NSW Liberals to launch court challenge after losing Sydney seat of Bradfield to teal independent
Boele was declared the winner on 4 June, defeating the Liberal party's candidate Gisele Kapterian after a month-long count. The seat has been held by the Liberal party since its creation in 1949.
The Australian Electoral Commission initially said Kapterian won on the first distribution of preferences by eight votes, before a recount was ordered. The final result followed rulings on ballot formality.
At the end of the recount, Boele had 50.01% of the total vote, ahead of Kapterian's 49.99%.
Bradfield was the last outstanding seat from the 3 May election and the Liberals kept open the possibility of a challenge in the court of disputed returns.
The NSW Liberal party said on Monday it would ask the court to recount a small number of ballots, invoking the 2008 challenge in the Victorian seat of McEwan.
Former small business minister Fran Bailey defeated Labor's Rob Mitchell by just 27 votes. Mitchell had been declared the winner, with a margin of just seven votes.
Bailey raised a number of irregularities with the original count, including instances where some ballot papers were found hidden within others.
That challenge took more than 220 days to be resolved.
A federal court judge said the AEC had wrongly counted nine votes that should have been found to be informal. More than 140 ballots were allowed to be counted, after initially being found to be informal.
Kapterian was appointed a shadow assistant minister in Sussan Ley's Coalition frontbench, pending the recount. She is expected to be replaced by another Liberal.
Within 40 days of the election writ being returned, any candidate or elector from the seat can 'petition' its result. That process involves a formal pleading to the court of disputed returns. For national elections, that usually means the high court.
Only 50 challenges to House of Representatives results have been considered by the court of disputed returns since 1907.
Boele was backed by Simon Holmes à Court's Climate 200 group, and the Liberals pumped significant resources into holding the seat, previously held by Paul Fletcher.
Bradfield takes in North Shore suburbs, including St Leonards, Killara and Wahroonga, and borders the electorates of Warringah and Mackellar, held by teal independents Zali Steggall and Sophie Scamps, respectively.
The Australian Financial Review first reported the Bradfield challenge on Monday.
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