The race for the new WA seat of Bullwinkel takes shape, five Liberal candidates line up to succeed a retiring member in the SA seat of Grey, plus more Victorian redistribution aftermath.
Federal polls may be coming down the line shortly from Resolve Strategic in the Age/Herald and Freshwater Strategy in the Financial Review. Until then:
• The West Australian reports three potential contenders for Liberal preselection in the new seat of Bullwinkel in Perth’s eastern hinterland, which by my reckoning has a notional Labor margin of 2.9%: Matt Moran, an Afghanistan veteran and former Ten Network reporter who ran unsuccessfully for the Curtin preselection in February; Holly Ludeman, a veterinarian and activist in the campaign against a ban on live sheep exports; and Jonathan Crabtree, a commercial and estate planning lawyer who led the Senate ticket of Cory Bernardi’s Australian Conservatives in 2019. The paper earlier reported that Labor preselection would be contested by Kyle McGinn, a former Maritime Union of Australia organiser who has served in the state Legislative Council for Mining and Pastoral region since 2017, and there are suggestions the Nationals candidate will be former state party leader Mia Davies.
• InDaily reports five candidates for Liberal preselection in the regional South Australian seat of Grey, which will be vacated with the retirement of Rowan Ramsey, its member since 2007: Dean Johnson, mayor of Kimba and president of the Local Government Association; Tom Venning, Barunga Grains farming manager; Rikki Lambert, former chief-of-staff to Family First senator Bob Day; Matt Sampson, a Whyalla police officer; and Suzanne Waters, who ran in the seat for the United Australia Party in 2022.
• Nine Newspapers reports on expectations that Michelle Ananda-Rajah will run in Liberal-held Deakin or Menzies with the proposed abolition of her existing seat of Higgins, which she gained for Labor from the Liberals for the first time in the seat’s history in 2022.
• Labor has announced candidates in its Coalition-held targets in Brisbane: disability advocate Ali France in Peter Dutton’s seat of Dickson, where she also ran in 2019 and 2022; Rebecca Hack, a former school principal now of the Queensland Teachers Union, in the Greens-held seat of Ryan; and Rowan Holzberger, electorate officer to Senator Murray Watt and candidate from 2022, again to run in Forde.