Werribee by-election due soon in Victoria

Werribee was (believe it or not) won by the Liberals in 1976, the high-water mark of Dick Hamer’s government.

They also came close in 1996 to win the seat.

1976 was a time when seats like Dandenong were mortgage belt marginals.

I would not compare Dandenong to Werribee today. Werribee still has growth areas while Dandenong has a lot of renters. refugees etc

Definitely not today, but it’s true before Dandenong solidified for Labor after 1976 due to industry growth etc.

Agree Ian

Dandenong solidified for Labor has there was more manufactuinng relocated nearby. The growth of Middle Class suburbs nearby like Rowville meant the middle class left Dandenong, Wars in countries like Sri Lanka, Sudan and Afghanistan brought refugees and changed it to a Labor stronghold. I think maybe the two Narre Warren seats are undergoing the same process. For example Hallam and Hampton Park has many poor refugees and factories nearby so those two suburbs effectively swamp the marginal results elsewhere.

That’s pretty much it.

Probable Labor hold but I’d expect a swing to the Liberals. Same as Prahran which will be a Greens hold but will likely swing to the Liberals.

Dead wrong, I’m afraid. Werribee was held by the Libs in 1976 and remained marginal until mass immigration kicked in and changed the demographics.

Battin’s comments after the cabinet reshuffle indicated he was much more interested in this by election as opposed to Prahran

Agree Maxim. I was thinking the same. He singled Werribee out as the focus.

@Maxim. You can tell that Baton Charge Battin is more interested in Werribee, because he has chosen a white cisgender male to run for the seat.

The Liberal Party has no interest in diversity and only get women of color to run in electorates where they have no chance of winning.

In my state district the Liberal Party always choses someone who represents a diverse community, because they know that they have a snowflake’s chance in hell of winning. They would never get that same person to run in Malvern or Brighton.

There are sections within the Liberal Party who will never even welcome people like Pesutto, Southwick, Frydenberg (regardless of how right wing he is). The party is still inhabited by old school WASPS who hold deeply racist views. They tolerate Deeming because she is so far to the right. Their ideal choice would be James Kingsley Newbury, the upper class WASP from Brighton.

It’s the same with the federal Liberal Party.

The Liberal Party would also see it as a major coup to snare a district in the west. It is far better for their propaganda to promote a victory in Werribee than in, what is perceived as, bougie Prahran.

Yesterday the Prahran candidate was campaigning with Renee Heath, in what possibly has the highest LGBTQI population of any Victorian seat. It’s like they are trying to lose it to prove a point that seats like Werribee are the future.

They definitely want Werribee much more.

@Trent. The suburbs that are covered by the district of Prahran are not considered desirable by the Liberals. They don’t care about Prahran, Windsor, South Yarra, or St Kilda. They see them as akin to Carlton, Fitzroy, and Collingwood. They are viewed as suburbs with wealthy young (progressively minded) professionals, public housing tenants from high rise estates, LGBTQI+ people, and students. Malvern district will always be the jewel in the Liberal crown, as it covers CEO land (Toorak, Armadale, Malvern, Malvern East, and Glen Iris in Stonnington).

They don’t care about Werribee either. A win there would be good for their propaganda machine. The only time the Liberal Party elites cross onto the western side of the Tullamarine Freeway/ City Link is to attend the Melbourne Cup, travel to a hobby farm in the Western District, visit a winery in Kyneton, or to catch a first class flight to Aspen. They would not know the west if they fell over it.

Anyone think Hopper could make much impact here?

The Victorian Libs have been incredibly lazy for decades by not working hard to establish more than the occasional foothold in the Western suburbs – and have not won a seat there since 1996. I think with Brad Battin there could be a serious change in attitude. To their credit – the NSW Libs started working on Western Sydney from the early 90s and it has paid off since. Bronwyn Bishop was the champiin for that westward push.

No Mondays – I think Nicole Werner would disagree with you.

@Redistributed. I am sure Nicole Werner would disagree with me, as do many others.

Not choosing an Indian was a mistake for the Liberals in Werribee… its time for community preselection pls!

@Up the dragons. What would you expect from a bunch of racists like the Liberal (sic) Party. They think they have a shot in Werribee, so they have gone with the cisgender white guy real estate agent (ex cop, ex military). Baton charge Battin, and rich kid Groth are a part of p3nis head’s national right faction.

South Asians are about 20% of the population in Werribee according to the ABS. They are a major community group but not dominant. We also don’t know how many are citizens and can even vote. The South Asian community is politically engaged – much more seemingly than East Asian immigrant communities. Parties can only put up those who puts their hand up. The ‘Indian’ community is not a homogenous mass – there are sub groups so putting someone up from one part of the community might upset someone else. Is the Liberal guy the wrong candidate – quite likely – he ain’t no youngster.

I’m genuinely not sure which of these posters are actual ALP supporters, or LNP trolls taking the piss out of ALP supporters….

@Mark Mulcair no idea. I’ve voted Liberal all my life and I have disagreements with both supporters on here.

@No Monday WASP is an American term, we’re in Australia. Also, the party isn’t racist, but I see what you’re tryna say. The federal and Victorian branches are not appealing to everyday people and moderates.

As for James Newbury, he’s a moderate. He criticised Bernie Finn’s abortion views as dangerous and rightfully so.

@Redistributed. The guy running for the Liberal (sic) Party is the right guy according to the national right faction. He’s a real estate agent (representing the interests of the landlords, and the investors), an ex cop (representing the jail ‘em and throw away the key/ adult time for adult crime mantra and the ban protests brigade), and ex military ( representing AUKUS/ war on China/ channeling STEM courses into the military design/ channeling manufacturing towards military production). He is quite literally p3nis head’s man. The federal national right faction put pressure on the Victorian Party to get their people into prominent positions within the party.

What would be better for Liberal (sic) Party optics than wheeling this guy out to complain about any rental reforms, protestors, or anti militarism. They would love to have a heavy hitter like this guy, who on the one hand supports the ruling class, while on the other pretends to be a voice of the working class west. Even better if they could put a Footscray (not Western Bulldogs) scarf around his neck come footy finals.

I think I spot here a bit of US style Pol Sci – the idea that political parties are coalitions of interest groups rather than broad class based groupings. Add in a bit of CRT, and you get the idea that you can only vote for someone if they are the same race/gender/sexuality etc as you are. It is obviously rubbish (because gaining 400 more votes from one group is no good if you lose 800 votes from another group), but it is very seductive to the kind of psuedo academic that populates the media and political parties these days.

‘Prominent positions’ such as getting on the ballot in a seat currently held by Labor on a 10% margin?

@Maxim. Prominent positions as in opposition leader, deputy opposition leader, and key shadow cabinet positions. The national right faction also wants their people to run in seats that they think are winnable. Personally I don’t think that the Liberal (sic) Party will win Werribee.

@Nether Portal. I agree that Newbury is technically a moderate, however a pragmatic one at that. He was willing to throw Pesutto under the bus. Let’s see how he handles Deeming, who is very dangerous and divisive. Battin is proud to be associated with Deeming. He is excited to have her campaigning in Werribee.

Sky News are glazing Moira Deeming as a “movie star” now:

https://www.skynews.com.au/australia-news/politics/movie-star-moira-deeming-hits-campaign-trail-ahead-of-werribee-byelection/video/82dba9d630d2fb1965a99d50f37757d7

Personally I don’t understand why she would be bothered campaigning given she’s an unpopular backbencher with outspoken views. The only reason backbenchers campaign usually is if they’re the candidate for that seat or if they’re from a neighbouring seat. This is like if George Christensen campaigned outside Dawson.

@No Mondays, not really sure if Newbury would be moderate if he is represented a non-Teal areas as he seems more around localist just for votes as he is active in the NIMBY movement plus he even made bizarre statements saying Premier and the new Treasurer from Regional Victoria means they “don’t represent Melbourne”

Despite her views, she was pretty much vindicated after recent events – not surprised at all that she has rockstar status on Sky. She didn’t get a shadow cabinet position but I think she may prefer it that way so she can remain outspoken on issues she cares about and not be bound by cabinet positions even if the leadership team is now much more friendlier towards her than it was under Pesutto. As for her campaigning, she’s a Legislative Councillor for Western Metropolitan region which covers the district of Werribee.

@Marh. Personally I wouldn’t trust Newbury as far as I could throw him.

Yes, I heard those statements in regards to the Premier and treasurer…bizarre indeed.

Newbury was heavily involved in the no high rise development in Brighton rally which got front page news. The irony is the day before we held a rally at the Flemington high rise estate protesting the demolition of the towers. Did that get media coverage? No way.

@Nether Portal. I think she’s campaigning in Werribee because she represents Western Metropolitan in the Legislative Council. You are right about her being unpopular. She is more likely to damage the prospects of her party in Werribee. The Christensen analogy is an apt one. Sky News call her a movie star because she wages the culture wars that Sky News love.

@NP, what evidence do you have that Deeming has unpopular views?

No doubt her views are popular in some circles, but in general, I think Victoria has repeatedly shown that overall it leans progressive socially and a majority of swinging/centrist voters who decide elections are typically turned off by socially conservative views.

Her views are popular with a large segment of the Liberal/National base, but not the voters that typically decide Victorian elections.

I think what the Liberal Party are banking on this time is that the election will be decided by a different cohort of voters – that being socially conservative voters in Labor’s heartland that usually don’t influence the result.

But while Pesutto’s handling of the Deeming situation angered his party, their base, and resulted in a damaging lawsuit, he actually gave the Liberals their best polling in Victoria in over a decade. So he was doing something right to win support from the broader electorate. Time will tell if that support erodes now.

@trent his undoing was his own.

There’s no doubt his handling of the situation got the politics – specifically the internal politics within his party – all wrong.

It’s just that his polling figures clearly showed that the broader general public didn’t care that he expelled Deeming (or perhaps even approved). He had put the Liberals in a relatively strong position to at least force Labor into a minority government in 2026.

We don’t yet know what the impact of the leadership spill and readmission of Deeming will be. Just saying it was a gamble when Pesutto had clearly pushed the Liberal Party in a direction that was resonating well with the public.

I don’t think it’s any secret that there’s a massive disconnect between what the Liberal membership see as “electable” and what the Victorian public see as “electable” though. It’s happened time & time again. You only need to read comments on social media about the Deeming saga and see the passionate Liberal Party supporters all claiming that Pesutto was completely unelectable and the Liberals couldn’t win under him etc, which is totally at odds with the direction his polling was going in.

@trent as a liberal member I agree with you but he brought it on himself

2025-26 was probably always going to be tougher for the Liberals than 2023-24 was because Labor seemed to deliberately frontload all the bad news they could into those two years, and have then gone into 2025 with a reset: Pallas resignation, new treasurer, new cabinet, no doubt as part of a broader strategy to ‘reset the narrative’ with more election-friendly budgets in the same year that two of their flagship projects (Metro Tunnel & West Gate Tunnel) will be completed, off the books, and the operating budget forecast to be in surplus next year.

There’s still more they need to do to turn things around – resolve the police dispute, sell the housing policy better, and perhaps make a couple of tough decisions around re-prioritising projects (bring the Airport Rail forward again even if it pushes SRL East back a year or two, maybe announce that SRL West will be before SRL North) – but they have time to do that. For all the state Labor’s flaws at the moment, they have proven to be a campaign machine. They were not in campaign mode in 2023-24, they will be in 2025-26.

That’s not saying Labor won’t cop swings, and I’m not even trying to comment on the value or anything they are specifically doing either, just the reality that Victorian Labor in campaign mode is a very different beast to what we saw in 2023-24 and the Liberals just can’t take for granted that any gains they made in 2023-24 will even be sustained let alone expanded upon.

Their best bet would have been to have gone into the 2026 election with continuity, allowing Pesutto a full 4 years to build momentum, which Labor’s disastrous 2023-24 gave him a great headstart on. Instead, they will be entering a much more difficult two years, facing Labor in campaign mode, with a brand new leader who has to start from scratch, after a very public and messy period of disunity.

Liberals who didn’t like Pesutto hate the Andrews/Allan government even more and would still have held their nose to vote for him. The question is, will enough of the disillusioned Labor-leaning voters who had warmed to Pesutto and seen him as a viable alternative Premier still see the Liberals as a viable alternative?

The Liberals still have almost two years until the next state election so there is plenty of time to build momentum and traction. For once the Libs probably did something right – they had their leadership spill over Christmas – and got it over quickly and cleanly. It was also pretty decisive in the end. Brad Battin might be in a much better position to impose discipline on the Moira Deemings of this world. There is nothing to say that anything in Victoria will improve even with the Metro (that does not stop at South Yarra so you can’t connect at the obvious place) and a Westgate tunnel that will quite likely just dump traffic into North and West Melbourne – it was the western end of the cross city tunnel after all. The debt will still be there, basic public services are declining and not funded.

@Redistributed. It’s true that basic public services aren’t funded, but do really think that the Liberal (sic) Party are going to fund them?

Battin will implement more cuts. He will decimate the public service, and implement harsh austerity measures. He will cut frontline services (nurses and firefighters) while he pours money into prisons. He will continue the destruction of public housing. The only “new beds” created under Battin will be prison beds. There certainly won’t be any housing provided by the state to alleviate homelessness. They will deal with the housing crisis by throwing more people into prison.

The media will cheer them on, selling the lie that they are great economic managers. All of sudden there will be no “youth crime”, or a stagnating economy. The media won’t come up with articles about business losing confidence in Victoria.

No Mondays, I probably see Battin a lot like current LNP Premier of Queensland David Crisafulli. Whilst Crisafulli was like Battin in hammering out the typical conservative narrative on ‘youth crime’ issues in the leadup to the election, now that he is in office he hasn’t really stirred up criticism with unions or the public service like his predecessor Campbell Newman. The abolition of the BPIC did cause some controversy with protests led by the CFMEU and other unions, but even that issue has largely died down and is not causing major headaches unlike the current battle with rail unions in NSW.

I seem to remember last time the Liberals were in power, there was controversy around 2012 over them significantly cutting police funding. So they don’t have a great track record of addressing any police funding shortfalls.

Also, last time the Liberal Party were in power in Victoria, the crime rate increased all 4 years consecutively under them from 2011-2014 (which also spilled over to 2015-16 while their policies were still in place, before it started reducing again from 2017 after some legislation changes in 2016).

Notably, the crime rate increasing in 2011 (and the next 5 years after that) was the first annual increase after around 8 or 9 consecutive years of crime decreasing from 2002-10 under Bracks & Brumby.

Crime under Jeff Kennett also increased every year, and was far higher than it has been at any point under Bracks, Brumby, Baillieu, Napthine, Andrews or Allan.

Overall, I think it’s meaningless. We’re talking about offence rates ranging from a high of over 9000 per 100,000 under Kennett to a low of around 6800 per 100,000 under Brumby during the 30-odd year period, so not even huge variances. I firmly just believe crime stats are trotted out as a political weapon, especially whenever Labor are in office.

But, just like with the funding of public & essential services (including police), the Liberals also have zero track record of ever having achieved a single annual decrease in the crime rate in the past 4 decades. Whereas crime has actually decreased more years than it has increased under Labor, but it’s not a linear so some years (including 2024) will record an increase.

So the idea that they would fix police funding, fix hospital funding, and reduce crime, has no precedent at all under at least their last 3 Premiers.

@Trent. Spot on. In reality the Bolts Murdochs of this world know this too, however they perpetuate the lie to sell headlines, and get reactionary legislation enacted.

It’s not surprising that crime increases under conservative governments, because so much crime is a result of poverty. If people have no governmental support they resort to desperate measures like theft.

People also self medicate when situations are dire. The state sets up a dichotomy of illegal/ legal drugs. In short many people are jailed for self medicating drug offences.

Of course wage theft, industrial person slaughter, unpaid overtime, massive rent hikes, and unreasonable evictions are also crimes, yet they are not viewed as such by the mainstream media.

@ No Mondays

Remind me which party has formed successive governments in Victoria since 1999? It hasn’t been the coaltion parties ..

@Pyrmonter: The Coalition were in government from 2010-14 and that period was the first time crime increased in Victoria in almost a whole decade, and it increased all 4 years in a row under them.

Like I said, I think focusing on crime is just a distraction and a technique by the conservative-leaning media to attack Labor governments, usually there is radio silence about crime whenever a Coalition government is in power, even if the crime rates are higher. Perception is everything.

But looking at the facts, since Kennett was elected there has been 11 years of Liberal government and 21 years of Labor government. In those years:
– Crime increased all 11 years under the Liberal governments;
– Crime increased 7 years and decreased 14 years under the Labor governments

4 of those 7 years that crime increased under Labor too, were in the 2 years immediately following each of the two Liberal periods (2000-01 and 2015-16). In particular, the Liberals’ change to parole laws during their 2010-14 period dramatically increased reoffending rates, because while scrapping parole extends prison time, it also removes the supervised transition to civilian life, thus increasing the chance of reoffending. Labor fixed this shortly after and crime (and reoffending) rates again reduced from 2017-22.

So Labor actually have a better track record of dealing with crime than the Liberals do, but hysteria about crime waves only ever dominates the media when Labor are in government.

Even recently, while crime has increased the last 2 years, the 2022 crime rate was the lowest in over a decade and I believe actually the third lowest in many decades (probably since the 1960s).

If Albo were to be reelected then the Libs would be in a good position to topple Jaconta Allen in 2026 and likely topple the 1st term Minns minority govt as there are 6 seats on very low margins that could swap back to the lnp in 2027 as it put alp on 39 and the lnp on 41. And if the federal teals cause problems for the state ones the lnp could get real close to majority

There aren’t currently any state teals in Victoria anyway. No independents were elected at all in fact (although now there are two due to defecting from Labor). 2022 result was 56 Labor (2 of them now IND), 4 Greens, 19 Liberals and 9 Nationals.

I’d say the only Victorian seat that could fall to a teal in 2026 would be Hawthorn, which would be due to anger over Pesutto losing the leadership. I don’t think a teal would win anywhere else.

That means it’s basically majority or nothing for them and they need to gain 17 seats going up to margins over 8% to form government even if they hold Hawthorn. While no swings are uniform, it’s hard for them to even target their swings to certain areas, because of the sheer number of seats they need to win. They can’t just target 8% swings in the outer suburbs for example or they won’t gain the eastern & sandbelt seats they need. So they basically need a minimum of 8% swings across the board which would be a 53-47 2PP.

With that in mind, even if Albo is reelected I think the Liberals actually forming government is a real long shot, and the most likely outcome would be a Labor minority. If Dutton is elected, then I think it becomes easier for Labor to retain a majority, albeit a much slimmer one than now.

Realistically they are probably the two most likely scenarios. The Liberals getting swings of over 8% across every type of seat (inner, outer, east, west, metro, regional) and snatching all 17 ALP v LIB seats on a margin up to just over 8% without losing any of their own marginals like Hawthorn & Caulfield in the process, just doesn’t seem achievable.

“although now there are two due to defecting from Labor”

They did not defect, they were cast out for alleged ‘misbehaviour’ resulting in two political eunuchs.

@trent if the factors are there and the swing is on impossible is possible. Remember after a huge election win in 2012 the lnp lost it after one term. Abbot would have likely lost it if he wasn’t knifed. Also I think he means the nsw teals

Swing of 8% wouldn’t need to be uniform and very likely wouldn’t be. They might get a little bump in the inner city to hang onto their marginals there, perhaps 4-6% in the middle ring which could be enough to retake seats like Ashwood, Glen Waverly, Box Hill, Bayswater etc. Then they’d need the big 8%+ swings in the NW and outer SE suburbs to be competitive at forming government. Melton and Yan Yean likely fall but they’ll need seats like Werribee, Niddrie, Sunshine etc.

Highly doubt they win sandbelt seats, Prahran or some of the others they won in 2010, will be a narrow and totally different pathway to government