Former Deloitte consultant Roanne Knox could be the only Liberal candidate to throw her hat in the ring for the party’s preselection vote for the Sydney electorate of Wentworth.
A source has told The Australian Financial Review endorsement for Knox’s candidacy is “imminent”. According to the AFR, the only other known Liberal candidate for Wentworth’s preselection was Peter King, who held the seat between 2001 and 2004, but he has reportedly bowed out of the race.
Knox has experience in financial consultancy, the not-for-profit sector and has held positions on several boards. Notably, she was a senior manager for Deloitte, working in New York City from 1998-2004.
Knox was the former vice chair and treasurer of the Holdsworth Street Community Centre from 2007 to 2012 and was also on the Sydney committee for the Human Rights Watch from 2017 to 2019. Currently, she is the Vice Char for the Ascham Foundation and the Chair of the Sydney Art Quartet.
In 2020, Knox founded a boutique clothing brand for girls aged 9-13 called Chasing Sunshine.
The Division of Wentworth includes many of Sydney’s wealthiest suburbs in the city’s east, including Bellevue Hill, Vaucluse, Double Bay and more. The electorate is currently held by independent MP Allegra Spender, who beat Liberal MP Dave Sharma in the 2022 federal election with a margin of 4.2 per cent.
In November last year, despite suffering the major loss in the previously blue ribbon seat, Sharma made a comeback to politics as a Senator. He replaced the outgoing Senator and former foreign minister Marise Payne, who was the longest serving woman in the Senate at the time.
While she has familial ties with the Liberal party, Spender sits on the crossbench and works alongside the progressive “teal” independents. She has been vocal on a number of issues, including climate change, domestic violence, tax reform and cost of living.
An exclusive report from the AFR in February revealed a potential Liberal party “medium term” strategy to persuade Spender to join the Liberal party. Sources told the AFR a position on the frontbench for the Liberal party was offered to Spender. She has denied any and all reports of this.
Knox’s potential preselection candidacy for the division of Wentworth follows a string of men attaining preselection for the Liberal party ahead of the 2025 federal election.
Upon Scott Morrison’s departure from politics, the Liberal party chose Simon Kennedy, a former consultant at McKinsey, to run for the division of Cook in southern Sydney. The byelection will take place next Saturday 13 April.
The former safe Liberal seat of Gilmore on NSW’s south coast will see Andrew Constance as the Liberal candidate for the 2025 federal election. In late March this year, the party voted for Constance to run against Labor MP Fiona Phillips. It will be Constance’s second attempt at winning the seat.
Last week, the party also voted for Tim Wilson to be the preselected candidate for the 2025 federal election in the division of Goldstein. Wilson will run against independent MP Zoe Daniel in what will be a rematch of the 2022 federal election, where Wilson suffered a 12 per cent drop in his primary vote, and Daniel ultimately won.
Just 28 per cent of Liberal parliamentarians in the House of Representatives and the Senate are women. Prior to the 2022 federal election, analysis by the ANU Global Institute for Women’s Leadership found just 20 per cent of female candidates in the Coalition were contesting winnable seats.
An endorsement of Knox’s candidacy in Wentworth by the Liberal Party’s state executive is still to come.