‘No such thing as a safe seat’: Teals expand reach in Liberal heartland

Follow our live coverage of the 2025 federal election here.

The NSW Liberals will surrender another blue-ribbon seat on Sydney’s north shore, with teal candidate Nicolette Boele to seize Bradfield in her second shot at the electorate.

Boele, who narrowly missed out on unseating then-Coalition minister Paul Fletcher in 2022, claimed the seat on Saturday night after a tight race with Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian, who had planned to contest the neighbouring electorate of North Sydney until it was abolished in a boundary redistribution.

Nicolette Boele speaks at her election party in Artarmon on Saturday night.Credit: Wolter Peeters

Boele will join fellow NSW teal MPs Sophie Scamps (Mackellar), Zali Steggall (Warringah) and Allegra Spender (Wentworth) on the crossbench.

That would leave just one Liberal in the party’s former heartland, with Julian Leeser in Berowra now the sole MP for the area stretching from the Sydney Harbour Bridge to Ku-ring-gai Chase.

Speaking at her election night party at a distillery in Artarmon, attended by more than 500 campaign volunteers, Boele stopped short of claiming the seat, insisting it was still too close to call.

Supporters of independent Nicolette Boele on election night at the Buckle Cafe & Distillery in Artarmon.Credit: Wolter Peeters

“What we do know in Bradfield is that we have made Australian political history,” Boele told her supporters. “We have proven that there is no such thing as a safe seat.”

Boele said her campaign took the high road and ran a “really positive campaign”.

“I am so proud of the campaign that we have run, it’s been positive, it’s been grassroots [and] I could not be prouder ... and like so much of Australia tonight, I think that Bradfield has turned up tonight to say no to the kind of campaign the other side ran.”

Kapterian, a Salesforce executive and former Liberal staffer, was hastily installed as the Bradfield candidate late last year after securing the backing of former premier Gladys Berejiklian and former federal treasurer Joe Hockey.

Allegra Spender lodging her vote at the Clovelly Surf Life Saving Club. She has been returned as Wentworth’s MP.Credit: Kate Geraghty

Fletcher surprised colleagues by announcing his retirement in early December, leaving Kapterian less than five months to campaign in Bradfield.

Just weeks before his resignation announcement, Fletcher gave a speech to the right-leaning Sydney Institute, where he denounced the teals as a “Green left con job”. “The intention was to get people to think ‘that nice teal candidate could almost be a Liberal – I’ll vote for her’,” he told the think tank.

Boele, meanwhile, retained a campaign office in Gordon after her 2022 loss and styled herself as the shadow MP for Bradfield. She had significant backing from Climate 200, as well as hundreds of local donors.

Warringah has remained in teal hands, giving Steggall a third term after having unseated former prime minister Tony Abbott in 2019, while northern beaches GP Scamps hung on in Mackellar.

Mackellar was seen as the teal seat most likely to be won back by the Liberals, with the party preselecting former NSW RSL president James Brown as the candidate.

In Wentworth, once a Liberal blue-ribbon seat that was held by former prime minister Malcolm Turnbull, teal MP Spender retained her seat.

Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.