Hamer and Josh Frydenberg with a pre-poll voter during the federal election campaign.Credit: Rachael Dexter
“It’s something that I want to push for.”
In Victoria, the state government has started to unwind stamp duty on new commercial and industrial purchases in favour of an ongoing land tax, but it remains an upfront payment on homes. In NSW, former premier Dominic Perrottet gave some first home buyers the option to pay an annual property tax instead of stamp duty. It was later abolished by the Minns government.
Hamer, who came close to winning the federal seat of Kooyong in May, embodies a cohort the Liberals have been losing to in the so-called teal movement: female, Millennial, financially literate and a renter. But it was the “renter” label that proved a liability in her campaign.
Hamer was and remains a renter, but her pitch as someone who understands the struggles of tenants dissolved when she was forced to admit she also owns two properties, an apartment in Canberra and a million-dollar London flat. She rents a townhouse in Hawksburn with her partner Ross and his two children when they stay.
After the election, rumours swirled within Liberal circles that the leak of her investment portfolio came from within the party, an allegation Hamer refuses to speculate on. Her main frustration is that the “gotcha moment”, as she describes it, was a distraction for the Liberal campaign.
But a bigger problem, Hamer said, lay in her party’s failure to present a clear policy agenda, a shortcoming she believes the Liberals must fix.
Hamer in the photo that came to symbolise her election loss in the federal seat of Kooyong.Credit: James Brickwood
“People expect from an opposition party that they come in, and they say what they are going to do, and I think the team hadn’t fully refined and agreed on that,” she says of the federal team.
Her diagnosis also echoes criticism levelled at the Victorian Liberals, who have spent more than a decade in the political wilderness, struggling to define what they stand for beyond opposition.
Late last month, Hamer was preselected as the party’s candidate for the blue-ribbon seat of Malvern following Michael O’Brien’s resignation. Less than a year out from the election, Hamer is odds-on to win the seat that has been a safe electorate for the Liberals since it was first contested at the 1945 election.
But the role she seems to quietly be pitching for – an economic portfolio in a Coalition government – might be harder to secure.
According to a recent poll, Labor’s primary vote has slumped, giving the Coalition an 11-point primary vote lead.
But the Coalition still needs to win 16 extra seats to seize government, meaning Hamer may have to wait a little longer before putting her economic ideas into practice.
Hamer believes the path back to government lies in a formula which worked for her great-uncle, former Victorian premier Rupert “Dick” Hamer.
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He led Victoria from 1972 to 1981, overseeing reforms that expanded equal opportunity, removed gender discrimination in the public service and decriminalised homosexual acts. Dick Hamer’s government also invested heavily in cultural and civic infrastructure, including the development of the Victorian Arts Centre.
Hamer argues that her great-uncle’s government was economically responsible, showing compassion and care for people in need – lessons she believes will resonate to a new generation of Victorians.
“I think we have got an opportunity to do the same thing.”
Hamer said recalibrating the party’s economic message must occur alongside broader renewal.
“We need to be grounded in reality about what Victorian society looks like today. Victoria is significantly more diverse than it was when I grew up, we need to listen to those communities. We need to listen to young people.”
Hamer fears the Liberal Party’s current message isn’t resonating with younger voters who have “fallen off the aspiration bandwagon” amid harsher economic realities – an assessment she offers with the full knowledge that her own circumstances undeniably offered her a smoother ride.
“I have been very fortunate in my life, I went to a very good school, I had parents who love me, I studied overseas and worked in different cities and gained a whole wealth of different experiences and I see myself as very fortunate,” she said.
“I want to advocate on people’s behalf … my personal circumstances are irrelevant.”
While the rental faux pas may have bruised Hamer’s reputation, it hasn’t deterred her from wading into the housing debate. Instead, she’s leaning in.
Her stamp duty policy idea is pitched squarely at younger voters without her headstart.
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