tuesday afternoon.

Ms Boele has apologised for her comments to a hairdresser.

Ms Boele narrowly lost Bradfield against incumbent Liberal Paul Fletcher at the last election.

She has styled herself as the “shadow representative” for the seat. After the redistribution in NSW, Ms Boele is broadly understood to be more likely to win the seat.

Ms Boele’s office is 50m down the road from the Envy Room with a large image of Ms Boele looking out onto the Pacific Hwy. The office was closed on Tuesday but a whiteboard behind the glass front door read “The federal seat of Bradfield is marginal for the first time since 1949. Do come in for a chat”.

Liberal candidate for Bradfield, Gisele Kapterian, in Lindfield. Picture: Justin Lloyd.

Mr Fletcher announced his retirement from politics and Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian is trying to keep the seat in Liberal hands.

Ms Boele, Climate 200’s best hope of taking a Liberal-held seat, was last week forced to defend her credibility after the progressive fundraising body claimed it was not engaging in “misleading push polling” for labelling Boele as a “clean-energy executive” and “local mum” in a “message-testing” blitz to voters.

Ms Boele’s office sits down the road from the hairdresser. Picture: Jeremy Piper

Ms Boele has ramped up her campaign of 1000-plus volunteers to snare blue-ribbon Sydney-based Bradfield – after nearly pulling off victory in 2022 – but the Liberals have warned voters of the progressive group’s “hidden agenda”.

The retirement of Bradfield incumbent Mr Fletcher – who held the seat in 2022 with a 4.2 per cent margin – has emboldened Ms Boele and Climate 200 in the knife-edge race with Ms Kapterian.

Ms Boele, pictured with Simon Holmes a Court, has rebranded herself as the Shadow Representative for Bradfield.

The Liberals have zeroed in on Climate 200’s “misleading” use of “push polling” by pollster uComms, most recently on Thursday last week in the seat of Monash, but also last month in Bradfield.

“Teal politicians talk a big game about integrity and transparency, but their actions tell a different story,” Liberal campaign spokesman James Paterson said.

“From misleading push polling to refusing to say who they would support in a hung parliament, they consistently hide their true agenda from voters. Voters deserve honesty, not political games from a group that claims to be independent while marching in lock-step with the Greens.”

In that Bradfield polling, sent via text message to residents, uComms spruiked Ms Boele’s role as a “clean-energy executive” and her credentials as a “local mum”, before asking voters if they had heard of her.

Another question proposed that Ms Boele was “fed up with her community being taken for granted”, and that she would “stand as a representative of the people” and “reflect the community’s values”.