Source : the age
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With less than 24 hours until pre-poll voting centres open around Australia, all major candidates in Wills have now released their how-to-vote cards.
For the next two weeks, the name of the game for candidates will be standing at the Wills central pre-poll station – the Brunswick Masonic Centre in Davies Street – and trying to charm voters while handing them these how-to-vote cards.
On Monday, the Australian Electoral Commission said past trends in early voting showed that about half of all voters would have cast their vote by election day on May 3. So how have the parties asked voters to distribute their preferences?
Labor’s Peter Khalil has sent his second preference to Legalise Cannabis Australia, followed by the Greens’ Samantha Ratnam. He has placed the Liberal Party’s unsighted-in-the-electorate candidate, Jeff Kidney, third last, and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation stone-cold last.
Ratnam has put Socialist Alliance candidate Sue Bolton second, and asked voters to put Khalil third when filling out their ballot. She has also placed the Liberal Party third last, and One Nation last.
Liberal Party voters – who made up 17 per cent of the Wills electorate at the previous election – have been asked by Kidney to give their second preference to the Libertarian Party (“As long as you aren’t bringing harm to anyone else, you should be free to live your life, your way,” is the Libertarians’ credo). Kidney has put One Nation third, Labor third last and the Greens last.
Bolton has received between 3 and 5 per cent of the vote in her two previous runs for Wills, and may prove important if this election is as close as many expect. She has put Ratnam second, Labor’s Khalil fifth, and One Nation last.
Kooyong MP Monique Ryan has suggested funding pledges from her Liberal rival Amelia Hamer for local sports grounds and potholes is “a form of corruption”, after the Liberal Party announced $7.5 million over the weekend to reseal roads in the electorate.
A running total compiled by The Age of Liberal Party promises for the hotly contested seat shows more than $14 million has now been offered to voters in the area if they back a federal Liberal government. The pledges range from playgrounds for kindergartens to lighting at sports fields.
Amelia Hamer, the Liberal candidate for Kooyong, with young footballers at Glenferrie Oval this month.Credit: Joe Armao
The latest promise came on Saturday, when Hamer was joined by Liberal state MPs to announce “resurfacing and safety upgrades” to three stretches of state-managed arterial roads in Kooyong: Glenferrie Road (between Cotham and Wattletree roads), Cotham/Whitehorse Road (between Kew Junction and Union Road) and Balwyn Road (between Doncaster and Canterbury roads).
The announcement also included installation of a pedestrian crossing in Barkers Road, Kew, at the intersection of Haines Street and Edgevale Road.
“Too often I hear about the fact that a well-used road has more potholes each year, but no work has been done to fix them. This isn’t good enough, and we can do better,” Hamer said in the announcement.
Jess Wilson, John Pesutto and Michael O’Brien – the state Liberal MPs for Kew, Hawthorn and Malvern, respectively – appeared in Hamer’s social media post announcing the funding – as did the sole remaining Liberal councillor at Boroondara Council, Felicity Sinfield.
In the media release for the announcement, the state MPs accused the Allan government of ignoring requests for upgrades and suggested Ryan had no leverage to get funding for community projects.
“The state government has failed to listen, and the federal member isn’t listened to – but Amelia Hamer will actually deliver,” Pesutto said.
When asked under what criteria the roads were chosen, a Liberal campaign spokeswoman said: “Roads were selected based on community feedback and the failure of both the Albanese and Allan Labor governments to invest in road upgrades across Melbourne and regional Victoria.
“Our Victorian infrastructure commitments will be delivered in partnership with state and local governments.”
A Victorian government spokeswoman acknowledged the state had received a petition for the pedestrian crossing from Wilson, but said it had not received any formal requests from local MPs or councils to repair the three stretches of state roads named in the funding pledge.
Ryan described the Liberals’ funding announcements in her electorate as pork-barrelling.
“Rolling out pre-election promises of money for infrastructure projects is a tired major-party trope. It didn’t work for Josh Frydenberg in 2022,” she said on Sunday, referencing the infamous commuter car parks scandal.
In March 2022, Frydenberg, then the Kooyong MP and federal treasurer, announced that four commuter car parks would no longer go ahead in Kooyong, following community consultation, three years after they were promised during the 2019 election campaign. The former Coalition government’s allocation of money from a key fund was criticised by the Australian National Audit Office for favouring Liberal seats.
“More than 80 per cent of Australians see pork-barrelling as a form of corruption: I think that figure would be higher in Kooyong,” Ryan said on Sunday in response to Hamer’s full list of pledges.
Ryan also claimed several of the projects the Liberal Party had announced funding for were already funded or had not been raised with the two council areas they fall within, although her office would not reveal which projects she was referring to.
“The Kooyong community wants funding for sporting grounds and community infrastructure projects to be allocated transparently and fairly,” she said.
“I’m working collaboratively with Boroondara and Stonnington councils to find support for the projects they’ve identified as high priority, on the basis of their detailed, evidence-based assessments.”
All of Hamer’s commitments for the Stonnington council area were requests made in the council’s official election advocacy document. A spokesman for Boroondara council said all four sport projects announced by Hamer in the municipality were priority projects that the council already planned to deliver regardless of the outcome of the federal election.
“[But] where aligned with existing council priorities, co-contributions from other levels of government allows projects to have an enhanced scope or to be delivered sooner,” the Boroondara spokesman said.
The council did not pitch for the pedestrian crossing on Barkers Road, the spokesman said, but it welcomed funding from any prospective candidate “to help us deliver services and projects that improve the lives of our community”.
Hamer and Ryan have taken swipes at each other over funding pledges on social media previously.
When Peter Dutton announced $400,000 for floodlights at the Malvern cricket ground, Ryan posted a long video on social media describing the pledge as Dutton “cynically offering taxpayers money to try and buy votes”.
Hamer defended the pledge in an Instagram video, saying it was “an example of how major parties can take action and actually deliver on issues rather than just talk about them”.
“It’s not pork-barrelling. It’s something we like to call policy,” she said.
CORRECTION
An earlier version of this post incorrectly stated Barkers Road was a council-managed road. This was based on information received from Boroondara Council. The council has since advised this was incorrect and that the road is under the management of the Department of Transport, therefore, a state-managed road. The post has been edited to reflect this.
Easter Sunday looked a little different at the Dandenong Showgrounds this weekend.
Children rode camels, and adults raised money to build a new mosque in Narre Warren South as smoke from the charcoal barbeque filled the air.
Parked at the entrance was a truck with a banner from lobby group Muslim Votes Matter (MVM) with a red cross across Labor member Julian Hill’s face next to an Israeli flag.
“Julian Hill went on a Zionist lobby trip,” the sign reads. “Don’t let him take your vote for granted any longer.”
Inside the same hall where Liberal candidate Zahid Safi and Liberal member Jason Wood were heckled during Eid prayers just a few weeks ago, MVM volunteers were handing out flyers, including how-to-vote cards placing the Greens first, Labor second and the Liberals fifth.
MVM spokesman Mohamed Yousef said the group’s opposition to Labor in Bruce was driven by criticism of the party as a whole, rather than Hill specifically.
A Muslim Votes Matter attack ad against Labor MP Julian Hill in Dandenong.Credit: Charlotte Grieve
“He is part of a government, he’s part of a caucus who has collectively refused to take concrete actions to punish Israel, to take more standing against the genocide,” he said. “The separation between the individual and the party does not happen when they choose collective responsibility, and there is a collective response to that responsibility.”
Yousef points to Labor not imposing sanctions on Israel, and to what he described as the party’s “extremely underwhelming” response to rising Islamophobia in Australia.
In response, Hill confirmed he went on an Israel-lobby-funded trip in 2017, but said he subsequently took a trip organised by the Australian Palestinian Advocacy Network, spending “equal time in both Israel and Palestine”.
“After visiting Israel, I became an informed and outspoken critic of illegal Israeli settlements in the West Bank and an advocate for two secure states, which remains my position,” he said. “It’s a bit offensive to stereotype our diverse Australian Muslim community by suggesting they would all vote the same way based on one issue.”
Hill described the Muslim Votes matter campaign against him as “profoundly misleading and rather silly” and pointed to his support from high-profile Palestine advocate Nasser Mashni.
Mashni described Hill as “one of the most courageous and consistent voices for Palestine within the Labor Party” in a text message to The Age.
A Muslim Votes Matter stall in Dandenong on Sunday.Credit: Charlotte Grieve
Yousef said politicians should not go on these trips at all, claiming they influenced them in different ways.
Muslim voters were sick of being used for photo opportunities and then ignored, he said.
“It doesn’t excuse it,” he said of Hill’s Palestine trip.
Ruksana Siddiqui has been volunteering for MVM and has door-knocked in Bruce this week. She said the level of political literacy in the electorate was low, as many people she had spoken to “don’t know anything about these parties”.
“One of them said I’ll go for Greens because they said they will wipe out student loans,” she said.
MVM has endorsed Greens candidate Rhonda Garad, but Siddiqui said there was pushback within some parts of the Muslim community due to the minor party’s support for LGBT rights and opposition to taxpayer funds for religious schools.
“But I keep saying she is willing to stand for my voice and that’s all I care for at this stage.”
When asked if she thought Gaza was driving votes in Bruce, Siddiqui said “yes and no”, adding that some Muslim voters might vote for Liberal candidate Safi because of his name.
“Until now, not many Muslims are actively involved in knowing this whole thing. Is that education there? I just don’t know.”
A stall owner, who did not provide his name, said the “game is changing a little bit” from when many in the Muslim community voted Labor by default. He said he “wouldn’t have a clue” yet who he would vote for this election, but he’s going to do his research.
“In the past, elders say just vote Labor. That’s what you hear. But in Islam, it says do not follow the line. Do your own research; don’t just follow the next person. Don’t follow the imam either. Do your own research, make sure you’re doing your due diligence on what path you know is right and what needs to be done,” he said.
In the crowd, sitting around plastic tables and chairs with his family was Amer Khalil, who works as a tiler. He said work had been “very dead” all year, and the economy is the issue he’s most focused on this election.
“Rent keeps going up,” he said. “Fuel is going up always. It makes it very hard to find jobs. People are having issues with getting loans from the bank. It’s very, very hard to keep up with everything, paying bills.”
Sitting next to him was his mother, who flew from Lebanon four months ago to stay safe during the war. His mother, who does not speak English, cannot watch the news as it makes her feel sick, Khalil said.
“She hurts from seeing what’s happening there. She doesn’t like to watch. It’s really very bad. You see missiles come down, civilian people get burnt. They don’t allow people to come and save them. It’s really terrible that we’re in 2025 and we still see this criminal work. It’s hard.”
“I really don’t know,” he said about the differences between Labor and Liberal on Gaza, but it would drive his vote if a party was one-sided.
“I don’t think there is any fair action from our government or the whole world,” he said. “No one is doing anything to stop this war killing civilian people. How can this happen in 2025?”
In Kooyong, even the Easter campaign truce couldn’t slow the pace of news – and over the weekend, it took a dark turn.
While I took a couple of days to catch my breath, my colleague Grant McArthur broke the story of a Kooyong-based neurosurgeon who filmed himself destroying a Monique Ryan corflute while joking that he was “burying a body.”
What may have been intended as a private joke for friends quickly spread out of a group chat and across the internet – and landed with a thud.
The video was widely condemned by politicians including independent incumbent Ryan and her Liberal opponent, Amelia Hamer, along with domestic violence campaigners.
Grant broke the story on Friday. By Saturday, Professor Greg Malham had self-reported to the medical regulator, the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency, and was under investigation by Epworth Hospital, where he works contractually.
“I will be taking leave while that investigation is happening and have self-reported to the medical regulator, AHPRA,” he said.
“I will be fully accountable for my actions. I sincerely and unreservedly apologise for this lapse in judgment that does not reflect my core values and beliefs.”
We’re now less than a fortnight from polling day, with pre-polling starting on Tuesday.
Let’s hope the tone improves and civility holds.
I’ll be at pre-polling booths this week and attending three (!) candidate forums in Kooyong, on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday night. As always – if you have a tip, get in touch.
Welcome back to our live Hot Seats blog, where we’ll be back covering all the news and bringing you local insights on key contests in the federal election.
It will be a big week, with early voting for the May 3 poll due to begin on Tuesday.
We hope you enjoy it.
