Cook byelection date announced for ScoMo's old seat

Speaker Milton Dick issued the writ on Monday morning for the election in the south Sydney electorate of Cook.

Constituents have until March 18 to finalise their details on the electoral role. Meanwhile, nominations for candidates close on March 21.

The Liberal Party has already preselected former McKinsey consultant and Bennelong candidate Simon Kennedy to stand for the federal seat, despite the fact that he didn't live in the area. He reassured voters that he was moving to the electorate last week.

Mr Kennedy won with a significant lead of 158 out of 296 votes, beating Carmelo Pesce, and the only female nominee Gwen Cherne, despite the latter earning former prime minister John Howard's endorsement.

The result has earned the ire of those desperate to increase the number of women preselected for winnable Liberal seats.

Charlotte Mortlock - executive director of Hilma's Network, a group working to boost women's representation in the party - wrote that she felt "at a bit of a loss with female representation in the party" in the days after the the Cook preselection.

"At the last federal election, we reached a 30-year low which I thought was rock bottom. But we are going back further still," she wrote on LinkedIn.

Cook is known as one of the safest Liberal seats in the country, and has been held by the party since 1975.

But while Mr Morrison retained the seat with 12.4 per cent margin at the 2022 federal election, he did suffer a 6.58 per cent swing on a two-party preferred basis.

It is unclear at this stage whether the Labor Party will run a candidate. Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told ABC Sydney that Labor hadn't "made a final decision" on whether to contest the safe Liberal seat.

"Cook is not a seat that it would be expected that we would win, but we'll wait and see," he said.

Mr Morrison, a self-described "bulldozer", retired from politics last month to take up various global strategic advisory and private board roles.

The former prime minister told Parliament he was leaving politics with nothing left to give.

"While I ... left nothing of my contributions on that floor, I do believe that in that arena will always remain any bitterness, disappointments or offences that have occurred along the way," he said in his valedictory speech.

"I leave this place appreciative and thankful, unburdened by offences and released from any bitterness that can so often haunt post-political lives.

"This is due to my faith in Jesus Christ, which gives me the faith to both forgive, but also to be honest about my own failures and shortcomings."