Barrister Roshena Campbell will be the Liberal Party candidate for the marginal outer-eastern Melbourne seat of Aston vacated by Alan Tudge after top party officials handpicked a candidate on Tuesday night.
Liberal officials brought forward the Aston preselection after the Speaker of the House of Representatives, Milton Dick, on Monday announced the byelection would be held on April 1.
Roshena Campbell is the candidate for the federal seat of Aston in the upcoming byelection,
Opposition Leader Peter Dutton was among about half a dozen senior party figures who voted in a secret ballot of the Victorian administrative committee in Melbourne on Tuesday night.
April 1 is the earliest date that complied with the required 33-day notice period and fell after the NSW election on March 25, prompting an emergency Monday night meeting of Victorian Liberal officials.
Federal director Andrew Hirst, Victorian Opposition Leader John Pesutto, senior federal MP Dan Tehan and Victorian division president Greg Mirabella supported a controversial decision to handpick a candidate rather than conduct a drawn out rank-and-file ballot that would have delayed the ability for a new candidate to campaign against Labor’s pick, former unionist and finance worker Mary Doyle last week.
Campbell is a Melbourne City councillor who has written columns for The Age.
The unsuccessful candidates were oncologist Ranjana Srivastava, former Knox mayor and Christian school teacher Emanuele Cicchielo and former upper house MP Cathrine Burnett-Wake. Cicchielo withdrew his nomination before the vote.
Alan Tudge’s decision to quit politics leaves Opposition Leader Peter Dutton with a fight in the Melbourne seat of Aston.Credit:Alex Ellinghausen
Campbell was considered a strong candidate because of her two-decade membership of the party, her experience as a barrister and political career as a councillor. However, some feared she might not be well received in Aston because she did not live near the electorate. She was backed by former treasurer Josh Frydenberg and federal MPs James Paterson and Keith Wolahan.
Srivastava was considered by her supporters to be extremely well credentialed as a Fulbright scholar, well-known oncologist in and around Aston and an opinion writer for the Guardian. Former health minister Greg Hunt and former premier Jeff Kennett backed her.
Burnett-Wake was always going to struggle to win the nomination due to her rebuke of Christian fundamentalists in the party. Members aligned with church groups in the eastern part of the state previously helped de-select her as a candidate.
Candidates spoke for six minutes each and answered questions for 10 minutes.
Some state MPs as well as members of the administrative committee unwilling to speak on the record without authorisation were frustrated that local members in Aston were denied the chance to pick a candidate in the previously safe seat. Labor has not held it for 30 years, but the Liberals’ margin was cut from 10.1 per cent to 2.8 per cent at the May election.
Former frontbencher Ryan Smith criticised the decision during a state parliamentary party room meeting on Tuesday, according to two sources speaking anonymously to detail the private meeting. Pesutto and Brighton MP James Newbury defended the call.
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