In Melbourne’s leafy inner east, a bitter war is being waged.
Voters in the hotly-contested seat of Kooyong have been bombarded with anti-teal pamphlets, corflutes ripped down, “dirt” uncovered and candidate forums gatecrashed and shunned.
Teal independent Monique Ryan and Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer have both endured controversies.
Hamer lost skin when failing to disclose she owned apartments in Canberra and London after pitching herself as a struggling renter.
Dr Ryan was forced to apologise after her husband was caught pulling down a sign of her political opponent.
Amy Nethery, an associate professor of politics and policy at Deakin University, said it remained to be seen if any of the “unedifying” antics of recent weeks will impact the result of Saturday’s election.
“There might be some people who are quite put off by this,” she told AAP.
Dr Ryan shocked then-treasurer Josh Frydenberg, beating him by 2.9 per cent in 2022 and prising the seat once held by Sir Robert Menzies away from the Liberals for the first time since 1945.
But some of the behaviour of Dr Ryan’s camp this time around is contrary to the integrity-focused image she projects, Nethery argued.
“Monique Ryan went into parliament with the promise of a new style of politics,” she added.
“If this is a new style, it’s not that attractive.”
The former paediatric neurologist has also come under external attack, including from a surgeon filmed stomping on one of her corflutes and telling viewers to “bury the body” and men from a nationalist group who gatecrashed a local candidates’ forum.
Those incidents were not the usual “rough and tumble” of an election campaign, Nethery said.
“This is not just the corflute war,” she said.
Dr Ryan’s notional margin has been clipped to 2.2 per cent following a boundary change to take in more traditionally Liberal parts of Malvern, Malvern East, Armadale, Toorak, and Prahran.
The Liberals preselected Hamer, a 31-year-old fintech executive and the Oxford-educated grand-niece of former Victorian premier Sir Rupert “Dick” Hamer, to appeal to more young voters.
Jess, a young woman who voted for Dr Ryan and did not wish to give her surname, said she had noticed a disagreement about signs outside a pre-poll site in Kew and revelations about Hamer’s property portfolio.
Neither changed her vote but she suggested Hamer erred by not disclosing her investment properties.
“I feel like potentially being honest about it would have made me feel different but I don’t think the Liberals were ever going to because it was the angle that they were trying to play,” the Kew resident told AAP.
“It’s exactly what I expect from the desperation to get Kooyong back.”
Dani, who also did not wish to give her surname, said her vote was primarily driven by the current economic environment as a financially stressed small business operator.
“I don’t feel like Monique Ryan has done much in the time that she’s been representing us,” she said.
“But we have seen some pretty bad antics from the lefties ... obviously the debacle with Monique’s husband pulling down the sign wasn’t very ethical.”
The business owner also raised Hamer keeping her status as a landlord on the “down-low” as an issue, declaring she could have used it to her advantage.
“She could have said ‘Hey I rent and I also own so I also understand both sides and I can speak to both sides’,” Dani said.
“So I think that’s a bit of a mistake on her part.
Competing climate messages were on full display outside an early voting centre in Kew on April 30.
A man wearing homemade placards declared “The climate emergency is a scam, prove me wrong” as voters queued up before a carbon baron impersonator called Coral Reef showed up with a sign reading “The billionaires united will never be defeated.”
Kooyong voter Kanchana said he was similarly uninfluenced by the cut and thrust of the campaign, casting his ballot mostly on the cost of living and housing without revealing who he voted for.
“It’s noise,” he said of the campaign antics.
“Very honestly I feel like across the whole of politics, no one really cares about average people so it was pretty hard to decide.”
