LIB 2.5% vs IND
Incumbent MP
Paul Fletcher, since 2009.
Geography
Northern Sydney. Bradfield covers the Ku-ring-gai council area and most of the Willoughby council area. Key suburbs include Wahroonga, St Ives, Pymble, Turramurra, Killara, Lindfield, Gordon, Roseville, Castle Cove, Chatswood, Willoughby and Artarmon.
Redistribution
Bradfield shifted south, taking in about one third of the abolished seat of North Sydney. Specifically Bradfield took in most of the Willoughby council area, including Artarmon, Castlecrag, Middle Cove, Naremburn, Northbridge and Willoughby. The suburb of Hornsby was moved from Bradfield to Berowra, so the electoral boundary now mostly follows the local government boundary between Hornsby and Ku-ring-gai. The seats of North Sydney and Bradfield both had a teal independent in the final two-candidate-preferred count, and the changes reduced the Liberal margin against those independents from 4.2% to 2.5%.
History
The seat was created for the 1949 election, and has always been held by the Liberal Party.
It was first won by former Prime Minister Billy Hughes in 1949. Hughes had been an MP since he won election to the NSW colonial parliament in 1894, and had then held the federal seats of West Sydney, Bendigo and North Sydney. He had originally served as a Labor prime minister before leaving the party over the issue of conscription and leading the new Nationalist party. He eventually ended up in Robert Menzies’ Liberal Party and was the last remaining member of the first federal Parliameent to hold a seat.
Hughes died in office in 1952, and the ensuing by-election was won by state Liberal MP Harry Turner.
Turner held the seat for the next twenty-two years, and never rose to a ministerial role during twenty years of Coalition government. He retired at the 1974 election, and was succeeded by David Connolly.
Connolly also held Bradfield for twenty-two years, and was expected to take on a ministerial role after the 1996 election, but lost preselection to Brendan Nelson, former president of the Australian Medical Association.
Nelson won Bradfield in 1996 and quickly rose through the ranks of the Liberal government, joining the cabinet following the 2001 election and serving first as Minister for Education and then Minister for Defence.
Following the defeat of the Howard government in 2007, Brendan Nelson was elected Leader of the Opposition, narrowly defeating Malcolm Turnbull in the party room. His leadership was troubled by low poll ratings and being undermined by Turnbull and his supporters, and Nelson lost a leadership spill in September 2008. Nelson resigned from Parliament in 2009, triggering a by-election in Bradfield.
The 2009 Bradfield by-election was held in December, and was a contest between the Liberal Party and the Greens, with the ALP declining to stand a candidate, along with a field of twenty other candidates, including nine candidates for the Christian Democratic Party. While the Greens substantially increased their vote, Liberal candidate Paul Fletcher comfortably retained the seat. Fletcher has been re-elected five times.
Candidates
Sitting Liberal MP Paul Fletcher is not running for re-election.
Assessment
If the teal independents were to pick up an extra seat in 2025, Bradfield is a very clear frontrunner. The seat has taken in about a third of an abolished seat that has been represented by an independent for the last three years, and the previous form of Bradfield had a strong independent of a similar style and political ideology in 2022.
Nicolette Boele has been actively campaigning for Bradfield since her 2022 defeat. She will be a serious contender, but the particular circumstances that led to independents winning in northern Sydney in 2022 is not quite so present now.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Paul Fletcher | Liberal | 43,562 | 45.0 | -15.3 | 43.7 |
| Nicolette Boele | Independent | 20,198 | 20.9 | +20.9 | 22.9 |
| David Brigden | Labor | 16,902 | 17.5 | -3.7 | 17.7 |
| Martin Cousins | Greens | 8,960 | 9.3 | -4.4 | 8.6 |
| Janine Kitson | Independent | 3,018 | 3.1 | +3.1 | 2.4 |
| Rob Fletcher | United Australia | 2,496 | 2.6 | +0.7 | 2.3 |
| Michael Lowe | One Nation | 1,568 | 1.6 | +1.6 | 1.5 |
| Others | 1.0 | ||||
| Informal | 3,616 | 3.6 | -0.5 |
2022 two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Paul Fletcher | Liberal | 52,447 | 54.2 | 52.5 | |
| Nicolette Boele | Independent | 44,257 | 45.8 | 47.5 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Paul Fletcher | Liberal | 54,685 | 56.5 | -10.0 | 56.2 |
| David Gordon Brigden | Labor | 42,019 | 43.5 | +10.0 | 43.8 |
Booths have been divided into three parts. Polling places in the Ku-ring-gai council area have been split in two while those in the Willoughby council area have been grouped together.
The Liberal Party won 55.8% of the two-candidate-preferred vote in North Ku-ring-gai, while independents won 50.7% in South Ku-ring-gai and 53.6% in Willoughby.
Labor came third, with a primary vote ranging from 14.4% in North Ku-ring-gai to 21.1% in Willoughby.
| Voter group | ALP prim | LIB 2CP | Total votes | % of votes |
| South Ku-ring-gai | 16.5 | 49.3 | 21,377 | 19.2 |
| North Ku-ring-gai | 14.4 | 55.8 | 19,083 | 17.1 |
| Willoughby | 21.1 | 46.4 | 16,671 | 15.0 |
| Pre-poll | 18.8 | 52.7 | 33,487 | 30.1 |
| Other votes | 17.6 | 57.2 | 20,709 | 18.6 |
Election results in Bradfield at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Liberal vs Independent), two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, independent candidates and Labor.
and the declaration prepolls and absentees are barely favouring Boele. but this will be close
364 Absentees Votes – Net 6 Vote Gain to Kapterian
22 Provisional Votes – Net 2 Vote Gain to Boele
880 Declaration Votes – Net 30 Vote Gain to Kapterian
299 Postal Votes – Net 45 Vote Gain to Kapterian
This Puts Kapterian up by 138.
Seems the Lib retain projection by ABC was a bit premature, this is down to the wire
I’ll pose this question – if climate is what the Teals are all about (as some claim), and climate is becoming less relevant as an issue, then why did so many Teals get reelected?
@ Nicholas
I do not see climate becoming less of an issue this election far from it. Dutton said he would scrap the 2030 emissions target and the vehicle emissions standards. I was looking at a possible future scenario say 2031 (assuming Labor is still in power) where Labor has made enough progress on the energy tranistion/decarbonisation that it cannot be reversed so the Libs just reluctantly accept climate action and decide to move on. In such a scenario politics may revert to an economic divide rather than one of social values. At a NSW state level we see a bit of this. If we compare booth results for example Mosman and the lower Northern Beaches between Federal/status results. Also at a state level in NSW the Labor party is massively overperfoming the Federal party in the Hunter seats as there is no climate wars and the fault line is an economic one. If there are no Wedge issues politcs can revert to the socio-economic divide. The question is if climate ceases to be a wedge what can be the next wedge Trans issues, Republic, Changing the flag etc. Once upon the Vietnam War was a wedge, state funding of Catholic schools, Recognition of the Peoples of Republic of China these are no longer wedge issues.
@Nimalan
There are other comments on this thread which appear to suggest that climate is less relevant now than it was in 2022. I think VoteCompass also found a drastic change in public opinion on the question of whether the government should do more or less to combat climate change.
What I was really getting at in my question is whether there is more to the Teals – both in their platforms and why people vote for them – than climate. Or do people think the Teals will disappear in a world where we’ve moved past that issue?
@Nimalan, that is what I thought because if Liberals under Sussan Ley (or any other future leader) ever attempts to allow t to do a descent climate policy that is similar/competitive to Labor, it would have angered the National Party and Maverick Liberals MP’s who may create threats to separate, and many rank-and-file members (including Conservative Influencers, Advance, Australia, IPA and Sky-after-Dark types , etc) who run a massive campaign to encourage conservatives to drop their loyalty to the Libs and move to One Nation and Libertarian Party instead.
@Nicholas ‘… , then why did so many Teals get reelected?’
Probable Liberal women voters bought into the fantasy WHY CAN”T WE ALL GET ALONG?/aka Consensus. Hawke won 4 elections spinning that while the economy went down the gurgler.
They’ll change their tune once they’ve gotta sell the house to pay that unrealised Capital Gains Tax. Serves ’em right.
On Hawke, Albo is Hawke, without the pomposity. If they’d given Bill a miss and gone with Albo in 2013, he woulda wiped the floor with either of Abbott or Turnbull, imo.
@Nicholas My view is that the teals are the proof of the cultural split that has occurred in the Liberal party. It is true that climate was less of a concern in this election but the direction of the Liberals overall has run totally against the small-l Liberal voter. As long as the Liberals continue to follow the direction of the US Republicans we will see the divide grow and the teal constituency will be embedded. If we consider where the US party coalitions are now, social liberals have left the Republican tent and that is the direction that the Liberal party in Australia, along with the conservative base and donor and media networks, are taking their cues from.
The Liberal Party is supposed to be a liberal party. It’s not possible to be any more moderate than a liberal.
Take the candidate who was disendorsed during the campaign for saying women shouldn’t be serving in combat – a pretty mainstream opinion, I woulda thought, but even that was too scary for Dutton or whoever he was listening to.
@Adda, I don’t a even more conservative Liberal Party would even be comparable to todays Republican Party though given under Trump, GOP already to another layer by being full on conspiracy theorists and right-wing extremism, putting Liberal Party on a parity to todays GOP would require the Australia Modest and Calm Society to be overthrown.
@Nicholas
It does not surprise me the vote compass shows less support for Climate i would say that is probably an issue in Middle Australia than the teal seats partly because of weaker economic circumstance. IMHO there is greater support for climate action when there is better economic circumstances hence 2007 was a good year for a climate election as it was a time of great optimism of Australia’s future.
What would it really mean for politics to realign along economics nowadays? The platform the Liberal Party took to the election could hardly be called fiscally conservative or economically liberal – especially on energy policy.
@ Marh
I do concur with you that in the forseeable future a Liberal leader moving towards convergence for climate change will draw a backlash from Sky After Park, IPA, membership etc. Regarding the Nats, south of the Tweed (except Barnaby) they are more pragmatic. However, at some point climate action may be irrevisable for example % of electricity generated by renewable energy and coal fired power stations that have closed cannot be reopen due to market viability. By 2028 Australia would have reduced emissions signficantly and it is not possible for Australia to start increasing it emissions. We need to see where Australia is at by 2028 in terms of % Renewable electriity and % emissions drop from 2005 levels.
If you look at the chart below pretty much all developed countries are lowering emissions while growing their economies. During the Howard era Australia’s emissions were still increasing but now it is decreasing over time and i dont think that can be reversed.
https://ourworldindata.org/co2-gdp-decoupling
Lol, the ABC just moved this to back in doubt