The Liberals are mounting a court challenge to their Federal Election loss in the New South Wales seat of Bradfield. Candidate Gisele Kapterian fell just 26 votes short in the once-safe seat and is now calling for a final ruling on dispute ballots.
00:00The federal seat of Bradfield, it's long been considered a liberal stronghold, but it's now at the centre of a legal fight.
00:10So the Liberal Party is moving to formally contest the result that saw independent candidate Nicolette Buller winning that seat at the federal election.
00:20Now, if we cast our minds back to May 3, in the days afterwards, Liberal candidate Giselle Kaptarian was initially declared the winner, but the Australian Electoral Commission did do a recount, which often happens and always happens, I should say, when the victory is very slim or narrow.
00:41And that recount found that Ms Buller had actually won by 26 votes, and that's of the 118,000 that had been cast.
00:51What happens now is that Ms Kaptarian is taking this result to the High Court via the Court of Disputed Returns, and that's to take a closer eye at some small batch of ballots in question.
01:05And Ms Kaptarian says this isn't about questioning the authority of the Australian Electoral Commission, but she says that she'd like to see her voter intention accurately represented.
01:17So, as you'll see here in this statement from Ms Kaptarian, she says,
01:20So, this kind of recount at a court level has happened in the past.
01:46In 2008, for example, McEwen, the seat of McEwen, did see a court-verified reversal of the result in that seat.
01:56If successful, the challenge could see the Liberals win back their former stronghold of Bradfield, but we are still some way away from such a result.
