Know your Electorate: Kooyong
- 103997752
- Apr 27
- 3 min read
Updated: Apr 28
With early voting well underway and ballot counting starting Saturday, on election day, Swinburne students must understand their local electorate: Kooyong. Matthew Parkhill reports.
The Kooyong electorate has been embroiled in one of the closest heats for the Federal election. Controversy after controversy has followed incumbent independent Dr Monique Ryan and rising Liberal star Amelia Hamer, who both probably wish the seat were a little quieter.
But the House of Representatives seat symbolises something greater for the Liberals' campaign to get back in office. While the seat remains marginal according to pre-polling, the shift in demographics in this seat might reverberate across the nation.
Kooyong is just one of 38 electorates in Victoria. With 59 square kilometres of Melbourne’s inner-eastern suburbs, Kooyong represents Victoria’s more affluent constituents from suburbs like Kew, Hawthorn, Camberwell, Balwyn and all those in between.
Established in 1900, the inner-metropolitan seat’s borders remained unchanged until 2024 when the Redistribution Committee dissolved the neighbouring Higgins electorate and shifted Kooyong’s boundaries to encompass Toorak, Malvern, and parts of Prahran.
The boundary shift resulted in Kooyong losing residents within the Whitehorse local council area and gaining a more affluent constituency from the Stonnington council area. Now Kooyong encompasses parts of Stonnington council, Boroondara council, and Yarra City council.
According to the 2021 Census, pre-redistribution of the electorate, Kooyong was home to 52.2% women with a median middle-aged population. The 2021 Census also states the electorate is overwhelmingly more tertiary educated, with 52% of residents having a bachelor's degree, near double the nation's, and 40.3% of employed people over 15 listing their job as a Professional, against the nation’s 23%.
Students also nearly double the rest of the nation in attending non-government schools. The largest ethnicity in Kooyong after English and Australian is Chinese, at 19% of the electorate’s population. According to Australian Jewish News, the electoral redistribution has also increased Kooyong’s Jewish demographic to ~7% of the electorate.
The electorate has a rich history of electing Liberal representatives to ministerial positions and party leaders, alongside electing the man responsible for creating the modern Liberal party.
Its first representative was the Honourable William Knox, elected in Australia’s first federal election, a Free Trade Party member. The Free Trade Party then became the Commonwealth Liberal Party, then the United Australia Party.
However, it was the Honourable Sir Robert Menzies who led the United Australia Party from the Kooyong seat in 1939 to win the Prime Ministership, later forming the modern Liberal party we know today in 1944, becoming Prime Minister again under this new banner from 1949 to 1966.
After Menzies vacated the Kooyong seat, he was followed by the Honourable Andrew Peacock, who then stood as Leader of the Opposition for the Liberals for four years.
Josh Frydenberg was Kooyong’s latest Liberal representative from 2010 until 2022, serving as treasurer under Scott Morrison from 2018 to 2022, and was projected to lead the Liberal party someday.
The seat is only one of two seats in Victoria to have never been won by Labor, the other being the Gippsland electorate.
However, Dr Monique Ryan’s shock victory over Frydenberg in 2022 represented a shift in the electorate’s demographic, holding a marginal win over Frydenburg by 5.88% of the vote. Dr Ryan’s win came down to two-candidate preferred votes to win majority over Frydenberg, who initially captured a greater first preference vote than Dr Ryan.
Frydenberg gave up his 2025 race for fresh face Amelia Hamer, Grand-niece of Victorian Premier Richard Hamer, who will be running against Dr Ryan and Labor candidate Clive Crosby.
Amelia Hamer campaigns under the Liberal Party (Left), Dr Ryan's official boards around Kooyong (Right). Photos: Nathan James, Afia Khan
Other minor party candidates include: Jackie Carter for the Greens, David Vader for the Trumpet of Patriots, Richard Peppard for the Libertarians, and Camille Brache for One Nation.
As of the 27th of April, the ABC’s pre-polling showed strong support for Dr Ryan at booths in Hawthorn, Camberwell and Kew, with Hamer shoring up strong support from within the new boundary lines of Toorak and Malvern.
Comentários