Libs challenge Bradfield result in court after recount flips seat to teal

The Liberal Party has lodged a court dispute over the ultra-tight North Sydney seat result, after their candidate Gisele Kapterian’s initial victory was overturned on recount, handing the win to teal independent Nicolette Boele.

Nicolette Boele thanks her supporters after being declared the winner of the federal seat of Bradfield in Sydney, on June 4, 2025. Picture: AAP

The Liberals are challenging the election result in the North Sydney seat of Bradfield, lodging a dispute over the final count in court.

Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian initially won the May 3 contest by just eight votes, but the narrow victory triggered a recount.

Teal independent Nicolette Boele was declared the ultimate winner, with the Australian Electoral Commission revealing in June the recount showed she was victorious by 24 votes.

“This isn’t calling into question the process. This is us availing ourselves of that process, which we’re entitled to,” a senior Liberal source said.

“The results (between the counts) were different and it was so tight.

“We’re challenging the result and we’ll wait to see the outcome.”

A party is able to challenge an election result at the court of disputed returns within 40 days of the return of the writs.

Should the court find the final result was an error, a by-election is triggered.

While the teals swept up several seats in 2022, two of the six teals are no longer in parliament.

One is Kylea Tink, who’s seat of North Sydney was lost in the redistribution, and the other was Zoe Daniel who lost her seat of Goldstein to its former Liberal MP Tim Wilson.

More broadly, the Liberals suffered major losses at the election, losing more than a dozen seats while Labor landed a massive majority and ended up holding 94 upper house seats.