Teal MPs going postal after Tim Wilson strikes Goldstein and Amelia Hamer surges in Kooyong

Victorian teals were celebrating ‘victory’ on election night, but now it’s the Liberals who may get the last laugh with upset wins.

Goldstein Liberal candidate Tim Wilson and Kooyong Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer. Pictures: Luis Enrique Ascui

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Tim Wilson has become the first Liberal to turn back the teal tide, surging to the lead in Goldstein and defying the national election trend to give his devastated party hope of a future in inner-suburban Melbourne.

With Mr Wilson on the brink of victory over Zoe Daniel, colleague Amelia Hamer in ­Kooyong is also whittling away teal MP Monique Ryan’s margin, raising the prospect of two Liberals claiming back once blue-­ribbon territory.

Old-fashioned letter-writing, door-knocking and community meetings in an era of digital and social media campaigns have been credited with taking Ms Hamer to the brink of turning back the teal tide in Kooyong.

The Liberal candidate knocked on an estimated 10,000 doors throughout the inner-east Melbourne electorate over the past year in the fiercely contested campaign to reclaim the heartland seat from the teals.

Mr Wilson surged to a 684-vote lead on Tuesday over Ms Daniel in Goldstein while Ms Hamer has closed the gap on Dr Ryan to finish the day’s counting 1002 votes behind in Kooyong.

Neither Liberal has claimed victory but political analysts have declared Mr Wilson as the likely winner in Goldstein while ­Kooyong could be decided by as few as 50 votes. “We are cautiously optimistic,” Ms Hamer said on Tuesday. “The postal vote trend is very much going in our favour, but you never know.”

In a further boost for the embattled Liberals, their candidate in the new West Australian seat of Bullwinkel, Matt Moran, edged in front for the first time on Tuesday, as postal vote flows broke his way.

For both Mr Wilson and Ms Hamer to have scored swings – 2.16 per cent in Goldstein and 2 per cent in Kooyong – represents a remarkable result after both turned teal in 2022. The achievement looks more significant when you consider voters from coast to coast turned their backs on Peter Dutton’s Coalition on Saturday, delivering Labor a national swing of almost 2.5 per cent and a ­historic majority for Anthony ­Albanese.

Ms Hamer pointed to seat-­specific factors that both candidates were able to tap into with “hyper-local” campaigns.

“What’s quite clear is that we have turned it around and we’re listening and we’ve run an effective, fresh, local campaign which has made people go ‘despite what’s happened nationally we’re happy to support you’,” she said.

“The question is what are the similarities between the seats (Kooyong and Goldstein) and the campaigns that were run?

“I think what Tim and I did was run hyper-localised campaigns where we tried to speak to our communities in a personalised and direct way, although there was national messages of course.”

The potential up-ending of the expected twin teal victories – both Ms Ryan and Ms Daniel declared victory at election parties on Saturday – has been powered by thousands of postal votes breaking the Liberals’ way.

In Goldstein, Mr Wilson is getting 64.5 per cent of the postals and in Kooyong it’s 62 per cent. And there are thousands more to be counted in both seats. Mr Wilson declined to comment.

Ms Hamer took a quick break from the stressful count in Kooyong on Tuesday afternoon to take her beloved dog and campaign companion, Juno, for a walk through Grace Park in Hawthorn. “We had a national swing against the party, but we’ve had a 2 per cent swing in our favour here,” she said.

While Victoria’s teal seats are on the brink of reverting to blue, the same can’t be said for the other seats that swung to the independents in WA and NSW in 2022 with all sticking by the teals.

Liberal insiders have credited Ms Hamer’s strong on-the-ground campaign with helping turn the result around. They say 10,000 homes in the electorate have been doorknocked over the past year and countless meetings with community groups and networking functions held.

Liberals acknowledge the party’s social media campaign in Kooyong – in fact, they say this was a problem across the country – did not cut through and accept the teal digital campaign was far superior.

“A lot of people in Kooyong still expect to be written to,” one Liberal said. “They appreciate a formal letter explaining to them why Amelia is asking them to vote for her … it’s old-school, but personal.”

Perhaps because of the ­inadequacies of the Liberal digital operation, Ms Hamer was forced to embark on what some have ­described as an “old fashioned” personalised campaign that ­involved writing directly to ­thousands of voters, particularly older residents. There is no doubting a favourable redistribution carving off wealthy sections of the abolished seat of Higgins into Kooyong gave Ms Hamer a launch pad for her campaign.

“It moved the margin very slightly, we went from a 2.7 per cent margin to a 2.2 per cent margin,” she said.

“Even on that starting point we’ve still achieved a swing. The question is do we get enough of a swing to get across the line?”

Analysis of Kooyong’s new booths shows strong support for Ms Hamer in redistributed areas such as Toorak, Malvern and ­Armadale. Ms Hamer secured almost 62 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote in the ­Toorak booth, 57.7 per cent in ­Toorak West and 52 per cent in ­Malvern. However, in the Prahran booth, a Greens-leaning pocket of Melbourne’s inner north, Dr Ryan secured 66 per cent of the vote.

Australian Electoral Commission figures show that in some of the traditional Kooyong booths in Hawthorn and Key, the teal MP led the vote.

Asked by The Australian how the Coalition’s error-riddled national campaign impacted on Kooyong, Ms Hamer cited a lack of substantial economic policies and a failure to roll them out early enough as being negatives among Kooyong voters. “The first thing was people, ­especially in Kooyong, want us to have mature, sensible and coherent policies and they want to see that relatively early on,” Ms Hamer said. “But I think a lot of our policy was too little too late and the feedback I was getting from people was they would have liked to have seen more substantial economic reform much earlier.

“People wanted to see us as a safe pair of hands so we needed to tell them early these are all the things you’re going to get with the Coalition and make it clear what a Coalition government would mean for Australia.”

Ms Hamer acknowledged there was frustration in the Kooyong community about the Coalition’s policy agenda and detail.

“I think people in Kooyong get really frustrated when they feel like they’re not being treated as adults by political parties giving them mature and sensible policies,” she said.