Join us over the next four weeks for an in-depth look at the candidates, hot-button issues, and a breakdown of the policies and campaign promises in four key Victorian electorates.
Join us over the next four weeks for an in-depth look at the candidates, hot-button issues, and a breakdown of the policies and campaign promises in four key Victorian electorates.
Labor incumbent MP Josh Burns and Liberal candidate Benson Saulo have addressed hundreds of people from the Jewish community at a synagogue in St Kilda in the seat of Macnamara.
The audience for the Jewish Community Election Forum was reminded four times before either candidate spoke that respect was important, but Burns was briefly heckled when discussing the personal toll the conflict in Gaza had taken on him as a Jewish man, in what he described as the most difficult two years of his personal and professional life.
A man yelled “bullshit” during the remarks, and was shushed by other audience members, some yelling “shame”. The man was later ejected from the venue after a second outburst.
As attendees got up to leave, another man yelled: “Josh, you are a friend of Israel, but your Labor Party mates are not.”
Questions were put to Burns that repeatedly forced him to defend his party’s policies on recognising the Palestinian state, the party’s relationship with Israel, combatting antisemitic attacks in Australia and ensuring student safety in universities.
Burns conceded in his opening remarks that he had spoken publicly against some of his party’s policies on fighting antisemitism, but urged Jewish voters not to turn away from Labor.
Saulo replied, to loud cheers and applause: “Actually, it’s the Labor Party that has left the Jewish community.”
Saulo said that as an Indigenous man he understood the importance of connection to country, and empathised with the Jewish people as a friend of Israel. Both candidates tried to leverage local anti-Greens sentiment, with Burns positioning himself as the only realistic opponent to the minor party.
“Benson is a nice guy, but he’s not the person I’m worried about. The only people who can win this seat are me or the Greens,” Burns said. He pointed to young, progressive inner-city voters in suburbs such as Elwood, St Kilda and South Melbourne whose preferences he said would probably go to the Greens over the Liberals.
Saulo responded, to more loud cheers, that the only way the Greens would get elected was if people voted for Labor, because the party traditionally preferenced the Greens.
Burns declined to say whether the Greens would be preferenced in Macnamara at this election and said the result of an internal process on the matter would be announced within days.
Venturing out of the four hot seats on which this blog has focused so far, tonight I’ll be reporting from St Kilda in the federal electorate of Macnamara for a Jewish-community election forum.
A tight three-way race is under way in the seat, which has the biggest Jewish community of any electorate in Victoria, against the backdrop of rising community concerns over antisemitism.
Almost 10 per cent of Macnamara’s population nominated Judaism as their religion in the last census, compared with the national average of 0.4 per cent. The seat is also home to the Adass Israel Congregation synagogue which was destroyed in an arson attack late last year.
Tonight, incumbent Labor MP Josh Burns, who is Jewish, and Liberal candidate Benson Saulo will address the community in St Kilda. Greens candidate Sonya Semmens will not speak, at the request of the organisers.
Jewish Community Council of Victoria chief executive Naomi Levin and Rebecca Davis from the Australia/Israel and Jewish Affairs Council – two of the forum’s co-hosting organisations – will moderate the discussion.
When asked why Semmens had been excluded from the marginal seat’s forum, Levin told this masthead: “A decision was made by the co-costs that the most productive forum would be between the Labor and Liberal candidates.”
Macnamara was hotly contested at the 2022 federal election, with only a few hundred votes stopping the Greens from knocking Labor into third place and taking the seat. After several weeks of counting, Labor safely held the seat with a two-candidate-preferred margin of 12.2 per cent, once preferences were included.
This election, the incumbent will be trying to prevent voters from rejecting the party because of its stance on the war in Gaza. Labor is considering a controversial decision to run an open ticket in Macnamara, meaning the party would not instruct voters to preference the Greens before the Liberals.
Labor has held Macnamara, previously known as Melbourne Ports, since 1906, and Burns has been the MP since 2019.
Although it feels like we’ve been in campaign mode for months, the official gears of the federal election are only just starting to turn.
The deadline for party nominations passed at midday on Tuesday, while independents have until midday on Thursday to submit their paperwork to the Australian Electoral Commission.
In Kooyong, teal MP Monique Ryan shared a photo of herself on Facebook at the electoral office in Kew on Tuesday.
“Today I handed in my candidate nomination forms to run in the upcoming federal election. Let’s do this, Kooyong!” Ryan posted.
Meanwhile, a quick glance at her main rival Amelia Hamer’s socials shows the Liberal candidate has been out at Canterbury railway station this morning, chatting with commuters.
For the democracy nerds out there (I count myself proudly among them), the ballot draw happens at midday on Friday. That’s when AEC offices in electorates around the country hold an official event to announce the final list of candidates – and, more importantly, the randomly assigned ballot paper order.
The process involves a blindfold, numbered balls, and what is effectively a double-randomised “bingo” system to ensure fairness.
Why does ballot order matter? In close races like Kooyong, drawing top spot can make a difference because of so-called “donkey votes” – when disengaged voters simply number the boxes top to bottom.
If Ryan or Hamer lands that top position, it could be a big deal in a contest expected to be decided by a few hundred votes.
I’m hoping to be off crutches by then and plan to be there in person for the draw. Candidates often turn up too, so we might see not just Ryan and Hamer, but also the Greens’ Jackie Carter and Labor’s Clive Crosby and anyone else who has put their hand up.
The AEC will publish the full list of candidates – in ballot order – on Friday evening, once all data has been entered and verified.
I was out at Batman station on the Upfield line in Coburg North this morning to meet Greens candidate Samantha Ratnam as she handed out flyers and met voters in Wills. And what a beautiful fresh morning it was, it’s perfect weather out here.
This was an interesting spot for Ratnam to be campaigning, as it’s a fair way north of Bell Street, which is typically Labor territory. However, perhaps the Greens see it as a place ripe with potential new voters who can be swayed to their side.
For those on caramel latte watch, Ratnam did have a Keep Cup in hand, however she assured me it was filled with English breakfast tea, rather than the controversial coffee order she was “outed” on yesterday.
“It’s a good strong Sri Lankan brew,” she said.
It was a two-for-one for Ratnam at the spot she chose, with some commuters rushing to the platform to catch a city-bound train and others cycling down the Upfield bike path.
I saw some greyhounds out there, as well as a few of those kid-friendly cargo bikes, so I knew I was in the northern suburbs.
At one point, a person took a flyer and said to Ratnam that the issue of Palestine was a moral test for our politicians.
Ratnam, who is campaigning on an immediate ceasefire in Gaza, agreed. She wore a watermelon badge on her top, a symbol linked with Palestinian solidarity.
“What’s happening in Gaza comes up a lot, almost daily, on my doorknocks now,” she said.
However, the biggest issue, said Ratnam, was clearly cost-of-living. The major Greens plays on that front are bringing dental into Medicare, banning supermarket price gouging and capping rent increases.
As for the party’s public transport policies, they include 50 cent fares and a duplication of the Upfield line to allow for 10-minute train frequency (although these do sound more like state policies to me).
Ratnam, who has a profile in the area after serving as the mayor of Merri-bek, said she believed Wills was ready to shift away from Labor and turn Green.
“People are much less wedded to the parties they used to have loyalty to. They’re much more open,” she said. “We’re getting very close in this seat.”
I also had a chat to a few voters waiting on the platform at Batman station to see how they felt about how the election was playing out.
Jessie Rye, a 40-year-old who lives in Coburg North, said she was a long-time Greens voter who was hopeful that Ratnam could win the seat.
For her, the cost of health was a big factor and she wanted to see more things covered by Medicare, like ADHD and autism diagnoses.
“These are financially exclusionary to people who can’t afford thousands of dollars,” she said.
She also supported proposals for a ceasefire in Gaza and was keen to see cannabis legalised. “That would be nice,” she said.
Matty, who preferred not to give his first name, said he hadn’t made his mind up yet about who to vote for – but being priced out of the housing market was something he was focused on.
Both Labor and the Greens are pushing hard on this issue to try to win votes.
“I’ve just had a young one, so I’m looking to get a bit more space from a small townhouse,” Matty said.
“The wish is to own, but not move too far out. That’s probably a bit of a pipe dream at the moment. It’s hard enough to service the mortgage as it is on one income.”
I’ve also asked to join Labor’s Peter Khalil at a train station and will report back if that offer is accepted.
Teal independent Zoe Daniel has raised more than $1.6 million for her campaign to retain the seat of Goldstein.
Her rival, Liberal Tim Wilson, is disclosing nothing about his donations – either the amount or the source – instead relying on federal laws that only require MPs to declare their donations to the Australian Electoral Commission months after the election.
Daniel is declaring her donations in real time on her campaign website, and, as of Tuesday, had raised $1,613,365.
The donations are led by the fundraising body Climate 200, convened by clean energy investor Simon Holmes à Court, which has contributed around $450,000 in 11 separate tranches.
Other big donations include $100,000 from Keldoulis Investments, owned by share trader Robert Keldoulis, who is also a big backer of Climate 200, and $66,000 from Keep Them Honest Pty Ltd, a company registered to a $13 million Darling Point residence owned by Fred Woollard, founder of boutique fund Samuel Terry Asset Management.
Woollard also made a personal donation of $16,000 to Daniel’s campaign.
Woollard has come under scrutiny for his links to fossil fuel, due to his fund’s significant investments in Horizon Oil and US-based Diamond Offshore Drilling.
But the majority of the donations to Daniel’s campaign are for smaller amounts, with more than 3101 individual donations.
In the last election Daniel raised $1.745 million, with Climate 200 donations comprising $710,000, or 41 per cent of the total raised.
Wilson defended his decision not to disclose who is donating to his campaign or the amount he has raised.
“Our campaign comes from the community, not from Climate 200,” he said.
“We comply with electoral donations laws and we’ve raised our money overwhelmingly from the Goldstein community.”
Wilson said his fundraising efforts for the campaign were going well.
“Many people who have never donated before … have now decided for the first time that they need to donate,” he said. “They’ve realised they don’t have the luxury of just assuming that we’re going to win Goldstein.”
Joo-Cheong Tham, a professor at Melbourne Law School and director of the Centre for Public Integrity, said the current disclosure scheme for electoral donations “is effectively a non-disclosure scheme”.
Tham said close to half the donations made to major parties in the last financial year were “dark money” that was not itemised or attributed, and that it often took almost 18 months for donations to be disclosed.
Tham said real-time disclosure, which is being undertaken voluntarily by Daniel, will be required for the next federal election,but until then, voters will be mainly left in the dark about the origins of campaign funds.
“People need to know who pays the piper … for their vote to be an informed vote,” he said.
Tham said it was concerning that an increasing amount of money was being spent on tightly contested seats.
“These are multimillion-dollar contests,” he said. “The problem with that is that it becomes an informal barrier to entry.”
Andrew McNabb, the campaign manager for the Liberal candidate for Bruce, has been sacked by the party after he posted a series of offensive social media comments.
The Age approached the Liberal Party on Tuesday with questions about McNabb’s online activity.
“The party has been made aware of completely unacceptable comments made by a volunteer,” a Liberal spokesperson said in a statement.
“He is no longer involved in the campaign. These comments do not reflect the party’s values or the standards we expect.”
McNabb did not respond to multiple requests for comment and switched his X account to private after calls and texts from The Age.
McNabb is the campaign manager for Zahid Safi, who hopes to unseat the current MP, Labor’s Julian Hill, at the May 3 election. Hill holds the seat on a margin of about 5 per cent.
McNabb’s X account is littered with sexist and other offensive commentary over the past two years.
He has regularly responded to women critical of the Liberal Party by calling them derogatory words such as “nasty ugly”, “STUPID B”, “ugly old bat”, “stupid bitch”, “dumb old cow”, “leftist bitch”, “ugly cow”, and “miserable old bat”.
“Clearly you need to stick your tampons in your mouth to stop the shit running out!” he wrote to one woman in February.
“F OFF YOU OLD MOLE,” he told another woman on January 14.
“How many ugly pills did you take to look like that?” he wrote to a third woman in February.
In response to a woman who wrote in March that Liberal leader Peter Dutton offers “only hate and division”, McNabb wrote: “And your PURE CRAP SWEETHEART! Nasty ugly LEFT women normally are. U STUPID B”.
McNabb’s X account has 32 followers. His most recent post was a campaign ad for Safi.
Neither Safi nor McNabb responded to requests for comment.
In recent months, McNabb has also published a slew of personal attacks on Labor, Greens and independent politicians, repeatedly using expletives.
“BULLSHIT U DICKHEAD ALBANESE GOOD LUCK WITH THAT,” he commented last week on an ABC article about US tariffs.
McNabb commented on Labor Senator Murray Watt’s profile: “You’re just a FLOG Watt! Nobody is listening to Labor, because they have failed to deliver. Get stuffed you over weight GRUB”.
In a post by Labor MP Amanda Rishworth claiming Peter Dutton will “slash” welfare payments, McNabb responded: “BULLSHIT, Why are Labor Left women so nasty? Get a life you nasty B.”
He referred to Housing Minister Clare O’Neil as a “nasty vicious low life” and told Bob Carr in January: “F Off Carr you old dinosaur”.
Underneath a post by Greens leader Adam Bandt criticising US president Donald Trump, McNabb wrote: “You’re just a wanker Bandt. GO TRUMP WELL DONE CANCELLING THE PARIS AGREEMENT. NOTHING BUT A BLOODY SCAM. F OFF BANDT YOU FILTHY COMMUNIST PRICK.”
Across other recent posts, McNabb described climate change as the “biggest scam of the 21st century” and wrote about Indigenous ceremonies at sporting events – “a bloody joke this crap is.”
McNabb also published commentary on US politics, referring to former US president Barak Obama as a “useless prick” and “pathetic loser” while throwing enthusiastic support behind Trump.
“GO TRUMP & MUSK LOVE YOUR WORK! The leftists are bleeding and screaming, four more years of entertainment.”
He commented about support for Trump’s executive order to withdraw from the World Health Organisation, which he described as a “corrupt organisation” and also supported the “mass deportations”.
At other times he expressed support for US health secretary Robert Kennedy Junior and published views on vaccine safety that contravene government health advice: “No way am I having any more covid vaccines. I refused to have Pfizer full stop,” he wrote in November 2023.
McNabb has also repeatedly made derogatory comments about Hill.
“When will you be honest with the Muslim community? Family values are their top priority!” he wrote on X in mid-2024.
More recently, when a voter asked for more information about Safi’s businesses in a post on the candidate’s official campaign page, in a series of responses, which have since been deleted, McNabb repeated the same theme, stating Hill “pretends to be a family man”.
Hill, who has held the seat since 2016, is openly gay and has one adult daughter.
“[Zahid] is married with six kids and has a “REAL GENUINE FAMILY VALUES”. Why don’t you ask about his living arrangements? We all know about Zahid’s. Then lets talk about transparency, ethics and morals,” McNabb wrote in a since-deleted post.
McNabb was previously forced to deny a string of racist commentary online by an account with his name, including several Facebook posts calling for a ban to Muslim immigration or telling Muslims to “leave the country”.
The Age reported in 2015 the Victorian Liberal party moved to expel McNabb after he led a demonstration outside a party fundraiser and repeatedly described Tony Abbott as the “world’s worst salesman”.
The cost of living, as it is around the country, is a major policy battleground in Wills. Labor’s Peter Khalil and the Greens’ Samantha Ratnam are both citing it as one of the top issues for voters.
With that in mind, we spoke to Grant Miles, managing director of Cheaper Buy Miles, a discount supermarket that sells low-cost groceries that are close to their use-by dates.
There are four Cheaper Buy Miles outlets in Melbourne, including one in Sydney Road, Brunswick, which Miles said was the busiest of all his stores.
“The cost of living has gone ballistic in the last four to five years,” he said. “And in that time we’ve grown with it because there are just so many more people now looking to save money, particularly on groceries.”
Cheaper Buy Miles has a devoted following on social media, where shoppers wait to see what deals are on offer in any particular week. Some products don’t get advertised online because they are being sold so cheap, Miles said.
“We do have some suppliers who say, ‘Please don’t put it on social media because we don’t want other players in the market to see what you’re selling it for,’” he said.
Khalil and Ratnam were on ABC Radio Melbourne Mornings show with Raf Epstein on Tuesday speaking about their plans to take on the supermarket giants to keep prices down.
Labor and the Greens want to make price-gouging illegal, but it’s unclear how effective this would be after a damning Australian Competition and Consumer Commission report into the supermarket giants stopped short of accusing them of price-gouging.
In Wills, a seat which is younger on average than other parts of the country and has a large student population, anything to bring down the cost of living is bound to cut through.
“I think young people are hurting the most in terms of grocery prices,” said Miles. “Young people can’t afford to pay the rent, and the last thing they want to do is overspend on groceries.”
Politicians and their property portfolios are under the spotlight: Anthony Albanese’s $4.3 million clifftop purchase, Peter Dutton’s many property purchases over 35 years (he bought his first home when he was 19) and this week’s revelations that 31-year-old Kooyong Liberal candidate Amelia Hamer, while renting in Hawthorn, actually owns two properties.
It seems like a good time to take a look at the properties owned by Goldstein candidates teal independent Zoe Daniel and Liberal Tim Wilson.
Both Daniel and Wilson have highlighted the housing crisis as a key focus for their campaigns.
Daniel and her husband jointly own a five-bedroom home in Hampton which property records show they bought for $1.95 million in 2013 and a three-bedroom beach house at Separation Creek, just past Lorne on the Great Ocean Road.
Daniel says the housing crisis is “a national emergency”, and at her campaign launch on Sunday, she outlined her plans for a national housing summit next year to come up with “a unified vision for a 20-year housing strategy”.
Property records show Wilson owns three properties: a three-bedroom townhouse in Sandringham which he bought with his husband for $1.25 million last year; a two-bedroom apartment in South Yarra which they bought for $1.45 million three years ago; and he also owns a house solely in Barongarook in the Otways.
In a statement provided to The Age, Wilson said: “I live in Brighton, and also spend some time at a property in South Yarra that I have owned for 15 years. My husband and I also own property on the Mornington Peninsula.”
At his campaign launch, Wilson said home ownership was a “central pillar of public policy”.
“If Australia has a national story, it is hard work, sacrifice and savings,” he said. “Everybody should be able to share ownership of this nation, yet young Australians increasingly believe it is beyond them.”
Wilson also criticised the state Labor government’s housing plans which he said involved “imposing 20-storey towers onto suburbs to help bureaucrats tick boxes”.
Wilson wants Australians to be able to access their superannuation to buy housing.
“We are committed to slowing migration [which is] causing foreign ownership, ensuring Australians can access their full savings so they can buy earlier, cheaper and minimise the years they’re paying rent,” he said. “The Greens may want you to rent from the government, Labor may want you to rent from your super fund, only we [the Liberals] fundamentally believe that every Australian should aspire to own their own home.”
Labor’s Peter Khalil and the Greens’ Samantha Ratnam appeared on ABC Radio Melbourne this morning for an interview with Raf Epstein that put the spotlight on the seat of Wills.
The interview covered plenty of ground, from the housing crisis to supermarket pricing and the conflict in Gaza. There wasn’t much in the way of nastiness between the two candidates.
But first up, Epstein asked his two guests for their coffee order. Khalil’s was uncontroversial: latte with no sugar. Ratnam, however, caused a little bit of a stir with her preference for a caramel skinny latte. “It’s out there now, embarrassing, but, you know, delicious,” she said in her defence.
Who knows how that plays out in the hipster territory of Brunswick and Fitzroy North?
They were also asked about their preferred routes from the ABC studio in Southbank back to the northern suburbs. Both opted for Sydney Road over CityLink, although Khalil noted the busy thoroughfare can get backed up, so it takes a bit of time.
Interestingly, both candidates also supported Airport Rail over the Suburban Rail Loop when asked about their preferred transport projects. The north section of SRL, which will see a station built at Fawkner in the north of Wills, has yet to be given a start date.
On to more pressing matters, the candidates were asked about housing, an issue that is dominating the campaign. Khalil said Labor was investing $33 billion in housing through programs such as the Housing Australia Future Fund, the Help to Buy shared equity scheme, and a plan to build 1.2 million homes.
“The practical reality is you’ve got to get supply into the market to actually alleviate pressure on renters,” he said.
Ratnam said the Greens’ negotiations with Labor on its housing policies had forced the government to secure an extra $3 billion for public and community housing. Ratnam said the Greens also wanted to freeze rent increases.
“Thousands of people are telling us they feel like Labor has not been there for them and has not taken the crisis that they’re experiencing seriously, including housing prices,” she said.
The interview then went to talkback, of which I’ll give a flavour of below.
On supermarket prices
Khalil: “We’re going to make price gouging illegal. The cost of living crisis is real. People are under pressure. The important part about the legislation on this is to make sure that they’re being watched. They know they can’t actually breach the law and do price gouging.”
Ratnam: “We’ve got to make market price gouging illegal. It’s an idea that Greens first put on the table. It’s really welcome that Labor has adopted that plan now. We’ve got to monitor those big corporations. I was up in Fawkner recently and people were telling me their grocery bill was now over $500 per week.”
On Gaza
Khalil: “The Labor Party is committed to recognising the state of Palestine. We’ve seen horrific images and horrific loss of innocent life over the last couple of years, but this conflict goes back decades and decades. I’ve been listening to members of the community who are feeling pain and anguish, and my role is to reflect back their views. We’ve voted for a ceasefire multiple times in the United Nations.”
Ratnam: “We’ve been pushing for a ceasefire, one of the first in the Australian parliament to call for that. We want sanctions to be placed on Israel when a genocide is happening to the Palestinian people. We want to end the two-way arms trade that is happening between Australia and Israel. It’s coming up almost daily in our conversations in our community that they feel really let down by Labor.”
On who will win the federal election
Khalil: “Every Labor seat counts to form government. Every Labor seat lost brings Peter Dutton closer. We are confident we can get a re-elected Albanese Labor government.”
Ratnam: “All predictions are that it is going to be a minority Labor government, shared power with more Greens and independents pushing Labor.”
Over the weekend, Muslim Votes Matter officially endorsed Greens candidate Rhonda Garad in Bruce.
“Rhonda will be challenging [Labor MP] Julian Hill who’s been taking the local Muslim community for granted for too many years,” the group posted on Instagram yesterday.
”As a Dandenong local for over 30 years, she’s stood firmly for a ceasefire in Gaza and co-led a motion to fly the Palestinian flag in solidarity.”
Bruce is a seat with a significant Muslim population (around 14 per cent) and Muslim Votes Matter will now deploy more than 100 volunteers to doorknock and campaign for Garad in coming weeks.
Tally Room election analyst Ben Raue said the endorsement was unlikely to shift the needle in Bruce, with Labor more likely to lose votes to the Liberals than Greens.
Garad disagrees and aims to double the Greens primary vote in the south-east Melbourne seat by promoting federal policies like rent freezes and supermarket regulation as ways to tackle the cost-of-living crisis.
“I just met a man whose rent increased from $300 to $570 in one year. He’s paying 60-70 per cent of what he earns. He’s going to food banks just to get food. We’re seeing the rise of the working poor. If you go to Dandenong park, you see tents, people living in their cars,” she said.
I tagged along with Garad for a few hours on Monday. She wore a Palestinian sash around her neck and said “as-salamu alaykum” to passing women as she knocked on doors to ask voters what issues matter most to them.
She tears up speaking about the deaths of children in Gaza and what she says is an inadequate response from local politicians.
“They say nothing about this. The difference between what we’re feeling and what Penny Wong and Albo are saying is really traumatic,” she says.
First stop was strong coffee and home-made biscuits with Italian couple Luigi and Linda Stranges, who have lived in the area since 1967.
“I love Dandenong so much,” Luigi said. “Dandenong was very, very good. European come in, work hard. The last 15 to 20 years, Dandenong changed a lot. Kids are robbing. Not much control the young people. Before there was more respect.”
He sees crime and cost of living as the major issues driving his vote.
“Would you consider voting Greens?” Garad asked. “Maybe Greens yes. It’s too early to know yet,” he says. “I’m not Labor, I’m not Liberal. I go for which one is better for Australia.”
On another street nearby, a voter called Pam, who did not want to share her surname, said she did not like the Greens and has already made up her mind on who she is voting for.
“Liberals, don’t give me Peter Dutton, I can’t stand him,” she said. “We’ve always been Labor. Definitely sticking with that.
“Does this worry you, the Gaza situation?” Garad asked, pointing to her sash.
“The government can’t do anything about the Gaza Strip. You can’t send troops over,” Pam said.
“Nobody can do anything about it. It’s up to them, there. We’ve always been allies with Israel. I don’t like what they’re doing now, I think they’ve gone too far.”
“Would you like to see Albanese finally say something?” Garad said.
“Yes. Say one thing,” Pam said. “I have to get back to vegetables now.”
As for the other candidates, Hill was focusing on ministerial duties today, after attending 15 community events at the weekend.
Liberal candidate Zahid Safi has still not shared his diary.
We’ll be on the hustings again with Hill tomorrow. As always, feel free to get in touch with tips or your thoughts on charlotte.grieve@theage.com.au.