The voters of the Nepean electorate will head to the polls on 2 May to elect a replacement for retired MP Sam Groth.
The date was announced yesterday (Tuesday 17 February) by Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, Maree Edwards, and leaves candidates and voters a little over ten weeks of campaigning.
Crucially, candidates will have only ten weeks run their campaign to be elected and only 23 days if they wait until the final nomination day for candidates on 10 April. Voters have even less time to update their enrollment, with the electoral roll closing on 20 March
News from the trenches is that five preselection candidates remain in the battle to be the Liberal Party’s candidate in Nepean.
The five remaining are Anthony Marsh, Nathan Conroy, David Burgess, Briony Camp, and Bree Ambry.
Current Mornington Peninsula Shire mayor, Cr Marsh submitted his application last week and was approved by a Liberal Party administrative committee meeting last Thursday (12 February). The Liberals waived the usual two-year wait before a member can nominate for preselection (Marsh stands for Liberal preselection in Nepean, The News 16/2/26).
Ex-Frankston City mayor and two-time Dunkley candidate Nathan Conroy has also nominated. Conroy contested the 2024 by-election after the death of Peta Murphy, and again in the 2025 federal election, both times losing to Labor’s Jodie Belyea.
Also putting her hand up for another attempt is Briony Camp (nee Hutton), who ran for the seat of Hastings in the 2022 state election, losing to Labor’s Paul Mercurio. Her loss saw the seat of Hastings move away from the Liberals for the first time since 2006.
A third candidate giving politics another go is Nepean resident David Burgess, who unsuccessfully contested the 2022 state election for the upper house. Burgess appears to be the only candidate for preselection that lives in the electorate and has been a “proud long-term member” of the Liberal Party for around 35 years.
Rounding out the five is Bree Ambry who is a peninsula resident and a project manager with Peninsula Health. Ambry has extensive volunteer community involvement, particularly through lifesaving and sporting clubs, and currently serves on the board of the Southern Football Netball League.
The Liberal candidate will be decided at a meeting at Liberal Party headquarters next Tuesday (24 February). Contentiously, the decision will be taken out of the hands of local members, with the preselection being run as a “hybrid” model where 24 will choose the candidate, comprising 18 members of the state executive and only six from the local Nepean executive.
A Liberal Party source told The News that the risk of this approach, intended to expediate the process, is that “local members may not be as keen to get behind a candidate that is imposed on them against their will.”
In other news, long-time Liberal Party member Peter Angelico is believed to have been endorsed as the Libertarian candidate for Nepean. Angelico’s Facebook pages states he is the “successful founder of an Australian manufacturing company and 2023 Greater Dandenong Corporate Citizen of the Year”.
The News believes Independents for Mornington Peninsula are still undertaking a candidate search (‘Independents’ fast-track Nepean search, The News 16/2/26), and that Labor appears unlikely to field a candidate with a party insider saying that it is long-held party policy not to contest by-elections in seats they don’t hold.