Liberals to have ‘easy run’ in Morrison’s old seat of Cook

Liberals expect their Cook candidate Simon Kennedy to have an easy time retaining Scott Morrison’s old blue-ribbon seat when voters there head to a by-election poll on April 13. 

Labor declined to run a candidate, meaning Kennedy will face off against five mostly unknown rivals.

No party has wrested Cook from the Liberals since the party first won the seat in 1975. 

Morrison, who was prime minister from 2018 to the Coalition’s 2022 loss, announced his retirement from politics earlier this year. He remains more popular in his local area than he was in the rest of the country, local Liberals say (even if there were reportedly a less-than-ideal number of RSVPs at his now postponed Sutherland Shire farewell dinner) and he’s already been out stumping for Kennedy on at least one occasion.

However, it’s understood Morrison has taken a hands-off approach to the by-election, declining to support any one candidate in the intra-party preselection battle. Perhaps it was wise to stay out of it: the parachuting of Kennedy to the safe seat has reportedly caused some strife in the local branch.

“Kennedy will have an easy run this time,” a local Liberal source told Crikey. 

Like Morrison did when he first contested the seat in 2007, Kennedy will move to the Sutherland Shire as part of his by-election bid. He lives in Maroubra and has previously campaigned for the Sydney north shore seat of Bennelong in a 2022 contest that was won by Labor.

At the 2022 federal election, Labor’s candidate for Cook Simon Earle managed to get a 6.6% swing towards the party, but the Liberal margin still ended up a comfortable 12.4%. 

The local newspaper the Sutherland Shire Leader noted just two of the confirmed candidates were registered as living in the Sutherland Shire: the Animal Justice Party’s Natasha Brown, who lives in Yarrawarrah; and the Greens candidate Martin Moore, who lives in Cronulla. 

“I have been out every day this week and what I am hearing is cost of living,” Kennedy told the newspaper.

“For me, the job now is to show people my work ethic and I am willing to listen to them and fight for them on cost of living.”

The other candidates on the ballot will be: 

• Vinay Kolhatkar, Libertarian (Sans Souci)
• Roger Woodward, independent (Westleigh)
• Simone Francis Gagatam, Sustainable Australia Party (Oatley)

Brown has said she’s running to “give animals the political voice they so desperately need”. 

Kolhatkar was described by his party as a “passionate advocate for universal human liberty and its profound impact on happiness, [prosperity] and morality”. 

Woodward states on a website linked to his campaign that he would, if elected, seek to reduce taxes and make sure superannuation goes through no retrospective changes. 

Gatatam’s party said she would aim to “stop corruption, stop overdevelopment, and stabilise [the] population … mainly by returning annual permanent immigration to normal”.