Mr Kennedy comfortably defeated the only female candidate to put...

Mr Kennedy comfortably defeated the only female candidate to put her hand up for Liberal pre-selection, Veteran Family Advocate Commissioner Gwen Cherne, who received 35 votes to his 158.

The result was said to have upset those within the party pushing for more females to be preselected to safe Liberal seats.

Mr Kennedy, who tried and failed to win the seat of Bennelong in 2022, said his party had several "exceptional" female candidates including the member for the neighbouring electorate of Hughes, Jenny Ware.

But he said it would be great for the party to have even more women.

"We leave it up to the local voters to select who they would like to have, and I was very humbled to be selected as that person," he said.

"Of course, it'd be great to have more women, but we do have some good women and we're looking to get more."

The Australian Greens have put up Martin Moore, who has a Fine Arts Degree with a Masters in Social Ecology and ran for the local seat of Miranda at the 2023 NSW election.

Mr Moore disagreed with Mr Kennedy that locals would be comfortable living next to a nuclear reactor.

"I feel that people are really concerned that we're being dragged into a nuclear wasteland with the AUKUS deal … and the opposition's ideas of reactors," he said.

Natasha Brown will be running for the Australian Justice Party and is campaigning on giving "animals the political voice they so desperately need".

Local Simone Francis Gagatam is running for the Sustainable Australia party and works in the anti-human trafficking and environmental legal fields.

Vinay Kolhatkar is the Libertarian candidate who has lived in the Cook area for over 18 years and is advocating for "universal human liberty".

The only independent candidate in this by-election is accountant Roger Woodward, who previously contested the north shore seat of Berowra at the 2016, 2019 and 2022 federal elections.

ABC LINK. .... same link for the post above.