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| Adam Carr's Election Archive
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Australian federal election, 2025
Division of Kooyong, Victoria
Named for: Melbourne suburb of Kooyong (Indigenous word meaning "resting place").
Eastern Melbourne: Balwyn, Canterbury, Hawthorn, Kew, Toorak
Enrolment at 2019 election: 108,424
Enrolment at 2022 election: 112,972 (+04.3)
1999 republic referendum: Yes 64.2
2018 same-sex marriage survey: Yes 73.7
2023 Voice referendum: Yes 59.9
2007 Liberal majority over Labor: 9.5%
2010 Liberal majority over Labor: 7.6%
2013 Liberal majority over Labor: 11.1%
2016 Liberal majority over Labor: 13.3%
2019 Liberal majority over Greens: 5.7%
2022 Independent majority over Liberal 2.9%
2025 notional Independent majority over Liberal 2.9%
Status: Very marginal Independent
Liberal two-party vote 1983-2022
2022 results
Statistics and history
Announced candidates:
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Amelia Hamer
Liberal Party |
Dr Monique Ryan
Independent |
Division of Kooyong
Kooyong has existed since Federation, and has always taken in Melbourne's prosperous inner eastern suburbs, based
originally on Kew and Hawthorn. Successive redistributions have extended the seat to the east but have not changed
its social composition or its political alignment. It has one of the country's highest levels of median household
income and highest proportions of people in professional and managerial occupations. It also has a fairly high level
of families
with dependent children, but a much lower rate of dwellings being purchased. This is an electorate of affluent,
home-owning upper and middle-class families.
Kooyong is a traditional "leadership seat" for the non-Labor parties. It has never come close to electing a Labor
member, but has occasionally spoil its perfect record of loyalty to the non-Labor parties by electing independents.
liberal in 1922. That was
John Latham, who went on to be Leader of the Nationalist Party.
Kooyong's most illustrious member has been
Sir Robert Menzies, Prime Minister from 1939 1941 and from 1949 to 1966,
and founder of the modern Liberal Party. His successor
Andrew Peacock was twice leader of the Liberal Party but
failed to become Prime Minister. He was succeeded by
Petro Georgiou, a former state director of the Liberal Party
and senior adviser to Prime Minister
Malcolm Fraser. Georgiou found himself out of sympathy with the Howard
government and became a leading backbench dissident. He retired in 2010.
He was succeeded by Josh Frydenberga lawyer who was an adviser to John Howard and Alexander Downer, and later a director of Deutsche Bank. He was Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister from 2013, then
Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Resources, Energy and Northern Australia. In July 2016 he became
Minister for the Environment and Energy. In August 2018. He was appointed Treasurer by Prime
Scott Morrison.
Frydenberg's brilliant career was derailed by the changing demographics of inner Melbourne. In 2019 he managed only a 5.7% majority over the Greens, and 6.7% over Labor. In Kooyong as in similar seats
across the country, upper-income urban voters are increasingly alienated from conservative politics, and particularly from Morrison's
style of social conservatism. At the 2022 election, in the biggest election upset in recent years, Frydenberg was defeated by a "Teal" independent.
Dr Monique Ryan, independent MP for Kooyong since 2022, was a neurologist at the Royal Children's Hospital before her
election. The 2024 redistribution has made major changes to Kooyong's boundaries, removing Mont Albert and Surrey Hills and adding
Malvern, Prahran and Toorak - all from the abolished seat of Higgins. These changes are unlikely to have much effect on the seat's
voting behaviour.
The Liberal candidate in 2025 will be Amelia Hamer, who has a degree from Oxford and extensive experience in the banking and
finance sectors. She is a grand-niece of former Victorian premier Sir Rupert Hamer. These are excellent credentials for a Liberal candidate for Kooyong, but whether they will be enough to defeat Ryan will depend largely on whether affluent voters like Peter Dutton any better than they liked Scott Morrison.
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