Amelia Hamer ‘positive’ about prising Kooyong from Monique Ryan

Polls have closed in Kooyong, the key Melbourne seat the Liberals hope to reclaim from teal independent Monique Ryan.

Monique Ryan campaigning outside early voting centre on April 22. Picture: The Australian / Nadir Kinani.

Polls have closed in Kooyong, the key Melbourne seat the Liberals hope to reclaim from teal independent Monique Ryan.

Dr Ryan won the formerly safe Liberal seat off Josh Frydenberg at the 2022 election and currently holds it by a 2.2 per cent margin, according to Antony Green, against the Liberals.

As the polls neared their close on Saturday afternoon, Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer told The Australian she was feeling positive.

“You never know what people are doing in the privacy of the voting booth, but I do feel that it’s been very positive for us, so I’m really hoping we’ll have a good result tonight,” Ms Hamer said as she campaigned at Kew Primary School.

“It’s a marginal seat, I really hope we’ll get a result tonight but we’ll see what happens.”

Liberal Candidate Amelia Hamer voting on Saturday at Balwyn Primary school. Picture: David Crosling.

Dr Ryan – who also spent Saturday speaking with voters at various booths across the electorate – told The Australian on Friday she thought the race for Kooyong was “extremely close”.

Following the close of polls at 6pm, Dr Ryan’s camp was due to hold a function at the Auburn Hotel in Hawthorn East, while Ms Hamer’s team had arranged to set up just around the corner at the Tower Hotel.

Controversies have rocked both candidates during the campaign period, with the heated battle for the seat culminating in a Supreme Court win for the Liberals on Thursday against the Boroondara City Council and its one-sign per candidate restriction at an early voting centre in Kew.

Dr Ryan’s re-election campaign was hit by the emergence of two videos – one catching her husband removing a poster of Ms Hamer and another – now the subject of an AEC investigation – which appeared to reveal two of her volunteers were instructed to support her by an organisation reportedly linked to the CCP.

However Dr Ryan dismissed the notion that either incident had negatively impacted her campaign to any significant extent.

“It’s been a really difficult campaign across the board … things have been a bit heightened this time around,” Dr Ryan said on Friday.

Ms Hamer was embroiled in a controversy of her own when she was accused of not being forthcoming in declaring she owned two investment properties while she pitched herself to voters as a renter.

Ms Hamer denied the issue had negatively affected her election bid, telling The Australian on Friday the issue hadn’t come up with voters during the pre-poll period and that people understood you could be both a renter and a landlord.