Thank you Wills!
Historically a safe electoral seat for the Australian Labor Party (ALP), Wills is now a marginal seat with the ALP put on notice that the community is not happy with their performance.
The mass people-power campaigns of the Greens, Socialist Alliance and Victorian Socialists, Muslim Votes Matter and smaller community groups like Vote Palestine Wills succeeded in challenging the ALP incumbent Peter Khalil on numerous fronts.
In 2022 Peter Khalil won Wills with over 58% of the vote, while the Greens garnered some 41% of the vote – on a ‘two candidate preferred’ (TCP) basis.
In 2025 the ALP’s once-safe margin was demolished by a historic 7.6% swing against Peter Khalil, who got 51.43% of the vote while the Greens vote grew to 48.57% (on a TCP basis).
The TCP swing to the Greens in Wills was, to the best of our knowledge, the largest in the country, while in most other electorates the Greens suffered a swing against. Much of this swing in Wills was due to pro-Palestine activity from all the different groups in this campaign.
The ALP threw massive resources into the electorate costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. They had the mainstream media behind them the whole way, which tried to discredit the Greens and discredit the pro-Palestine movement.
But against this machine we still delivered a more than 7% swing purely through people power and comparatively minimal finance.
Thank you to the dozens and dozens of volunteers involved in the campaign, to those volunteers who turned up rain, hail or shine to handout out leaflets all over the electorate, to those volunteers who organised the numerous events with the election candidates or local stalls in the community, to those volunteers behind the scenes writing media articles, doing the graphics, social media and website content for the campaign. Thank you for your energy, enthusiasm and dedication to working for positive change in our electorate.
Well done all!
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Images above sourced from the Australian Electoral Commission Tally Room of the 2025 Federal Election.