IND 3.5% vs LIB
Incumbent MP
Monique Ryan, since 2022.
Geography
Eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Kooyong covers a majority of the Boroondara council area and part of the Stonnington council area, including the suburbs of Armadale, Hawthorn, Kew, Kooyong, Malvern, Canterbury, Surrey Hills, Balwyn, Toorak and parts of Camberwell.
Redistribution
Kooyong expanded south, taking in the suburbs of Kooyong, Toorak, Armadale and Malvern from the abolished seat of Higgins. Kooyong lost Mont Albert and Mont Albert North to Menzies, and lost part of Camberwell and the remainder of Glen Iris to Chisholm. These changes increased the estimated margin for Ryan from 2.9% to 3.5%.
History
Kooyong is an original federation electorate, and has always been held by conservative parties, by the Free Trade Party for the first eight years and by the Liberal Party and its predecessors since 1909. It was held from 1922 to 1994 by only three men, all of whom led the major conservative force in federal politics.
The seat was first won in 1901 by Free Trader William Knox. He was re-elected in 1903 and 1906 and became a part of the unified Liberal Party in 1909. He won re-election in 1910 but retired later that year after suffering a stroke.
The 1910 by-election was won by Liberal candidate Robert Best. Best had previously served as a colonial minister and a Protectionist Senator from 1901 to the 1910 election, when he lost his seat in the ALP’s majority victory, and had served as a minister in Alfred Deakin’s second and third governments. Best returned to Parliament, but didn’t serve in Joseph Cook’s Liberal government or Billy Hughes’ Nationalist government.
At the 1922 election, Best was challenged by lawyer John Latham, who stood for the breakaway Liberal Union, a conservative party running to personally oppose Billy Hughes’ leadership of the Nationalist Party. Despite winning the most primary votes by a large margin, Best lost to Latham on Labor preferences.
John Latham was elected as one of five MPs for the breakaway Liberal Party (two of whom had previously been Nationalist MPs and retained their seats as Liberals in 1922). The Nationalists lost their majority due to gains for the Liberal Party and Country Party, and were forced to go into coalition, and the Country Party demanded Billy Hughes’ resignation as Prime Minister. With Stanley Bruce taking over as Prime Minister, the five Liberals, including Latham, effectively rejoined the Nationalist Party, and Latham won re-election in 1925 as a Nationalist.
Latham served as Attorney-General in the Bruce government from 1925 to 1929, when the Nationalists lost power, and Bruce himself lost his seat. Latham became Leader of the Opposition, but yielded the leadership to former Labor minister Joseph Lyons when they formed the new United Australia Party out of the Nationalists and Labor rebels. Latham served as the unofficial Deputy Prime Minister in the first term of the Lyons government (when they governed without the need for support from the Country Party), before retiring at the 1934 election. Latham went on to serve as Chief Justice of the High Court from 1935 to 1952.
Kooyong was won in 1934 by Robert Menzies. Menzies had been elected to the Victorian state parliament in 1928 and had served as Deputy Premier in the United Australia Party government from 1932 to 1934. He was immediately appointed Attorney-General in the Lyons government. He served in the Lyons government until 1939, when he resigned from the Cabinet in protest over what he saw as the government’s inaction. This was shortly before the death of Joseph Lyons in April 1939, which was followed by the UAP electing Robert Menzies as leader, making him Prime Minister.
Menzies’ first term was rocky, with the Second World War being declared in September 1939. He managed to retain power with the support of independents at the 1940 election, but after spending months in Europe on war strategy in 1941 he returned home to opposition within the government, and was forced to resign as Prime Minister and UAP leader. He was replaced as leader by Country Party leader Arthur Fadden, who was followed soon after by Labor leader John Curtin.
Menzies worked in opposition to reform the conservative forces, who suffered a massive defeat at the 1943 election. In 1944 and 1945 he put together the new Liberal Party, which took over from the moribund United Australia Party and a number of splinter groups. He led the party to the 1946 election and won power in 1949.
Menzies held power for the next sixteen years, retaining power at elections in 1951, 1954, 1955, 1958, 1961 and 1963, and retiring in January 1966.
The 1966 Kooyong by-election was won by Andrew Peacock, then President of the Victorian Liberal Party. Peacock rose to the ministry in 1969 and served in the ministry until the election of the Whitlam government in 1972. He served as a senior frontbencher during the Whitlam government and became Minister for Foreign Affairs in the Fraser government in 1975. He moved to the Industrial Relations portfolio in 1980, but resigned from Cabinet in 1981 due to supposed meddling in his portfolio by the Prime Minister. He launched a failed challenge to Fraser’s leadership and moved to the backbench, although he returned to Cabinet in late 1982, a few months before Malcolm Fraser lost power.
After the 1983 election, Peacock was elected leader, defeating John Howard, who had served as Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party for the last few months of the Fraser government. Peacock led the party into the 1984 election, reducing the Hawke government’s majority. With rising speculation of a leadership challenge from Howard (still deputy leader) in 1985, he attempted to replace Howard as deputy leader, but the party room re-elected Howard. This caused Peacock to resign as leader and Howard was elected Leader of the Opposition. Howard led the Liberal Party to a bigger defeat in 1987. Howard was challenged by Peacock in 1989, and Peacock led the Liberal Party to the 1990 election. Despite winning a majority of the two-party preferred vote, Peacock didn’t win enough seats, and he resigned as leader immediately after the election.
Peacock remained on the frontbench under the leadership of John Hewson and Alexander Downer, and retired in 1994. Peacock was appointed Ambassador to the United States upon the election of the Howard government in 1996, and served in the role until 1999.
Kooyong was won at the 1994 by-election by Petro Georgiou, the State Director of the Victorian Liberal Party. Georgiou was a former advisor to Malcolm Fraser and a key proponent of multicultural government policies. Georgiou’s main opposition came from Greens candidate Peter Singer, due to the absence of a Labor candidate. Singer managed 28% of the primary vote, which remained a Greens record until the 2009 Higgins by-election, but it wasn’t enough to seriously challenge the Liberal hold on Kooyong.
Georgiou positioned himself strongly as a moderate within the Liberal Party and despite his impeccable credentials in the Liberal Party and as a policy advisor, he never held a frontbench role in the Howard government. He was openly critical of the Howard government’s refugee policies in the final term of the Howard government. He faced a strong preselection challenge in 2006, but managed to win more than two thirds of votes in the preselection. He managed to win re-election in 2007 with practically no swing against him, despite the Liberals suffering large swings across Australia.
In 2010, Georgiou retired, and he was succeeded by fellow Liberal Josh Frydenberg. Frydenberg was re-elected three times, and in 2018 was elected deputy leader of the Liberal Party. Frydenberg served in a number of ministerial portfolios, including as Treasurer from 2018 until 2022.
Frydenberg was defeated in 2022 by independent candidate Monique Ryan.
Assessment
The 2022 political environment was more favourable to independents than it is now, but Monique Ryan should benefit from a personal vote that will help her win a second term.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Josh Frydenberg | Liberal | 43,736 | 42.7 | -6.5 | 43.4 |
| Monique Ryan | Independent | 41,303 | 40.3 | +40.3 | 30.8 |
| Peter Lynch | Labor | 7,091 | 6.9 | -10.6 | 11.3 |
| Piers Mitchem | Greens | 6,461 | 6.3 | -14.8 | 9.8 |
| Alexandra Thom | Liberal Democrats | 1,080 | 1.1 | +1.1 | 1.4 |
| Scott Hardiman | United Australia | 1,011 | 1.0 | -0.2 | 1.2 |
| Rachael Nehmer | Animal Justice | 500 | 0.5 | -0.7 | 0.7 |
| Josh Coyne | One Nation | 741 | 0.7 | +0.7 | 0.5 |
| Others | 0.4 | ||||
| Will Anderson | Independent | 265 | 0.3 | +0.3 | 0.2 |
| Michele Dale | Hinch’s Justice Party | 177 | 0.2 | +0.1 | 0.1 |
| David Connolly | Australian Values Party | 152 | 0.1 | +0.2 | 0.1 |
| Informal | 3,046 | 2.9 | -0.1 |
2022 two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Monique Ryan | Independent | 54,276 | 52.9 | 53.5 | |
| Josh Frydenberg | Liberal | 48,241 | 47.1 | 46.5 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Josh Frydenberg | Liberal | 55,542 | 54.2 | -2.2 | 53.7 |
| Peter Lynch | Labor | 46,975 | 45.8 | +2.2 | 46.3 |
Booths have been divided into five areas: central, east, north-east, north-west and south. The “South” covers all of the areas added to Kooyong from Higgins, and thus no cover votes were cast there for Monique Ryan.
Ryan won a majority of the two-candidate-preferred vote in three of the other four areas, ranging from 53.7% in the north-west to 60.4% in the centre. The Liberal Party won 51.1% in the north-east.
The two-party-preferred vote (between Liberal and Labor) was recorded everywhere. Generally the Liberal Party did 7-9% better on the 2PP than on the 2CP. Labor won in Central but the Liberal Party won everywhere else.
| Voter group | LIB 2PP | IND 2CP | Total votes | % of votes |
| North-West | 53.9 | 53.7 | 10,921 | 9.9 |
| East | 54.9 | 54.0 | 10,894 | 9.9 |
| Central | 48.5 | 60.4 | 9,218 | 8.4 |
| South | 51.7 | 0.0 | 8,962 | 8.1 |
| North-East | 58.7 | 48.9 | 7,828 | 7.1 |
| Pre-poll | 52.5 | 38.3 | 37,574 | 34.1 |
| Other votes | 56.1 | 35.8 | 24,835 | 22.5 |
Election results in Kooyong at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Independent and Labor vs Liberal), two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, independent candidates, Labor and the Greens.
Arky based on 2022 preference flows and the far fewer number of absent and dec votes she would only recover 300-400 maybe. The postals will outweigh that and theres no reason to belive later ones will change significsntly enough.
Bazza i dont think anyone was accounting for trump or the libs faling off the rails during the campaign
I didn’t know there were nearly 2800 votes between absentees and declaration pre polls. If the trend continues, I think it’ll be a double digit margin in the end.
Very interesting how redistribution has shaped this to be a very close race. More labor voters (4% increase vs last election) presuming to be from redistributed areas, are they not familiar enough with Monique Ryan? With preference flow about 20% will flow to Hamer, could be worth a critical 0.8% swing, even 0.4% would be critical. If remaining postal votes come in at 60/40 (currently 62/38) for Hamer, absent and dec at 55/45 (54/46 last election) for Monique, it will be down to the wire.
This was also the seat with the highest number of Plymouth Brethren “volunteers” for the Liberal campaign, and reportedly they were quite aggressive in the way they conducted themselves at the polling booths towards the other volunteers, I wonder what impact that has had
apparently the Brethren had a big turn out in Bennelong as well
With 7000 het to be counted at still over 60-40 split that should put hamer up by 700 votes. There are still about 9000 absent and pre poll dec votes to be recived/counted ryan would need about a 55-45 split to get just ahead of hamer.therr also 5000 postals to be received.
Should they be elected, I hope Hamer, Kapterian, and Wilson are quickly promoted to shadow cabinet. And I hope they are earnestly listened to by their colleagues. But I’m not holding my breath.
@ Nicholas
i do find it ironic that some in the Liberals talk about abandoning places like Kooyong and win poor workiing class suburbs instead but even with Dutton it seems the only seats that the libs could possibly pick up are Kooyong or Goldstein.
@Nimalan
I imagine the whole “moderates bad because they lost to Teals” narrative now becomes “Dutton good because he regained Teal seats”. I sense a lot of cognitive dissonance on its way.
@ Nicholas
Totally agree, Life is full of contradictions. People like Peta Credlin often said appeal to seats like Bruce/Holt and that a more socially conservative approach works there but ironically Liberals got their worst ever resut there with their new outer suburban strategy. Gorton and Hawke which were hyped about got no swing to the Libs. Aston is interesting it was said to be the new heartland Credlin blamed Pesutto and the Moira Deeming saga for the by-election loss it now that Pesutto is gone and Deeming has been promoted and Aston still votes Labor i dont know what to say.
The argument will be that the Liberal Party put large resources into these seats and has many volunteers ready to help win them back because they are the traditional heartland where many of the old hands in the party reside. So it’s not a reflection of a small-l liberal Liberal Party being more popular, but of simple logistics. The argument would then be that focussing on these seats is what cost them elsewhere.
but it proves the libs can win teal seats back even against the tide. Expect them totarget curtin and mackellar next time.
Haner continues to close the gap now only 366 votes behind.
Only half an hour ago I was walking along Queen Street, Melbourne, and bumped into Josh Frydenberg. He had a fairly stony disposition, as though a man who coulda-woulda-shoulda recontested Kooyong.
Hamer will likely recontest this in 2028if she doesn’t run in the 2026 state election
That’s assuming Frydenberg won’t want either seat.
Curtin was targeted this time with lots of money and media attention – this was the Liberals best chance for the immediate future – they threw the kitchen sink at Chaney and she recorded an increased vote
Hamer has conceded defeat.
Astonishing that the Libs under Dutton did best in Affluent seats and the two possible seats they could have picked up are both Teal seats (Goldstein, Kooyong). The Outer suburban strategy was to win Hawke, Gorton, Holt and Bruce (the latter two were a complete diaster.)
@Nimalan, I think it comes down to the teals have been poor in government, especially in Melbourne. In Sydney and Perth the teals all got re-elected but in Melbourne only Monique Ryan did whereas Zoe Daniel lost. The Liberals did manage to hold onto Berowra and Bradfield though there were swings there which should ring alarm bells for the direction of the federal party.
@ Nether Portal
Excellent points. Please go to the Bradfield thread and look at the comments made by redistributed and myself
I would also Elizabeth Watson Brown is a defacto Teal in the sense that the seat is demographically small l liberal and if a Teal option existed maybe may have chosen a Teal in government
I’m sure they will recover in 2022. The libs should be able to get kooyong Curtin and possibly mackellar back
@john based on your predictions it would be the Liberal/LNP/Nats/CLP coalition with 92 seats in parliament
Yea…. no
They won’t be getting anywhere near that till at least 2034
“The Teals have been poor in government”
This is news to me. Did the Teals do a Scomo in the last term. Did Allegra Spender secretly swear herself in as treasurer? Did Ryan take environment? Scamps for health?
This is the teal seat with the largest ethnic Chinese population. It’s worth noting that there were big primary vote swings of over 5% to Labor in Surrey Hills, Canterbury and Balwyn.
One explanation I can offer about the Liberals doing well in Kooyong and Goldstein is that it was a contest between two candidates rather than a ‘presidential’ like contest. Dutton was a huge drag on the Liberals in LIB vs ALP seats. It felt more like a referendum on Dutton at times and Labor campaigned against Dutton heavily and strongly. Monique Ryan’s anti-Dutton campaign couldn’t compare.
In this thread, I gave my two cents on why Sydney-based teals got swings whereas Melbourne-based teals faltered.
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/60426#comments
@Votante, only reason I think Goldstein even voted Teals in the first place in 2022 was mostly due to it consisted suburbs along the Frankston Line which is mostly a traditionally competitive LIB vs ALP race (mostly Labor leaning in recent elections) so it was Labor Voters going for Teals whereas Suburbs along the Sandringham Line is mostly Old Money Conservatives especially around Brighton hence it was always going to be leaning Liberals.
I wonder if Frydenberg will put his hand up next time. Hame that a bit of hot on her via media and the margin stayed small, he may see opportunity to get back in.
@Marh, in most teal electorates, there are solidly blue suburbs where people are asset rich and old money conservative and the median age is older. Still there was a swing away from the Liberals in 2022.
I noticed that along the Sandringham Line or bayside suburbs, there were primary vote swings to Labor and swings away from Zoe Daniel. The biggest swings to Tim Wilson, the Liberal, were in Brighton.
@Real Talk, that’s not the only thing you can do to be poor in government. Albo’s been poor in government and he hasn’t done any of that.
Maybe in government is the wrong term. In office might be more accurate. The teals promised to be a centrist option but ended up always voting with Labor and the Greens. This made them easy to link each other, hence all the “don’t risk a Labor-Greens-teal minority government” ads on TV. In Victoria they also campaigned with messages against Jacinta Allan (like they did with messages against Dan Andrews in 2022).
@ Votante/Marh
The seat of Goldstein has less density and fewer young renters compared to Kooyong. Maybe the only exception would be Elstenwick around the station. However, it has more middle class areas along the Frankton line which Kooyong does not have. Wentworth has a lot of young renters while Warringah has that in parts like Manly North Sydney council etc. Mackellar is interesting as it has a very high median age and virtually no young renters. I think the Jewish community helped the Libs in Goldstein and almost did in Kooyong. The current boundaries of Kooyong are unfavourable for Monique Ryan as it diluted the Chinese community but increased the presence of the Jewish community.
@Nimalan, the Sandringham Line experienced very low rates of densification and those apartments developments are often extremely luxurious and expensive which probably keeping the high rate of old money living there unlike around Hawthorn to Camberwell rail corridor where there is a higher number of densification and there are also a lot of older apartments complexes hence keeping apartments there significantly more affordable in contrast to the Sandringham Line which might explained the demographic pattern.
@ Marh
Agree, also not many tram lines near Sandringham line unlike between Hawthorn and Camberwell. Elstenwick is probably the only area underdoing densification for this reason
@Marh I wonder how this will impact the Victorian state election next year. Some of those Sandringham Line seats despite being blue-ribbon are quite marginal.
@ NP
In the state seat of Brighton, the left wing part is Elwood which is in Macnamamra at a federal level. In the state seat of Brighton, the part along the Frankton line such as Highett and Cheltenham are good for Labor as they are middle class and Labor has invested a lot in removing level crossings etc.
@Nimalan thanks for the info. What makes Elwood left-wing, is it just its proximity to St Kilda?
@ NP
Yep it is more like St Kilda than Brighton, a lot of young renters mostly apartments while Brighton has single family homes, nuclear familes etc. Elwood is in the same council as St Kilda so from a demographic perspective it does not really fit in the Brighton electorate.
Also i meant to say Highett and Cheltenham are in the Sandringham electorate but they are average middle class suburbs compared to Elite Hampton, Beaumaris etc.
still the libs did well to get close here. if they hadnt shot themselves in the foot they may well hav won here. this is more teal ground then goldstein hence why the libs were able to overcome a much higher margin
Monique will narrowly hold. She was saved by a substantial swing to Labor in the Balwyn area which flowed through on preferences. Seems like Labor’s anti-Dutton campaign was more effective than hers.