Incumbent David Southwick is well-liked, his party not so much

JULIE SZEGO: The Liberal incumbent for Caulfield has the ease of a man who suspects that his fate lies in forces beyond his control. It’ll be personal if he wins, less so if he loses.

Sometime after digesting the Albanese Government’s badly executed reversal of the Morrison government’s recognition of West Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, I thought: “This’ll be good for David Southwick.” 

It’s hard not to think such things during election season.

Southwick is Caulfield’s incumbent MP of 12 years. The seat has been safely conservative for most of its nearly 100-year existence. The past 20 years saw volatility creeping in, and at the last Victorian election Southwick prevailed by only 204 votes.

This time he’s also up against an electoral redistribution that flips the seat by a whisker to Labor, which, if we’re to believe the polls, seems to be defying gravity despite eight years in office, the punishing lockdowns of the past two, enduring corruption within the party and deteriorating ambulance response times. The polls likely reflect the government’s decisive leadership during Covid and momentum on critical infrastructure projects. They almost certainly reflect a floundering opposition under Matthew Guy’s recycled leadership.

Adding to Southwick’s woes in Caulfield is a teal challenger, lawyer and journalist Nomi Kaltmann. The disaffected Liberal voter is spoilt for choice, with Kaltmann in the mix alongside Labor’s Lior Harel, whose CV includes a senior role at top commercial law firm Arnold Bloch Leibler, and the Greens’ Rachel Iampolski, an urban researcher.