The Liberal Party should elect Goldstein candidate Tim Wilson leader if he wins the ultra-marginal Melbourne seat, former MP and NSW party president Jason Falinski says.
Mr Falinski feels Mr Wilson, who trails independent MP Zoe Daniel by 95 votes, would help win back inner-city voters who deserted the Coalition in the election, a group he referred to as a “tribe” with more in common with residents of London or New York that the Australian suburbs.
The 45-year-old Mr Wilson, who is married, would be the first openly gay leader of a major Australian political party. He was a parliamentary secretary for energy for the last seven months of the Morrison government.
“I think that he is someone who should be under serious consideration for the leadership, and if not then a very senior role in the Coalition’s ranks,” Mr Falinski told the Beyond Politics podcast.
“What the Liberal Party has shown over a number of election cycles, going back to the John Howard era, to be quite frank, is an inability to actually communicate to those people or offer those tribes something that they would be interested in voting for.
“And the result of that is that we are now locked out of almost every major city in Australia. So Tim Wilson at this election is the one person who demonstrated that there is a pathway for the Liberal Party to appeal to those tribes.”
Mr Wilson has not commented on the count, although on Sunday posted a meme on X of television soccer coach Ted Lasso pointing to a changeroom sign that says “Believe”.