2025 brought the sweeping federal election that kept Labor in majority of its seats and with it, much controversy for the Bruce electorate division.
From the sacking of Liberal campaign manager for Bruce, Andrew McNabb due to offensive comments online, to a contentious toppling of Bruce Liberal candidate, Zahid Safi.
Early in the campaign, Safi garnered the endorsement of neighboring MP for La Trobe, Jason Wood, who described Safi as a “serious candidate”.
The contentious electorate seat for Bruce resulted in two-term MP, Julian Hill, yet again retaining the seat with a focus on housing affordability, cost of living, improving the health system as well as Medicare and access to quality education.
A few weeks into the election campaign in April, Bruce was largely expected to be a more competitive seat in Melbourne’s southeast, with political analysts considering the seat to have a 5.3 per cent margin and a possible target for the coalition — with each major party investing approximately $90,000 into the electoral division.
The party fell short however, according to the AEC, with a 9.3 per cent swing to Labor, Hill ultimately retained the seat with much larger margins than originally estimated.
Late into the election campaign, questions arose about the opposition’s candidate for Bruce who was reported by The Age to be fabricating reviews of his small businesses.
The same investigation reported that an NDIS business owned by Safi was registered to a property he does not own.
In a social media post from 2023, the address was promoted as a disability support service location with short-term accommodation for those with disabilities.
Safi, who had branded his campaign on his successful local businesses during the federal election was also revealed to be using stock photos and placeholders rather than real customer content — raising questions from Labor insiders about the validity of his business operations.
The investigation found numerous suspicious and alleged inauthentic online reviews consistent with the usage of photos of individuals from other countries including one from Azerbaijan.
Back in April, at an early voting centre in Dandenong, Star News approached Safi who avoided questions regarding the recent media coverage and allegations.
Safi dodged the reporter by entering the toilet, seemingly on a phone call when coming back out, while telling the reporter he was here to speak to the voters.
Not much later however, he left the centre, with many voters questioning where he went.
It was also reported by The Guardian that Safi had co-authored a 2021 parliamentary submission which stated that Hazaras were not persecuted on the grounds of their ethnicity in Afghanistan — incorrectly citing a 2005 Human Rights Watch report and contradicting the official Australian government view on the violence.
In the face of backlash and outrage in the Hazara community, MP Jason Wood, defended Safi, saying that “his input into the report was on the health aspect”.
And that “there was no way that he or anyone” at the Liberal Party held the view that the report insinuated, which effectively minimised the Hazara genocide.
Making history, Safi was the first Afghan to be endorsed by a major political party for federal elections and if he had taken the seat for Bruce, he would’ve been marked as Liberal’s first Muslim MP.
The politician fled Afghanistan to Finland and moved to Australia in the 2010s, where he lived in the South-Eastern suburbs of Melbourne but it wasn’t until 2024 that he pursued his political endeavours by joining the Liberal Party.
