Berowra – Australia 2025

Big announcement from the last two weeks that local journalist Tina Brown will be running with backing from the Teals

@Hawkeye I don’t rate her chances as particularly good tbh.

Liberal hold.

This seat is now a better prospect for an IND win than North Sydney was in 2022 – though of course that is after the Liberal primary has already taken an 8% hit so one wonders how much more there could be – another 5-7%? Could be enough to lose.
Although the 2PP margin is less than North Sydney was, the Labor primary vote is lower, therefore easier to get into second and watch the preferences flow home.
Could be one to watch. The cut of 2.3% 2PP margin via additional of the Hornsby booths may have moved this into an IND sweet spot.

I sense Julian Leeser will hold.

@Insider, interesting point. The narrower margin now could be because the trough following a hit to the Liberal primary vote. The ship has sailed for the teal candidate. Add to that, moderate liberals are probably fans of Leeser.

There are teal-ish areas along the eastern edge of the electorate i.e. along Pennant Hills Road and the Northern (Train) Line as well as the Pacific Motorway.

Julian Leeser will easily hold.

I saw in the AFR today that Heather Ruddock, the wife of Philip Ruddock, is openly endorsing Tina Brown – the teal candidate. Heather quit the Liberals last year after Philip lost preselection for the Hornsby mayoralty.

Interesting Labor votes best in.epping and hornsby

No idea why this wasn’t a teal target in 2022 – perhaps it really was the case no strong candidate came forward for Climate 200 funding.

Greens actually do reasonably well here and would have some profile from local government, and Labor have pockets of strength too. But the same is true of the Eastern Suburbs and Northern beaches. The narrative that only a teal can beat the LNP checks out and combines with the aforementioned cracks in the Liberals base, and Dutton potentially having an even worse image than Morrison here.

If Bradfield is winnable for teals then so is this seat.

I don’t think it’s hard to understand why this wasn’t a teal target.

The teals had six main targets in 2022 which was a lot! The fact that they won them all can make us forget what a perfect result that was. Spreading their resources further out wouldn’t have helped them achieve that goal.

Berowra is a bit interesting but I think it’s much less attractive for the teals than Bradfield.

I think Bradfield should’ve been more a serious teal target in 2022 if Climate 200 wanted a more inland pickup. I agree with Ben that Bradfield is more of a target. The teal candidate has been campaigning for years and plus the Liberal, Paul Fletcher, is retiring.

Berowra has teal-ish areas (as I mentioned above) but the semi-rural areas north of Dural are solidly Liberal.

Seems as if the firing gun has already started. Apologies for the paywall link but it appears that the Liberal Party have started off by pulling their advertising from The Post and then accusing Tina Brown of denying them an ability to advertise.

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=DTWEB_WRE170_a_GGL&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.dailytelegraph.com.au%2Fnews%2Fnsw%2Fteal-candidates-newspaper-accused-of-pulling-liberals-articles%2Fnews-story%2Fdafecc0b946aa292bf16b752d61d16c5&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium&v21=HIGH-Segment-1-SCORE

Julian Lesser claims that Peter Dutton might put a referendum to deport people convicted of anti-Semitic crimes if the policy is blocked by the High Court. I wonder how would this fare?

@Marh Will fare pretty well in the Jewish committee but lukewarm everywhere else. This will absolutely fail, probably worse than the voice.

I don’t think a referendum or plebiscite is even needed to deport such visa-holding criminals.

I think people have had an enough of referendums for now people will not appreciate the waste of money and it would fail.

Labor have chosen Benson Koschinski again for this seat.

@Tommo9, pretty much assuming referendums might never become successful again given the crossbench is now much stronger meaning it might needs full cross-party support (not even Bipartisan support) which is a challenge given the need to convince both the Greens and One Nation to support the same referendum which only if one party opposes the referendum, it will trigger an official No campaign which history shows at that level, can defeat a Lib-Lab supported Referendums.

All but two of the successful referendums are above 70% (all have non-existent or very small official No Campaign) with two closer successful referendums are because it positively benefited the majority of Australians within a majority of states and all of these referendums had less crossbenchers to contend with.

Philip Ruddock, former Hornsby mayor and former Howard Government minister, appeared in a video for the teal independent candidate Tina Brown. It was regarding Hornsby Bushland. I mentioned earlier that Philip’s wife, Heather Ruddock, openly endorsed the teal candidate.

We can believe John Hewson and Malcolm Turnbull (and Malcolm Fraser before he died) disassociating themselves from the Liberals, but Philip Ruddock is a bit of a surprise.

@Marh, I wouldn’t assume that referendums will never be successful again, even if they are opposed. In this case, if you could frame the argument as the people vs unelected, unrepresentative judges then it becomes much harder to oppose. Easy to argue we need to fix this so we (we as in parliament particularly but we the people in the abstract) are sovereign. This is as opposed to the Voice where not only could you argue correctly this could be legislated now but also that the affect could be to neuter parliament by providing a practical veto, depending on how the High Court ruled on the inevitable challenge.

Not that much of a surprise Votante. Ruddock has always seemed the kind of person who would struggle in a social setting dominated by industrial workers, as opposed to say ScoMo or Tony Abbot, so a Liberal party moving towards non uni educated workers is always going to more uncomfortable for Ruddick than the Teals, which has a sort of Melbourne Club for women kind of vibe.

Ruddock has always been a small l liberal.He supported Amnesty International(I don’t know whether he still does given their left capture).

Greens have announced their candidate as Martin Cousins.

Fusion have announced their candidate as Brendan Clarke, contesting his 4th Federal Election for Berowra. He becomes one of 5 candidates that have run in 4 or more elections for Fusion and the previous amalgamated parties.

@MLV regarding Referendums to change the Constitution due to the High Court Ruling , it would be more like the 1951 referendum to ban Communist (namely to ban the Australian Communist Party) which was narrowly defeated despite being in a period where there was a strong appetite to oppose Communism.

Goes further than that Re: Ruddock. He got rolled for the mayoralty of Hornsby Council by Warren Waddell and the accusation is that it was orchestrated by Leeser and Kean.

There is a lot of Bad Blood in this election.

I’m getting the vibes the Liberals will hold here, Julian Leeser is a strong MP and a credible moderate in the party. I would expect Tina Brown to finish second and make the 2CP, but not win. There should be a slight Labor swing as a result here, but it could also cause a small Liberal swing on the 2PP.

@Hawkeye_au – makes sense. It feels weird that Leeser, Kean and Ruddock do all seem to be moderates, but it’s a bit odd there’s two opposing sides here. I will admit I thought the Ruddocks were supporting Brown off the basis that the Liberals dumped him, but then the fact he’s a small-L Liberal gives further context here. Thanks for your insights.

@Sabena are you saying that supporting Amnesty International is a bad thing? Surely not.

Crikey reporting that Tina Brown could be a chance here

Crikey is very pro crossbench, I’d take them on something like this with a grain of salt.

Simon,
In a word yes.They have been captured by the left.

“They have been captured by the left.”

“Captured”? Like a rogue ship at sea? Did Greta Thunberg storm the offices of Amnesty International with a battalion of woke interns and say, *“Alright lads, this charity now belongs to socialism”*?

Amnesty International calls out authoritarianism, abuses of power, human trafficking, torture, censorship, and war crimes—*regardless* of who’s doing them. But when they criticise *your* side? Suddenly it’s a “capture.” That’s not critique. That’s copium.

By this logic, any organisation that says, “Hey maybe don’t disappear journalists” is clearly on the radical left. Because apparently respecting human rights is now a partisan position?

If you genuinely think Amnesty International has been “captured,” maybe ask yourself: *captured from what*? From the golden age when human rights were just a casual hobby for conservative think tanks? Please.

@ Sabena
I am keen to hear your views. On what issues do you feel Amensty International has become left-leaning?

Word is that Tina Brown has this one in the bag. Labor & green preferences & Labor tactical voters on the move. A bit sad for Julian Leeser but he should have walked out of the Liberals after the Voice like Andrew Gee did with the Nationals in Calare. Gee will win & Leeser will not win Berowra. What a poisoned chalice the Dutton Voice campaign has been for the LNP?

@Roger Roughead April 26, 2025 at 6:27 pm
From what I’ve heard, Tina Brown is likely to get into the 2CP count, but whether she will win Berowra is still unclear, but the person I talk to seems to think Leeser will hold on this time.

Why dont the teals target some of the more right wing Liberals. It seems pointless targeting someone like Julian leeser who is moderate and uncontroversial

I’ve been on Cherrybrook prepoll and most are taken Tina Browns HTV and around 30% taking only hers

@Roughead, whose word is that, Roger?

@Up the dragons April 26, 2025 at 6:41 pm
https://www.communityindependentsproject.org/ci-mps-candidates

The site I just linked lists all the Teal candidates and they are targeting some of the more right wing Liberals like Dutton (Dickson), Sukkar (Deakin), Ley (Farrer), and Groom (idk the candidate but ik the area is very conservative)

yes – Teal candidates are running against right wing Lib candidates. I guess that if you are happy with the LNP under Peter Dutton then you will be happy with a right wing Lib. If you yearn for earlier years of the liberals where the focus was on making money but still giving lip service to caring about humanity then you won’t want a “moderate” who just toes the line with the conservative mob

No one was talking about Bradfield ahead of the 2022 election. Then Boele came shockingly close to winning. (And then all of a sudden everyone was talking about Bradfield as if we all saw it coming!) So I believe it, that Berowra could be close this time too.

I was suspecting Berowra to be a potential pickup mainly bc of it’s geographical proximity to the other Teal seats in Northern Sydney (I’m unfamiliar with Sydney geography but would be correct if I called it the North Shore?)

However I never really got any decisive polling nor anecdotes to back it up so I couldn’t really satiate my suspicions

@Lurking Westie the seat is mainly classical “north shore” with a few twists
The north parts from Hornsby and north are more affordable areas than the lower north shore and recently have had an increase in apartments.
To the west there is Dural and surrounding Hills District which is still a strong Liberal Party true believers/bible belt
Would expect Liberal party vote to increase the further west you go in the seat

The booths starting from Cherrybrook and heading north-west into the Hills Shire are where the Liberal margin gets padded in this seat. The rest of this seat is relatively winnable for a teal but it’s hard to see them actually winning the seat thanks to the surplus of Liberal votes in this section.

North of Dural is semi-rural and low-density. They’re not very teal-ish areas like I mentioned before. To have a shot, Tina Brown would need high support in the southern and eastern parts especially those near railway lines and the Pacific Highway.

I can see why people are talking up her prospects. There’s a redistribution made it more teal-friendly.

Julian Leeser might face the scenario as last election in now teal seats – Liberal voters saying “I like you but not your party”.

The Liberal vote in the east is very soft – softer than it was elsewhere on the North Shore. Does this counter the impact of the conservative western end of the electorate, or does it just make it more likely that Koschinski will end up in the 2CP against Leeser?

I don’t know how much can be read into anecdotes about people taking HTVs, but if Brown is performing as well in Cherrybrook as Ben’s comment might suggest, that’s big. With the exception of Glenhaven and the Greater Dural area (as I like to call it), I would expect Cherrybrook to be the least Teal-friendly part of the electorate.

Regarding Berowa yes it is more conservative than the currently held Teal seats and Bradfield. However, some interesting points.
a. It is one of only 5 seats that that voted for the Republic that are still Liberal held others being (Sturt, Menzies, Deakin, Bradfield).
a. It is one of only 13 seats in the currently where the Voice result was higher than the notional 2022 Labor TPP. One of only 3 that are Liberal held others being Mitchell and Bradfield
I agree Cherrybrook (part of the Hills District culturally) and the Greater Dural area are least teal friendly and more socially conservative. The Area below the M2 is more like Bennelong a middle class ethnic area with a decent Liberal vote
I still think the Teal will fall short. However, as Labor cannot win the seat unlike Bennelong they will run dead so the Teal can make the 2CP.

I think this will end up 2CP (as opposed to 2PP).

Leeser has been getting more and more aggressive in his tone through his campaign, suggesting that he might be rattled.

At this stage, I’m still calling Liberal Hold, but don’t be surprised if this gets dragged out to preferences and Leeser falls over the line.

Leeser was a YES for The Voice, Berowra voted 53% NO, presuming there was still a NO presence at Prepoll and Polling Day in the division, perhaps potential volunteers find it a bit hard to get enthused about returning Leeser to Canberra?
I know I would.

I agree that the Leeser is getting more concerned. I’ve seen pictures of anti-teal signs (linking teals with Greens). I’m not sure if they are from Leeser himself. There’s been some bad blood too.

I don’t think Tina Brown has a high-profile like Nicolette Boele in Bradfield does.