The federal Opposition has suffered an early blow to its shadow ministry, with Liberal candidate and proposed shadow assistant technology minister Gisele Kapterian missing out on the Sydney seat of Bradfield.
A week to the day that the presumptive MP was included in the shadow ministry, the Australian Electoral Commission on Wednesday announced Independent Nicolette Boele had won the closely fought electorate by 26 votes.
The commission had previously had Ms Kapterian as winning the blue ribbon Liberal seat on the initial distribution of preferences by a margin of eight votes last week, before a recount was ordered.
But “further rulings on ballot paper formality during the recount process” resulted in a final split of 50.01 per cent to 49.99 per cent in favour of Ms Boele, a finance and clean energy executive.
“The final margin of 26 in favour of the Independent candidate is similar to where it stood at the completion of the previous indicative two-candidate preferred (TCP) count,” the AEC added.
On Twitter, Ms Boele said she was “incredibly honored to be provisionally elected as the next member for Bradfield”, while acknowledging Ms Kapterian for her civility during the contest.
Ms Kapterian, who is contesting the seat following the departure of long-time Liberal MP Paul Fletcher, said she will “carefully review the two counts”, adding that she was ahead at the conclusion of the original count.
Pending the results of the Bradfield count, Opposition leader Sussan Ley last week named Ms Kapterian as shadow assistant minister for technology and the digital economy in her ministry.
“Gisele’s appointment is a vote of confidence in the future of women in our party,” Ms Ley said last week.
“And it’s a clear message to communities like Bradfield that if you support your local Liberal member they will have a direct say in the decisions that change the direction of this country.”
Ms Kapterian is a former international trade lawyer and political staffer who left Canberra in 2018 and took up a role at US software giant Salesforce as its regional head of public sector.
Do you know more? Contact James Riley via Email.