The Liberal Party faces being wiped out in wealthy heartland electorates with betting markets expecting it to hold no seats on Sydney‘s north shore for the first time ever after Saturday’s election.
Sportsbet now has the Labor Party retaining Bennelong on revived 1970s boundaries, east of the Lane Cove River, as a Teal independent embroiled in a hair salon scandal picked up Bradfield.
This would also be the first ever state or federal election where the Liberal Party was left with no seats on Sydney’s north shore, with areas from Ku-ring-gai to Lane Cove long regarded as its political heartland.
Labor MP Jerome Laxale is the favourite at $1.57 to keep Bennelong, with Liberal candidate Scott Yung now out at $2.20.
Should that occur, ultra-expensive waterview suburbs like Hunters Hill, Riverview, Longueville, Greenwich and Lane Cove would be in a federal Labor electorate for the first time ever.
In Bradfield, Teal independent Nicolette Boele is at short odds of $1.72 compared with $1.97 for first-time Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian – vying to replace retiring MP Paul Fletcher in the redrawn seat now stretching from Wahroonga to Northbridge.
Should that materialise, the Liberal Party would lose an electorate it has held continuously since the seat was created in 1949, to a Teal rival.
Bradfield was also the only Liberal electorate to vote for the Voice in 2023.
TheLiberal Party faces being wiped out in wealthy heartland electorates with betting markets expecting it to hold no seats on Sydney’s north shore for the first time ever after Saturday’s election
In Bradfield, Teal independent Nicolette Boele (pictured) is at short odds of $1.72 compared with $1.97 for first-time Liberal candidate Gisele Kapterian
Mr Laxale is the favourite to retain Bennelong, even after having to apologise for his father Alain making an anti-gay comment to a Liberal campaign volunteer.
This is also despite the government proposing to slap a 15 per cent unrealised gains tax on super balances above $3million, and double retirement earnings taxes to 30 per cent.
The re-elected Labor government also changed the former Coalition’s government’s stage three tax cuts so those earning more than $200,000 would get back $4,529 instead of $9,075.
Andrew Zbik, who in 2017 was elected to Lane Cove Council as the area’s first Labor representative since 1947, said wealthy people in Bennelong were happy to vote against their economic interests.
‘I definitely see a shift – it’s almost like “I’ve got my surplus income that I can care about issues; I’m no longer worried about just my own hip pocket”,’ he told Daily Mail Australia.
Mr Zbik, a former Lane Cove mayor who is now a financial planner, said higher-income earners and baby boomers were the ones switching to Labor in traditional Liberal Party areas.
‘The thing that I’ve been hearing, they’re like, “I’ve got surplus, I’ve got more than that, it’s okay”; if anything they’re in that position going, “In the scheme of things, what’s $4,000 to me? It’s nothing to me, my children are struggling to buy a home, I’m fine”,’ he said.
While Labor has promised to leave negative gearing untouched, the ALP had strong swings to it on Sydney’s north shore in 2019 when it campaigned to scrap tax breaks for investor landlords for future purchases of existing homes.
Sportsbet now has the Labor Party retaining Bennelong on revived 1970s boundaries, east of the Lane Cove River (pictured is Labor MP Jerome Laxale campaigning with Anthony Albanese)
‘We started seeing this trend in 2019 where people were saying “Labor will help my children have a leg up”,’ Mr Zbik said.
‘And that’s where we really started this shift of traditional Liberal voter, A, come and talk to us; B, actually start voting for Labor.’
This occurred as former prime minister Scott Morrison’s Coalition government had strong swings to his side in Sydney’s outer south-west.
In 2022, Labor picked up electorates in wealthier areas of Sydney, Melbourne and Adelaide and Perth, as the Coalition kept battler, outer-suburban seats in western Sydney and northern Brisbane.
The Liberal Party three years ago was wiped out on Sydney’s northern beaches, with Teal independents picking up Mackellar and keeping Warringah, as the Teals gained Wentworth in the eastern suburbs and North Sydney on the lower north shore.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s vow to spend more on renewable energy and electric car subsidies resonated more with voters in upmarket electorates.
Mr Zbik said well-off voters disliked Opposition Leader Peter Dutton’s nuclear energy policies.
‘When you’re worried about the environment and a transition to a renewable form of energy, going nuclear is just daft,’ he said.
Labor MP Jerome Laxale is the favourite at $1.57 to keep Bennelong, with Liberal candidate Scott Yung (right) now out at $2.20 after handing out Easter eggs to children outside a school
They are also more likely to drive an electric car, and would benefit from Labor policies to cut car emissions over four years and provide generous tax incentives to those who bought an EV through a salary sacrificing package.
These are policies the Coalition opposed at the election, as it also campaigned to halve fuel excise to 25.4 cents a litre for a year.
Mr Zbik said the Lane Cove local government area had some of Australia’s highest concentration of electric cars.
‘You just hang in Lane Cove and you see electric cars everywhere,’ he said.
‘For an LGA, it’s got one of the highest ownerships of electric cars in the nation.’
Mr Laxale first won Bennelong in 2022 under old boundaries that saw the electorate stretch west of Ryde towards Carlingford.
Under those old boundaries, former ABC TV journalist Maxine McKew won the seat for Labor, in 2007, off sitting Liberal prime minister John Howard when Bennelong overlapped with the state Labor seat of Ryde, then held by deputy premier John Watkins.
Bennelong’s boundaries were redrawn for the 2025 election following the abolition of the Teal seat of North Sydney.
Labor has never held a federal electorate east of the Lane Cove River but it’s previously held the north shore state seats of Lane Cove, North Sydney and Willoughby and the northern beaches electorates of Manly and Wakehurst, at various times from 1944 to 1984.
The Liberal Party still retained seats on Sydney’s north shore and northern beaches in a landslide 1978 state election defeat, even as it lost traditional heartland electorates to Labor and independents.
The north shore covers areas east of the Lane Cove River, west of Middle Harbour and south of Hornsby, overlapping with Ku-ring-gai, Willoughby, Lane Cove and Mosman councils.
