Driving down Beach Road, it quickly becomes apparent the race in Goldstein – one of the Liberal party’s safest Melbourne seats for more than 120 years – is tight.
Attached to the beachfront mansions, there are dozens of signs spruiking the economic credentials of the incumbent, Tim Wilson – some recently cleaned of vandalism – and just as many of Zoe Daniel, the former ABC journalist running as an independent.
Ormond resident Shai Diner says it’s an exciting time for many in the electorate who traditionally don’t vote Liberal and have felt their vote “doesn’t matter”.
“There seems to be a growing sentiment that we can make something happen here and I hope that’s the case,” he says.
“It’s a progressive electorate. We’re in inner-city Melbourne, people care about climate change, people care about integrity in politics, people care about human rights, but economically they’re not pro-welfare and all of that, so that’s why Liberals have always [held the seat].”
Goldstein is among the country’s wealthier electorates, with a median household weekly income of $2,018, according to the 2016 census, almost double the Australian average of $1,124.
The majority of residents were born in Australia, own their home and are well educated.
And, like property prices, support for the Liberals is highest closest to the beach, in the suburbs of Brighton, Hampton, Sandringham, Black Rock and Beaumaris.
Further inland in Bentleigh, Ormond and McKinnon and parts of Cheltenham, Highett and Elsternwick, where there are strong Jewish, Greek, Chinese and Indian communities, Labor outpolled the Liberals at most booths.
Wilson holds the seat with what would normally seem a comfortable 7.8% margin.
Diner, usually a Labor voter, is backing Daniel at this election. He doesn’t hold back in his criticism of Scott Morrison, whom he describes as “one of the worst prime ministers we’ve had”.
“It took me many years to realise Scott Morrison wasn’t a lazy prime minister, which I always believed he was, and I couldn’t comprehend why he didn’t do things in the bushfires, the pandemic. I feel stupid now, but realise it’s ideology,” he says.
“He just doesn’t believe that governments should do stuff, and to me that’s like, why would you be in government? What’s the point?”
About a five-minute drive from Ormond is the shopping strip on Centre Road in Bentleigh, where Ashleigh Moore has spent the morning scouring the local op shops.
She makes a similar appraisal of the prime minister: “We’ve had zero leadership. He’s had no accountability. When we’ve really needed him, he hasn’t been there.”
Moore is considering voting for Daniel, having ruled out both major parties due to their lack of support for the events industry, in which she is employed, during the pandemic.
She is also concerned about climate change, housing affordability and the rental crisis, though she suspects these issues may not resonate for others in the electorate.
“We live in a very privileged demographic here and a lot of the issues I think that broader Australia would face we just don’t see in Bentleigh,” she says.
“I come from absolutely nothing so I have been first-hand in the rental crisis and I have been first-hand relying on Centrelink payments, so I know what that feels like, and I think there’s not a lot of people in this suburb or this area that have lived through that.”
David Jane, director at Century 21 Bentleigh, has worked as a real estate agent in the area for more than 50 years and has seen housing prices skyrocket.
He bought his first home in Bentleigh for $12,000. It would probably be worth $1.8m today, he says.
“I honestly don’t know how they afford it,” Jane says of the young, aspirational families moving into the area.
A lifelong Liberal supporter, he likes Morrison and says he’s done a good job despite the challenges of the pandemic.
“He hasn’t been perfect, but no one is,” Jane says.
Of Anthony Albanese, he says: “I don’t know whether he’s the right man for out the front. I think his heart’s in it but I just don’t know whether he’s coming across properly.”
Several Goldstein voters describe Albanese as a “nice guy”, but question his ability to lead the nation.
They include retiree Jenny King.
“I do feel a bit sorry for him, I don’t think he’s up to the job,” she says as she enjoys a coffee with her sister on Station Street in Sandringham.
“He’s a very nice person, he’s a lovely person … But I just don’t think he’s leadership material.”
King will continue to vote Liberal, describing Morrison as a “strong leader”.
“You need the adult politicians in charge at the moment because of the state of the world, with the war [in Ukraine]. I find there’s a lot of people there for the wrong reason in politics and they’re just on the smaller issues,” she says.
King describes Wilson as “laid back” and the Daniel campaign as “intimidating”.
“I am just overwhelmed by the amount of propaganda,” King says.
At a neighbouring table sits Stuart Douglas, who says his main concern about a Daniel win is the possibility of a hung parliament.
“A hung parliament could lead to better debate potentially but it could also … make our decision-making process considerably slower,” he says.
He says whoever wins will need to do more to counter Chinese influence in the Pacific.
“It would be a good thing if we could put a stop to it with America’s aid,” he says.
Despite his interest in politics, the New Zealander, who has lived in Australia for 35 years, jokes that he “can’t be bothered” becoming a citizen, so he won’t be able to vote.
Sandringham resident Nicole Walsh has lived in the electorate for 35 years and says until recently she wasn’t interested in politics, because she felt her vote – for Labor in the lower house and the Greens in the Senate – “wasn’t going anywhere”.
At this election she will vote for Daniel, having donated to her campaign.
“For once I feel like the issues that are important to me will be represented by someone in parliament – because she’s going to get in,” Walsh says, citing climate change, integrity, gender equality and health as her main concerns.
She dismisses criticism of Albanese as “too nice”.
“What’s wrong with somebody whose nice and genuine?” Walsh says.
Labor’s candidate for Goldstein is 25-year-old Martyn Abbott. While corflutes for Wilson and Daniel pepper the electorate, Abbott’s candidacy is all but invisible.
Despite initially agreeing to an interview, Abbott stopped responding to requests.
‘Any other really bad words?’
In Brighton, Jackson Catalano and Charlie Moore are preparing to vote in their first election.
“I’m not a big fan of Scomo to be honest. He’s been there for too long, it’s time for him to go I reckon,” Catalano says. “I don’t think he’s very good for the sort of young Australians, I don’t like his climate policies.”
He’ll be voting Labor but is “not a huge fan” of Albanese either.
“He’s the better one of the two but I don’t think he’d be much of a prime minister,” Catalano says.
“I guess in recent times, Scomo going away during the fires probably wasn’t the greatest look for him,” Moore says.
“I will probably have to do a bit more research but I can’t see myself voting for Scomo.”
Highett resident Chloe Babic will have her eight-month-old daughter, Teddy, in mind when she votes.
“Jobs, interest rates, childcare, housing affordability. All the things we now have to think about with babies, their future, which we probably selfishly didn’t think about before,” she says.
Babic is not sure who she’s voting for yet, but says the Liberals would have more of a chance without Morrison as leader.
“He’s fairly unlikeable in my opinion. I find him smarmy and smug and insincere and dismissive – any other really bad words? I don’t like him. He irks me,” she says.
The overwhelming sentiment in the electorate is a dislike for Morrison, rather than Wilson, who many know only from his signs.
Bill Raper is a retired research scientist who worked at the CSIRO. He says the major parties are light on policy and are “demeaning themselves … pretending to be tradies or scientists”.
“In my particular case I was infuriated by that idiot [Morrison] trying to pretend that he knew how to do microbiological testing and the next thing he pretended to do some welding and they had to finish it for him,” he says.
“It’s very shallow,” his wife, Jenny, says.
The Brighton East couple are in their 80s and are volunteering for Daniel. An image of Bill leafletting with their poodle, Polly, clad in a custom-made teal jacket was shared by Daniel on social media.
“I am very hopeful. I will give up my optimism if she doesn’t win, she must win,” Bill says.
“We’ve lived here 62 years. We’ve never really had a true representative, it’s true blue Liberal so they’ve always been either ministers or men on the rise into the ministry and so honestly, they’re absent,” Jenny says.
Daniel says many in the electorate have come to realise their vote was being taken for granted by the Liberal party.
“They were an automatic tick in the yes column for the Coalition, being thrown a car park here and there but not really being genuinely considered in terms of what the broader priorities and principles of the people who live in the electorate might be,” she says.
But Wilson describes Daniel’s campaign as “not born of the community”, citing a more than $400,000 donation she received from Climate 200, as well as support from activist groups such as GetUp and Extinction Rebellion.
His home and signs have been repeatedly targeted by vandals.
“It’s all very clear. It’s all designed to change our community and I think frankly, residents are sick of it and tired of becoming a target when they’re a smart community, they’re quite capable making up their own decision and it’s not going to come from vandalism,” Wilson says.
Daniel says GetUp didn’t consult her campaign but that the group is free to do what it chooses in the electorate, while her signs have also been subject to vandalism.
She says the Liberal party has shifted to the right and she is filling the gap.
“People who might have described themselves as small-l liberals, who sit closer to the centre of the political spectrum, are in the wilderness. They feel that the Liberal party doesn’t represent them but they’re probably not going to be able to bring themselves to vote Labor.
“Now they’ve got me.”
