Federal election 2022: Carnage in Liberal heartland

Libs’ centre of gravity has collapsed into outer suburbs and regions far from inner-city seats that turned teal or Green.

Josh Frydenberg is consoled by wellwishers after the Liberal Party election bloodbath. Picture: Andrew Henshaw

The Liberals’ centre of gravity has collapsed into the outer suburbs and regions, far removed from the leafy inner-city heartland seats that turned teal or Green to pose an existential threat to the party of Menzies and Howard.

This is what the fracturing of the conservatives’ fabled “broad church” looks like after the 2022 election reckoning: Climate 200-backed independents at the centre of recast electoral maps in Sydney and Melbourne, surrounded by a sea of Labor red.

The new tribe of teals, professional, educated women from well-heeled suburbs have ripped the heart out of the Liberal Party.

The casualty list reads like a who’s who of the party’s best and brightest, not to mention the pick of its capital city real estate.

Monique Ryan, a medical specialist, has almost certainly defeated Josh Frydenberg in his Melbourne electorate of Kooyong – a seat once represented by Liberal Party founder Robert Menzies, the nation’s longest-serving PM, and later by charismatic Andrew Peacock, befitting a man who was seen as the future of the party.

Goldstein, which covers Melbourne’s inner southeast and bayside suburbs including Brighton, has been seized by former ABC foreign correspondent Zoe Daniel.

Giant killers: (clockwise from top left) Sophie Scamps, Allegra Spender, Kate Chaney, Monique Ryan, Kylea Tink and Zoe Daniel.

Once the jewel in the crown of Australian conservative politics, the Liberal presence in metropolitan Melbourne has been stripped back to Alan Tudge’s seat of Aston in the eastern suburbs.

In Malcolm Turnbull’s former east Sydney seat of Wentworth, the bright political future predicted for former Australian ambassador to Israel Dave Sharma looks to have been terminated by the teals’ Allegra Spender, daughter of the late fashion designer Carla Zampatti and Liberal mover and shaker John Spender. She joins in parliament Zali Steggall, who defeated Tony Abbott in his seat of Warringah in 2019.

The carnage spread to Sydney’s leafy north shore, with Trent Zimmerman defeated in North Sydney, former stomping ground of another treasurer in the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison government and Liberal leadership aspirant, Joe Hockey.

Further northern beaches territory for the Liberals fell when Dr Sophie Scamps took Mackellar from the Liberals’ Jason Falinski.

The Liberals’ remaining seats in Sydney are clustered on the northern and southern urban fringes, including Scott Morrison’s electorate of Cook in the Sutherland Shire. The outgoing prime minister took a hit of nearly 6 per cent to his vote there.

Look west, and Liberal territory starts only at the foot of the Blue Mountains in Lindsay, where sitting MP Melissa McIntosh put 1 per cent on her margin to be returned.

In metropolitan Perth, where the swing away from the Liberal Party topped 10 per cent, dwarfing the 4 per cent of the vote it shed nationally to lose government, the seat of Moore stands alone – but even that is in doubt.

To add insult to injury in Perth, Kate Chaney, niece of former Howard government minister and Liberal deputy leader Fred Chaney, ran down Celia Hammond in Curtin for the teals, capturing a seat once held by long-serving foreign minister and Liberal deputy leader Julie Bishop and, post-war, by senior Menzies government minister and governor-general Paul Hasluck.

Labor has its own woes in Brisbane after frontbencher Terri Butler conceded on Sunday she had lost her southside seat of Griffith, formerly held by Kevin Rudd, to the Australian Greens, who also picked up the prize of Ryan in the dress-circle inner-west and are closing in on the electorate of Brisbane, also at Liberal expense.

But for the Liberals you have to look far afield for bright spots on the electoral map. Two were in Tasmania, where Bridget Archer held onto the “ejector seat” of Bass, breaking a hoodoo on the ­sitting MP being returned, and Gavin Pearce in Braddon bucked the national trend to post a 5 per cent increase in his vote.

Atop the eastern seaboard, Phillip Thompson in Townsville-based Herbert, the nation’s most marginal seat going into the 2019 election, lifted his buffer to 11 per cent.

Warren Entsch – the last man standing from the storied Class of ’96 of Coalition MPs who entered parliament when John Howard came to power – saw off a spirited challenge by Labor candidate Elida Faith in his Cairns-based seat of Leichhardt to give him bragging rights to be the Liberals’ great survivor. The sole Labor alumni still in parliament is none other than Prime Minister-elect Anthony Albanese.

Mr Entsch said he was deeply worried by the loss of so many Liberal heartland seats in the capital cities, extending to Boothby in Adelaide.

“It’s disappointing because we have lost most of our moderates out of the party,” said the gruff-spoken former crocodile farmer who went up against both Tony Abbott as PM and Scott Morrison to push for the legalisation of same-sex marriage.

“But I am still there as a regional moderate. We are going to have to rebuild on that. I just hope the voters in those seats realise what they have actually done by going with independents.

“Let’s see whether or not these so-called teal candidates have any capacity to do what Simon Holmes a Court wants them to do in terms of implementing his agenda.”

The election broke the nexus of the frontier states of Queensland and Western Australia to underwrite the Coalition’s federal fortunes. Backing up from the landslide re-election of Mark McGowan’s state Labor government in March last year, Labor will pick up at least four Perth seats – Swan, Pearce, Hasluck and Tangney – on Saturday’s double-digit swing away from the Liberal Party in WA.

Outside inner Brisbane, the Sunshine State remains a fortress for the Coalition, with the Liberal National Party set to retain 21 of 30 federal seats. Labor’s haul of Queensland seats could fall from six to five if Brisbane goes to the Greens.

The National Party is also solid in regional NSW and regional Victoria, and set to hold all 16 federal seats.