Malvern heads to the polls with a new Liberal face
Amelia Hamer seeks to retain the Liberal stronghold as Michael O’Brien retires after 20 years.
Malvern has elected only Liberals since 1945, and the party goes into the November 28 poll with an 8.1 per cent margin. But the member since 2006, former opposition leader Michael O’Brien, is retiring.
The seat takes in Armadale, Kooyong, Malvern, Malvern East and Toorak, along with parts of Chadstone and Glen Iris.
The Liberal candidate is Amelia Hamer, who lost the federal seat of Kooyong to independent Monique Ryan by less than 0.7 per cent in 2025.
Hamer did not respond to questions from The AJN before our deadline. During the 2025 campaign she told The AJN antisemitism demanded a federal government with “moral leadership”, the “right laws” and “enforcement of the laws”.
Labor, which ran second in 2022, has yet to nominate a candidate. One Nation’s Edward Bode also did not respond, and Victorian Socialists candidate Gavin Leonard declined to answer our questions. Georgia Katsikis is standing for the Greens.
Independent Christina Zigouras, a building designer, stood for Labor in Sandringham in 2014 and later for the Greens in the upper house. She told The AJN she left Labor over housing policy and the Greens because they failed to connect climate action with economic policy and business. “I’ve spoken with many Jewish residents, including my neighbours,” she said, adding that she had heard of schools needing additional security and “some residents even afraid to leave their homes”.
Victoria “has recently strengthened its laws”, she said, and her priority was that they be “properly enforced and adequately resourced”.
She would support further action on intimidation and online hate, “based on what genuinely improves safety”.
Zigouras said she did not think that people who criticise actions by the Israeli government “are necessarily antisemitic”.
Asked whether she would support a formal definition such as IHRA in universities and schools, she gave no direct answer, saying Victoria has a Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities and “I believe we should operate within that.”