Wentworth

Background

Malcolm Turnbull's resignation from parliament after losing the Liberal leadership on August 24 has precipitated the tenth by-election of the forty-fifth parliament, equalling the record for by-elections set by the twentieth parliament from 1951 to 1954. However, it is only the second out of the ten to have arisen independently of the Section 44 crisis. Wentworth has an unblemished record as a conservative seat going back to federation, although Turnbull's personal vote forms a substantial part of its current 17.7% margin. Turnbull has held the seat since 2004, when he successfully challenged the Liberal preselection of one-term member Peter King.

Candidates

The Liberal candidate is Dave Sharma, former ambassador to Israel. Sharma emerged the winner of a marathon preselection ballot on September 13 in defiance of Scott Morrison's call for a woman to be chosen, and after resisting calls for him to withdraw to that end. One who did withdraw was Andrew Bragg, a director at the Business Council of Australia and former leader of the Yes same-sex marriage survey campaign, who was identified early as the likely front-runner. Bragg cited polling he had conducted showing the party would perform better with a female candidate, and said he would instead pursue preselection for the Senate.

In the event, no female candidate made the final three of the round-by-round preselection ballot process, in which Sharma ultimately prevailed by 119 votes to 83 over Richard Shields, former deputy state party director and Insurance Council of Australia manager, with Peter King, the member for the seat from 2001 and 2004, excluded in the previous round. The best performing woman was Mary Lou Jarvis, a Woollahra councillor who had support from the Right. Jarvis lasted one round longer than Katherine O'Regan, owner of a consultancy firm and a former deputy mayor of Woollahra, who was supported by Morrison and moderate powerbroker Michael Photios, but deserted by many potential backers after Sharma received the endorsement of John Howard and Malcolm Turnbull.

The field includes two notable independents, the highest profile of whom is Kerryn Phelps, Sydney City councillor and former president of the Australian Medical Association. Phelps was elected to council in 2016 as part of the Clover Moore Independents Team, and gained the deputy lord mayoralty in that capacity, but resigned from both the following June, complaining of a lack of transparency in relation to expenses policies. Phelps' campaign got off to a bumpy start when she reversed her initial recommendation that the Liberals be put last. Evidently this did not go down well, as she gatecrashed a Scott Morrison event to make the announcement that her how-to-vote cards would have Liberal ahead of Labor. Also in the running is Licia Heath, who works in the financial services industry and has led a campaign for a new high school in the electorate. Heath has been endorsed by Clover Moore, independent state Sydney MP Alex Greenwich and former state and federal independent MP Tony Windsor.

Labor's candidate is Tim Murray, owner of an investment advisory firm, who had been preselected as the candidate for the next election before Malcolm Turnbull's departure. His supporters include Alex Turnbull, the son of the ousted Prime Minister, who has connections with Murray through the investment industry. The field includes sixteen candidates in all, including some unlikely prospects in an electorate like Wentworth (Katter’s Australian Party, Derryn Hinch’s Justice Party, the Australian Liberty Alliance).

Profile

Wentworth encompasses the entrance to Sydney Harbour at South Head, extending southwards along the coast through Bondi to Clovelly and westwards to Paddington. The electorate is the nation's wealthiest, and contains its largest Jewish population and fifth highest concentration of same-sex couples. The harbourside suburbs of Vaucluse, Point Piper and Darling Point are proverbial for their wealth, and have historically overwhelmed Labor's areas of relative strength near the city and in the south. However, Turnbull's successes have obscured a trend of Liberal decline, in which margins that often exceeded 20% up to the 1960s came down to single figures before Turnbull secured his hold. The seat was held successively by Robert Ellicott (1974 to 1981), who as Shadow Attorney-General plyed a crucial tactical role in the 1975 supply crisis; Peter Coleman (1981 to 1987), conservative intellectual and father-in-law of Peter Costello; and John Hewson (1987 to 1996), Opposition Leader from 1990 to 1994.

Turnbull came to the seat in 2004 after winning a Liberal preselection vote against Peter King by 88 votes to 70, having gained the upper hand in a vigorous local party recruitment war and won at least the tacit support of John Howard. Sympathy for King's plight was tempered by the fact that he himself gained the seat three years earlier in a preselection coup against Andrew Thomson, who succeeded Hewson in 1996. King ran against Turnbull as an independent but only managed third place, but his campaign may have contributed to a 2.4% Labor swing that reduced the margin to 5.5%. Redistribution then reduced the margin to 2.5%, but Turnbull was able to add 1.3% to this at the 2007 election, at which he was the only Coalition candidate outside of Western Australia to pick up a favourable swing. He then placed his decisive stamp on the seat with an 11.0% swing in 2010.