Victoria’s hot seats LIVE updates: Far-right agitators crash Kooyong forum, police called after clash with attendees; Anti-lockdown campaigner rebuked at Kooyong refugee forum

Locals packed into the pews at Armadale Baptist Church on Tuesday evening to hear three Kooyong candidates take questions on one of the more emotionally charged — and politically fraught — issues in Australian politics: the treatment of refugees and people seeking asylum.

Notably absent was Amelia Hamer, the Liberal Party’s candidate for the seat. Organisers said she’d been invited, but never confirmed. Her absence left a conspicuous empty chair again.

Hamer also skipped a climate-focused candidates’ forum earlier this month.

While the forum was largely calm and refugee policy-focused, there was one moment of tension when an audience member — whom The Age has identified as anti-lockdown campaigner Harrison McLean — stood to ask independent MP Monique Ryan about the incident from last month where her husband was caught on camera removing a Hamer campaign sign.

“We’ve talked a lot tonight about refugees but my question is actually about political integrity. How can the voters of Kooyong trust your campaign, when your husband was caught stealing a corflute of a rival campaign opponent?” asked McLean who was filming on his phone and later posted it to his Telegram channel, Melbourne Freedom Rally.

There was uproar in the audience.

Ryan did not respond, and Kon Karapanagiotidis, CEO of the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, stepped in with a firm and widely applauded rebuke.

“Excuse me. Sorry… this is an event on refugees, and we don’t appreciate being hijacked for issues that are not regarding refugees,” he said.

“Please respect the purpose of tonight and the voices of refugees. This is not your platform tonight. Pick another one. Please sit down and please disregard that question … You are welcome to get your gotcha moment somewhere else. It’s not here.”

I tried to approach McLean afterwards for comment but he made a beeline past me for the exit without answering. McLean was revealed last week as one of two far-right agitators who confronted Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a similar incident in a hotel lobby.

I reached out to McLean again today for comment and he said he “entered the event with the intention of asking a tough but fair question to Monique Ryan.”

“It is disappointing that she did not address the question, and that genuine critical inquiry into the candidates was shut down by the organisers of the event.”

If you are interested in watching the full forum back, you can watch it here. But here is a summary of what the candidates had to say on the issue of asylum seekers and refugees.

Ryan: “Our politics has become meaner and smaller”

Ryan, seeking a second term in Kooyong, didn’t hold back in her critique of Australia’s asylum-seeker policies, describing them as increasingly punitive and lacking in transparency.

“Our politics has become meaner and smaller in the last two or three decades,” she said.

“I remember when I was a child, Australia taking refugees and asylum seekers was a source of pride for the country. It wasn’t something politicians fought over.”

She praised former prime ministers from both major parties – Bob Hawke, Malcolm Fraser and Paul Keating – for leading with compassion on refugee issues, and paid tribute to one of her predecessors, the late Liberal MP Petro Georgiou, who died two weeks ago.

“He was a man who demonstrated great personal integrity in the way that he fought for the rights of refugees,” Ryan said.

Ryan called for an end to indefinite detention, greater access to services for people on bridging visas, and a clear pathway to permanent residency for those caught in the fast-track system.

Crosby defends Labor’s record, calls out rising extremism

Labor’s candidate, Clive Crosby, highlighted changes made under the Albanese government — including increasing the humanitarian intake to 20,000, abolishing temporary protection visas, and speeding up visa processing.

He also expressed concern about the rise of far-right sentiment in Australia, referencing extremist groups with Donald Trump-style rhetoric calling for mass deportations.

“If I was elected, I would call it out and would not behave in that way and engage in the sort of dog whistling that we’ve seen in the vilification of refugees and migrants from people in the previous government and just generally in the community in these dangerous fringe groups,” he said.

When asked what Labor would do for people still in limbo, such as those medically evacuated from Nauru and PNG, Crosby said the government was working through them.

“Unfortunately, we can’t simultaneously review 7000 cases,” he said. “It is being done on a case-by-case basis because these are rather complex cases.”

Greens: “Seeking asylum is a human right”

Greens candidate Jackie Carter called for a complete end to offshore detention and for Australia’s humanitarian intake to rise to 50,000.

“Seeking asylum is a human right, but right now, our government is treating it like a crime,” she said.

Carter said that people granted refugee status should have full access to work, education, and social services — and delays and legal uncertainty were causing real harm.

“I think sometimes that is lost in the bureaucracy … we’re talking about real lives and people and families.”

The Greens’ policies aligned closely with many of the positions supported by the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre, which hosted the forum.

When the last local paper in Brunswick closed in 2021, during COVID’s second year, Mark Phillips decided to do something about it.

His Leader newspaper was the last in a succession of local papers in Brunswick to fold. Phillips, a journalist for almost two decades before leaving the Australian Financial Review in 2008, saw a vacuum.

“I thought, I’ve got the experience and skills to do something myself,” says Phillips, who launched Brunswick Voice in 2021 as a blog.

It’s since grown into a website, weekly newsletter and quarterly print edition with 5000 copies distributed in public places. “Anywhere people congregate,” says Phillips.

Brunswick Voice is part of a wave of “hyperlocal” news sites in inner Melbourne.

Others include The Rotunda (Fitzroy North), TWISK (St Kilda), and The Westsider (Footscray).

University student Charlie Gill launched The Rotunda, also in 2021, named after the rotunda in Fitzroy North’s Edinburgh Gardens.

“We were in COVID, and it seemed like a good thing to do – North Fitzroy has a community feel and a newspaper made sense,” Gill says.

Depending on his university workload, the 24-year-old publishes four to six editions a year.

His latest featured Labor’s Peter Khalil and the Greens’ Samantha Ratnam on the cover in front of the rotunda, after a redistribution had brought the suburbs of Fitzroy North and Carlton North into Wills for the first time.

“North Fitzroy is a big deal because it has now come into Wills, and it’s a big question of whether they will stay with the Greens or go back to Labor,” Gill says.

Gill has about 6000 copies of The Rotunda printed. “We try to get them to every door in North Fitzroy – that’s the goal – and into cafes.”

This election, local papers like The Rotunda and Brunswick Voice aim to better inform residents.

“Access to news about US politics is now so much bigger than what’s happening in your own street,” says Phillips, who hopes newspapers and websites like his can help fill the gap left by the demise of traditional local papers.

“People can just about read what Donald Trump had for breakfast, but in terms of what decisions the council is making or what investments or decisions the state and federal governments are making about things like transport or education in your area, you’re in the dark.”

Phillips began in the 1990s on a country paper in Echuca, moved through suburban and metro papers and worked in the federal press gallery, before leaving the AFR’s Melbourne bureau.

Originally, he “basically subsidised [Brunswick Voice] because I really believe in the importance of doing this”.

Now, while he isn’t earning an income from the newspaper and website, ads and donations means Phillips breaks even.

The current edition carries ads from Ratnam and Khalil – the Greens got the all-important front page slot, while Labor took out a full-page ad inside.

“I sent the same email to different advertisers and said, ‘These are the options, first in, best dressed’, and the Greens were first – I would have been equally happy to take Labor on the front page if they’d come back first.”

Phillips has made space for minor parties running Wills too, like Fusion’s Owen Miller.

“Fusion will only get a couple of per cent of the vote, but he’s really having a go, and he’s in it for the right reasons,” Phillips says.

“That’s something where local newspapers can have an impact. And local announcements are important. Labor announced a new emergency healthcare clinic in Coburg. That’s not going to make national news, but it’s important for people to know in the electorate, regardless of who is promising it.”

The trade-off is he doesn’t always get to some events the mainstream press is at – like a recent visit by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to a Pascoe Vale South chemist, which Phillips only heard about afterward.

Phillips reports what he can, but knows there’s a huge gap left by the wider collapse of local media in Australia, and internationally. “So much goes unreported and unrecognised because local papers don’t exist any more.”

He bristles at claims that Facebook groups and other social media sites or apps fill the gap.

“The idea that they fill the void – they absolutely don’t. They don’t do the on-the-ground reporting and they generally descend into absolute trivia or people hurling insults at each other.”

After Opposition Leader Peter Dutton claimed Victorians were afraid to go to the shops because of rising crime, I thought it might be worth checking this theory in Brighton.

“People don’t feel safe in their own homes, their businesses, taking public transport or even at the shops,” Dutton said on Monday.

The comments echoed a controversial claim Dutton made as home affairs minister seven years ago, when he visited Melbourne and declared the city’s residents were scared to go out to restaurants at night because they would be followed home by gangs.

In the pre-poll queue at St Stephen’s Anglican Church in the heart of Brighton, Goldstein’s Liberal candidate Tim Wilson said crime was one of the key issues voters wanted to discuss.

Wilson has campaigned hard on crime, distributing flyers depicting two dark, hooded figures with their faces obscured, one wielding a large machete.

“Stopping machetes and large knives. Making our communities safer,” the flyer says. “Safer communities start with fewer knives and machetes. Violent home invasions, car thefts and knife crimes are out of control. Weak enforcement and state bail laws have facilitated this crime explosion and we are all paying the price. The federal government should be helping.”

In the flyer, Wilson said he and Dutton would prevent minors and dangerous individuals from buying or possessing dangerous knives, make it illegal to post material glamorising violence, drug and property crimes to boost a person’s notoriety, and establish an antisemitism taskforce.

Given these claims, I looked at Victoria’s crime statistics, which are divided by local government area rather than by electorate.

The criminal incident rate per 100,000 of population for the Bayside region, which includes Brighton, Hampton, Brighton East, Sandringham and Highett, was 4079 last year, down slightly from 2023 when the criminal incident rate was 4181.

When asked if people in Goldstein were scared to go the shops, Wilson said he had been told this when doorknocking.

“Yesterday I was doorknocking in Moorabbin, and people, almost every second house, talked about crime as a really serious issue that people had in their street, whether it was people loitering in their streets, issues around drugs and drug dealing, people who are afraid to leave their home,” he said. “I can only say what people are saying to me … that’s literally what people are saying.”

Incumbent teal MP Zoe Daniel said crime was an issue, but Goldstein residents were confident to go out shopping.

“I know people in my community are concerned about safety around aggravated burglaries and car theft,” she said. “No one has said to me that they’re frightened to go to the shops. I don’t really have much more to offer on that.”

Brighton resident Matthew Bolton was even more succinct when asked what he thought of Dutton’s analysis as he stood waiting to vote.

“I think that is a tad dramatic,” he said. “At least in this area.”

Pre-polling opened across Australia today and in Goldstein both incumbent independent teal MP Zoe Daniel and Liberal candidate Tim Wilson turned up to the polling station at St Stephen’s church in Brighton at the same time.

Wearing a teal hoodie Daniel stood next to a mini-marquee part way down the line where her volunteers offered dog and bike minding services for those casting their votes along with some protection from the generally sunny weather.

Wilson worked his way up and down the queue of voters, which stretched to almost 100 metres long at its peak, resulting in a few close encounters with Daniel where the two candidates steadfastly ignored each other.

The only hint of conflict was when one voter attempted some queue-jumping and was quickly shown to the end of the line by other voters.

“Watch out or there will be fisticuffs,” one person in the queue laughed.

Daniel said it seemed like many people voting early knew who they were voting for already and had come with intent.

“The vibe has been really positive,” she said. “I don’t know how you read vibes, but there is a lot of ‘Good luck’, ‘You’ve got this’.”

Wilson, dressed in a blue “Vote 1 Tim Wilson” T-shirt over a business shirt, said he had been to all three pre-polling stations in Goldstein that morning.

“Unsurprisingly, Brighton has been incredibly warm, but Hampton has been extremely warm as well, and the same with Cheltenham,” he said. “It’s been extremely encouraging.”

Wilson said crime was the most common thing that voters wanted to talk about in the queue.

“The thing that stands out to me is that there’s a very high number of people voting for us, but there’s then quite a strong division of the alternate between Labor and the teals,” he said.

Wilson shook hands and introduced himself with: “Hi, I’m Tim.” He generally elicited a positive response.

“Tim, I remember your face from everywhere,” one woman said warmly, but one heckler shouted: “How’s robodebt going, Tim?”

In the 2022 election the St Stephen’s polling booth in Brighton was a Liberal stronghold with Wilson securing 44.75 per cent of the primary vote followed by Daniel on 35.30 per cent, Labor on 9.25 per cent and the Greens on 5.67 per cent.

Across Goldstein, Wilson’s primary vote was 40.38 per cent and Daniel was 34.47 per cent with Daniel securing the seat on a two candidate preferred basis.

Twenty-year-old Matthew Bolton queued for about 15 minutes to cast his first vote in a federal election.

Bolton said during the campaign he had seen corflutes for Daniel and Wilson “on every corner” but had not seen anything for the rest of the candidates until arriving at the pre-polling booth.

For him, raising the minimum wage is a key election issue.

“Obviously, I’m a minimum-wage worker, so it’s relevant to me,” he said, adding he planned to vote for Daniel.

“I just feel like an independent is a pretty good choice, because if there’s a minority government, then that’s pretty good because it makes whichever party [that] wins negotiate with the crossbench.”

Further down the queue, Robin, who did not want to give her full name because her husband works in finance, said she was going to vote for Wilson and had always been a Liberal voter.

“I haven’t seen anything that Zoe Daniel has done for our area,” she said. “I’ve always been a conservative voter, and I’m just worried about what’s going on. I want stability back.”

Dressed in lycra and with his racing bike by his side, Rob Pickthall said his main concern voting this election was the cost of living.

“I think the bigger issue is what’s going to happen in the US,” he said. “I think it’s very unstable at the moment here because of that. It’s going to be hard for whatever party gets in to have a constructive way in.”

Pickthall said he was not sure who he would vote for yet and had voted for Daniel last election.

“It’s going to be interesting,” he said.

With the modern political endurance event of pre-polling kicking off today, both of the key candidates in Wills – the Greens’ Samantha Ratnam and Labor MP Peter Khalil – were at the Brunswick Masonic Hall for much of the day handing out their how-to-vote cards.

It’s where they and other candidates in the seat will spend much of the next fortnight.

Ratnam was supported by federal Greens leader Adam Bandt, who came to Brunswick and did a media conference in the morning before heading to pre-polling in his own seat of Melbourne then on to Macnamara, which is a three-way contest between Labor, Liberals and the Greens.

By the afternoon, Ratnam said while lines had been long, “people seem to have done their research” before arriving at the pre-polling centre.

“And a lot of people are saying that they feel change in the air – they are talking about how the seat could change for the first time,” she said.

Khalil by the late afternoon said he’d had many “great conversations” with voters.

“The cost of living, housing and healthcare are coming up a lot with voters today. I’m sharing what Labor has already done, and our plan for Australia’s future.”

Lines at the Brunswick voting centre stretched around the courtyard attached to the Davies Street building, with voters waiting for about 30 minutes before getting in to cast their ballot.

Among those to vote early was Tricia Caswell, who several years ago was the executive director of the Australian Conservation Foundation.

She spent about 30 minutes waiting to vote, and cast her ballot for Labor, having been a member on and off over the years.

“They’re the best bet at the moment.”

Caswell said she was casting her vote before election day because she had long-standing family commitments on polling day and “wanted to get in early”.

Also in the line for just over half an hour was Len Harrison.

“I was surprised it took so long – normally early voting, you don’t expect so many people would be out here. I’m going overseas next week is why I’m doing it,” he told me.

Harrison changed his allegiances this election, voting for a minor party first then preferencing one of the larger parties.

“Because I’m getting sick of the major parties competing for votes rather than actually coming up with sincere, genuine policies.”

Steve and Ellen West are also headed overseas and neither was saying who was getting their vote.

“There weren’t this many last time,” Steve said of the crowd. “We try to pre-poll every election as it’s easier and gets it out of the way so you don’t have the really huge crowds.”

Also at the pre-poll campaigning was the Legalise Cannabis Party’s Senate candidate and former Victorian MP Fiona Patten.

Her party, surprisingly to some in Wills, has put Labor ahead of the Greens on its how-to-vote cards for the seat.

University student Bala Kalirajan was also at the voting centre, and spoke after having spent about 30 minutes lining up to cast his vote for Labor.

“I think Albo, he’s been going pretty well, and the policies they’ve brought up, like Medicare clinics here, have been good. Plus I think it’d be good to have a member of parliament that is part of the ruling party.”

I also popped in for a look at queues at Broadmeadows’ Pearcedale Parade pre-poll voting centre – which sits just outside the boundary of Wills, in the neighbouring seat of Calwell. There, voters lined up for almost an hour to cast their ballot.

That’s a wrap on day one of Kooyong pre-polling on Glenferrie Road in Malvern, where I spent most of the day alongside key contenders Monique Ryan and Amelia Hamer — plus dozens and dozens of their volunteers.

Labor’s candidate, Clive Crosby, was also out with a small team of volunteers, and Labor MP and Senate candidate Dr Michelle Ananda-Rajah made an appearance (this area falls in Ananda-Rajah’s seat of Higgins which is being abolished at this election).

There were a few Greens volunteers, a couple from the Libertarians, and (as mentioned earlier) those yellow-vested volunteers from Advance Australia.

It was surprisingly busy for day one — catching the Australian Electoral Commission off guard — with lines in the morning stretching hundreds of metres down the street, as voters rushed to cast their ballots early.

Ryan and Hamer — who haven’t been seen together much on the campaign trail — were both on the ground at pre-poll all day, each backed by large, co-ordinated volunteer teams, but I didn’t see them interact with one another.

Most of the people who showed up to vote today appeared to be older and retired. Many seemed certain about their vote before even stepping in line.

There were only a few flashes of tension that I witnessed.

One man, offered a pamphlet by Hamer, scoffed: “You’ve got to be kidding. How many houses do you have?”

Another bellowed at a Ryan volunteer: “Never in a million years [will I vote for Ryan]!”

But for the most part, voters were polite and peaceful – dutifully accepting how-to-vote cards from across the political spectrum.

Hamer was up for a chat during a quick break from greeting voters.

She said the thing people were speaking to her today most about were hyperlocal issues – safety and crime “a lot of people around here who’ve suffered home invasions”, traffic congestion and potholes.

“It’s just really basic. It’s boring. But the reality is people saying that that’s what they want fixed. So that’s my job,” she said.

I caught up with Monique Ryan around 5pm. She’d been at the booth greeting voters since 7.30am, squeezed in a round of media interviews (though, as I reported earlier, not with Sky News), and was heading to a forum that evening.

“I’m used to working long days,” said the paediatric neurologist-turned-politician. “It’s been really nice to hit the ground running. A really huge number of people have come through today.”

Ryan said AUKUS and Trump were top of mind for many voters.

“I think global geopolitical instability has people sort of a little bit worried about our relationship with the US.”

Here is an update on the yellow-vest saga from Kooyong pre-poll which I brought you a little earlier today.

This morning, a volunteer wearing a yellow vest marked “Community Advisor” was reported to the Australian Electoral Commission because they were handing out anti-Greens pamphlets from Advance Australia (the right-wing lobby group), and because the vest looked suspiciously like the yellow vests which AEC officials at the polling booth are wearing.

When I spoke to the volunteer, she told me directly she was with Advance Australia and she was handing out Advance Australia materials.

There were multiple Advance-branded corflutes around the booth.

When I asked Advance Australia about the vest issue, they first claimed they had nothing to do with it: “Interesting, but ADVANCE is not campaigning in Kooyong (or in any teal-held seat). Good luck finding out who is responsible,” a spokesperson said.

I pointed out the corflutes. The volunteer. The pamphlets.

The spokesman then acknowledged that Advance is on the ground in Kooyong at the polling booth, apparently because voters from the neighbouring electorate of Macnamara might turn up there.

“Those signs are for our campaign in Macnamara. To be clear, we’re not campaigning in Kooyong. And if we were, why would we put out anti-Greens signs?”

This was all a little puzzling. And still no answer to my actual question: Were the yellow vests designed to look like AEC uniforms?

Then the line changed again, the last comment from the spokesperson was this: “Sorry, we’ll have to look into this. There shouldn’t be ADVANCE volunteers in Kooyong. The vests have nothing to do with us, by the way.”

I’ll let readers decide whether that clears things up.