Libs willing burn $1m to save Frydenberg’s seat

The Victorian Liberal Party is preparing to spend up to $1 million to save Josh Frydenberg’s heartland seat of Kooyong.

The Liberal party will spend “whatever it takes:" to keep Treasurer Josh Frydenberg’s seat. Picture: Gary Ramage

The Victorian Liberal Party is preparing to spend up to $1 million to save Josh Frydenberg’s heartland seat of Kooyong, amid alarm that key city seats will be swept away at the May election.

Senior Liberals said the party had initially allocated $500,000 to fight for the Treasurer’s seat but was prepared to “spend whatever it takes’’ to save the electorate made famous by former prime minister Robert Menzies.

The $1m figure is being openly discussed among party figures, who have made it clear that Koo­yong will be the “line in the sand” seat in Victoria.

The hardest-working marginal-seat MPs can spend up to $1m in a campaign but the fact the Liberal Party is considering the same cash injection for a once rock-solid seat underpins the ­extent to which it is facing a rising Labor tide in Victoria.

Just weeks from handing down a pre-election budget, Mr Frydenberg is intensifying campaigning in Kooyong, which is held by a two-party-preferred margin of 12.8 per cent, after the party was blindsided in the area at last year’s Victorian election.

The Kooyong 200 Club, one of the party’s chief electorate-based fundraising groups, has been put on notice that more may be needed to save the Liberals’ safest seat in Victoria. The Kooyong 200 Club had a surplus of $460,000 last financial year, electoral authority documents show. More funds poured in after a recent fundraiser. Mr Frydenberg is popular in his seat and relentless in his ability to woo party members.

Climate and refugee activist ­Julian Burnside QC yesterday ­announced his candidacy for the Greens in Kooyong, launching his bid to defeat Mr Frydenberg alongside party leader Richard Di Natale.

Mr Frydenberg secured 58 per cent of the primary vote in 2016 but party figures are anxious that the so-called doctors’ wives phenomenon and inner-city, soft-left gentrification factors that struck in the Victorian election have exposed the Treasurer to ­potential defeat.

In 1994, Greens candidate Peter Singer secured 28 per cent of the primary vote at a Kooyong by-election with no Labor candidate. The Liberal Party’s Petro Georgiou secured 57 per cent.

Former Clean Energy Finance Corporation head Oliver Yates, a former Liberal, is also contesting the seat, as is Labor policy adviser Jana Stewart.

The Kooyong 200 Club often meets at Leonda by the Yarra, a function centre that attracts the biggest and wealthiest names in Victorian Liberal politics. It has been made clear that Kooyong must be saved.

Neighbouring Higgins, held by outgoing cabinet minister Kelly O’Dwyer on a margin of 8 per cent, is considered in real danger of falling as the Greens continue to unsettle the Liberal Party.

Labor and Liberal strategists are telling a different story over who is actually the Morrison government’s biggest threat in Higgins. Labor believes that if the seat falls, the Greens are more likely to take it, while federal Liberals argue the seat will be a Liberal-Labor contest.

If a uniform swing against the Coalition is assumed in Victoria, eight seats are in play. The most likely outcome is about five seats will fall if the polls continue in their current direction.

They are Corangamite and Dunkley, both ­notionally Labor seats after a redistribution, along with La Trobe (3.2 per cent), Chisholm (3.4 per cent) and Casey (4.5 per cent).

Beyond this, Labor or independents need swings of between 6.4 per cent and 7.5 per cent to pick up Deakin, Aston and Monash (formerly McMillan).

­For Mr Frydenberg, his best hope is the anti-­Coalition vote splits between Greens, Labor and independent candidates.