Wills – Australia 2022

This seat will most likely become marginal between the Greens & the ALP however I don’t see this seat changing hands.

I suspect that Wills will stay ALP at this election, with a swing to the Greens cutting the margin and be highly competitive at the next election. Although the likely redistribution could help the ALP`s margin at the next election (Victoria is likely to loose a seat at the next election, due to the border closures hitting our population hardest).

The state had 2007 and 2010 on the same boundaries and then again for 2013 and 2016 but then 2016, 2019, 2022, and potentially 2025 with different boundaries! I’m assuming Melbourne will bounce back to being the highest growth city in Australia going forward to reclaim the lost seat.

How long did it take Melbourne/Victoria to recover from the population losses of the late 80s and early 90s? Might be a good indicator.

With all due respect Melbourne isn’t a growing population in that seat is going to go to Perth which will make the boundaries a little bit interesting

Assuming Victoria loses a seat at the next redistribution i think the impact on this seat will be less pronounced than in the Eastern Suburbs like Chisholm etc. The Southern part of the electorate is undergoing new apartments etc especially close to the transport corridors. It may go north and take Jacana etc which will help Labor or go South and take parts of Parkville/Princess Hill etc. Potentially just the rest of Moreland LGA would be the best bet.

As a side interesting tidbit, I had to do a little background and wondered why there’s a party called Victorian Socialists (VSO) and Socialist Alliance (SA). Seems the latter was going to join the former but decided not to… so now we have this situation of two socialists parties running in Victoria! The irony being the VSO candidate at the 2019 Election, Sue Bolton, is now running for the SA. So far this is the only seat where candidates from the two parties overlap but could be more with more to be announced closer to the election…I just had a look at the local council (Moreland) in the area that overlaps the seat and it’s very left-leaning, with Sue Bolton a Councillor.

I think the VSO are Trotskyist and the SA are Marxist.

Both are trots and both are marxists, those are not mutually exclusive categories.

I think VS was formed as an umbrella group of a number of socialist orgs including Socialist Alliance and Socialist Alternative but Alliance has since left and are back running their own candidates.

In response to Wreathy and Ryan, Victoria stayed at 37 seats for almost 2 decades, from the late 90s all the way to the 2019 election, so it took a long while for the population to recover from the fallout.

Also from recent statistics, it appears Queensland is going through a new boom phase that may be a recurrence from the early 00’s.

Bit of a local scandal unfolding in Wills (as reported in The Age) with a local ALP Councillor charged with vote tampering. Unless it widened and sucked in more senior figures, it is unlikely to make any difference in Wills. As it no doubt has more time to run, it could be a state election issue.

The circumstances of the impending lost of a seat in Victoria and the previous losses are quite different.

Victoria was already declining in proportion of the population of the Commonwealth in the 1980s and lost seat 39 in the 1988 determination, before the recession. Victoria was increasing as a proportion of the population of the Commonwealth until early 2020.

Part of the comparative decline in Victoria since early has been the border closure to new immigration, already mostly lifted and so one source of comparative population decline this time is of shorter duration.

Regional Victoria has taken about half the net internal migration loss from Melbourne, unlike the 1980s, when regional Victoria was not doing better than Melbourne.

I therefore don`t think Victoria will loose seat 38 this time around and seat 39 may not take more than a term or two to return.

May of the industries hit by the current pandemic are less replaced than manufacturing was the in the 1980s and 1990s, making it easier for them to recover.

Khalil has been on social media to defend his vote on religious discrimination (although claiming he opposed it in caucus). Greens will presumably run hard on this here.

Khalil’s claim is backed up by newspaper accounts. Nevertheless, perception is reality at the ballot box, and it remains to be seen how social progressives view the episode.

Greens don’t seem to be prioritising this campaign. It’s not one of their top 8 according to the Saturday paper – along with Cooper they think their chances will be better after the first term of an ALP government. Sarah Jefford isn’t popping up in any central campaign social media.

However Labor are spending $ here – Khalil has a big billboard on Bell St. His signs south of Bell St talk about “renewable energy jobs”, and north of Bell St he talks about “Manufacturing jobs”

Khalil along with Josh Burns and Justine Elliot are Labor Right ghouls occupying seats where Greens do well, but I haven’t seen any strong campaigns on that basis since Batman 2016. So called Labor left like Kearney and Terri Butler vote exactly the same way, same as non-factional Alicia Payne, and the caucus vote on the religious discrimination bill didn’t split neatly along factional lines.

Winnable with LNP preferencing Greens over Labor. Perhaps Greens know this, but don’t want to emphasise a campaign here, lest it be seen as a preplanned deal should it happen. However Canberra is in their top 8 and has similar dynamics (extremely safe ALP seat where Libs might come 3rd).

I have a question: Why do the Liberals do quite well in Oak Park/Glenroy (West of Pascoe Vale Rd)? Like 21-28% in the primaries in Northern Melbourne is nothing to laugh at.

It is a more Liberal friendly area, near the Liberal`s best area in Northern Melbourne around Essendon (the Liberals actually held Maribyrnong 1955-69, with strong DLP preference and may have won it in 1990 if the 1988 determination had not cost Victoria a seat and expanded Maribyrnong to include some safer ALP suburbs on the other side of the Maribyrnong river. The Liberals have also won the state seat of Essendon as recently as 1992).

I’m looking forward to seeing whether the ALP vote holds in booths north of Bell St this time round. I sense that the demographics of suburbs like North Coburg and Fawkner have changed a lot since the last election. More young couples, student households and youngish musician types entering the community. I suspect the Green vote will improve in the Fawkner booths. By how much I dunno.

Lots of Greens corflutes have gone up recently in the Brunswick parts of the electorate, not seeing many Peter Khalil corflutes outside of a few in storefronts, as well as his quite large advertisement off Sydney Road at the Coburg end. There’s also quite a few One Nation posters for the Melbourne candidate on walls and the like, though they seem to be defaced quite frequently.

Greens will likely in my opinion make some form of large recovery in the area as they will Cooper, though a long shot off winning it if we are basing it off the flawed science of corflute density alone.

Core flute density is not a Core issue in deciding who wins a seat.

Hello folks!
Don’t you think is time for a big change?
Did you forget what happened during Covid in Victoria state?
Let’s vote for right parties and try to bring a better Victoria and better Australia!

Liberal preferences are flowing to Labor over Greens, and Liberal donkey votes will as well.

As I said earlier in the thread, Greens are not targeting Wills this time. On the Greens website, they have moved the Higgings, Kooyong, Macnamara and Cooper candidates to the top of the page, but not Sarah Jefford. Jefford seems to be running a fairly standard campaign for a Melbourne seat.

I suspect Greens may actually do worse than last time, especially on a 2PP basis (due to much weaker Liberal preferences). Jefford will be able to hang on to their base, maybe do even better than last time in Brunswick, but Greens won’t win until they can make more of a dent in the sea of red north of Bell St, which requires a big campaign.

Again, I think Greens are saving this one for next election, after the first term of a Labor government.

I can confirm that, apart from a handful of Greens signs here and there, there seems very little campaigning by the Greens here (I’m in Pascoe Vale). So it wouldn’t surprise me if indeed this was not a key Green target this time around.

As others have noted, it is interesting to see Khalil running what might be called an old school Labor campaign this time around: lots of references to manufacturing and “local jobs for local people” in his advertising. Seems to clearly trying to distinguish himself from the Greens instead of compete directly with him head on.

Since my last post, there has been a significant increase in visible campaigning and activity, with Khalil himself and various other Labor types now being a frequent presence at Pascoe Vale station.

I notice some of the ALP’s material has a clear “Only a vote for Labor can get rid of Scomo” message, obviously trying to play on the idea of the Greens indirectly helping the Liberals….

@Mark Mulcair Very interesting to note that the old school Labor campaign stuff on more manufacturing jobs and jobs for locals is increasingly being what the Coalition is campaigning on, especially in Queensland.

@Dan M

Actually I saw some of Khalil’s billboards down near Brunswick, and they’re focussing much more on Climate Change and renewable energy, etc.

So he seems to be going for the green policies in the “Green” part of the seat, and more traditional Labor ideas in the “Labor” parts.

Socialist Alliance members were part of the Victorian Socialists back in 2019, but they left VS not long afterwards. Socialist Alliance is an organization in its own right that publishes Green Left Weekly. Victorian Socialists are primarily made up of Socialist Alternative members, but there is also another faction known as Socialist Unity, within the party.

@Marisa: How would right wing parties make this country any better? Freedom for Clive Palmer means the freedom to rob his workers of wages, and the freedom to dig up minerals on stolen land.

One Nation are fascist adjacent. They would make everything worse than it already is. They don’t care about workers either. They are anti union, and don’t support penalty rates.

We need a swing to the left.

Victorian Socialists want a 90% tax on personal incomes over $300,000. No thank you.

I am happy to say I live in the most left wing electorate in Australia. Wills, according to Anthony Green’s vote compass, and PCA chart is the most left wing electorate in Australia.

@Ryan Spencer: Both VS and SAll are Marxist, and Trotskyist.

Adam Pulford wasn’t on the ticket against Peter Khalil, it was Samantha Rutnam

The comment about the Greens website downplaying Jefford seems odd in hindsight, considering she’s done pretty well here by eating further into Labor’s marign.

It’s interesting to note the slightly different dynamic between Wills and Cooper. The Greens seem to be more solid in the south of the seat here than in Cooper, but they’re not making the same inroads against Labor north of Bell Street that they seem to be in Cooper. There’s still quite a solid chunk of territory around Fawkner, Glenroy and Hadfield that is holding out strongly for Labor.

Greens are also struggling to get above the Liberals in areas like Oak Park and Pascoe Vale where the Lib vote is relatively strong.

It’s certainly obvious that the more conservative voters north of Bell St are all that is keeping the Greens from having another seat in Parliament. The lib vote is relatively high there and, while close to 30% vote liberal, it appears that many of those still preference Labor over the Greens. This is the sign of a social conservative.

The demographic in that area is more religious, younger families, home ownership is relatively high and, ironically, more ethnically diverse. That is why the liberal vote there is higher and why they preference Labor over the Greens. That is also why Khalil focuses on jobs rather than social justice issues. He knows that would only turn voters off in those areas and he needs that conservative vote. This is the case in most outer suburbs in western Sydney and Melbourne.

You only need to look at the redistribution of the state seat of Pascoe Vale (they removed Glenroy and Oak Park from the seat) and council elections, where that Northwest ward has a huge vote for more conservative independent candidates as opposed to the southern ward.

A very interesting seat and certainly not a left wing seat as claimed by one commenter here.

@John P The northern part of the seat is definitely more working class. The southern part still has some working class that have been there for awhile (working class probably can’t afford to move into most private housing in the southern half) and it still has social housing.
A lib voter preferencing Labor over the Greens doesn’t make them a social conservative, it’s the norm for most lib voters. A labor voter preferencing the Libs over the Greens may indicate a social conservative though.

Although Bell Street is a good dividing line for the working class north and gentrification south, there are some overlaps nevertheless with Coburg North (North of the Line) having a lot in common with the South and Pascale Value South (South of the Line) having more in common with the North as I have found not just from the results but from the houses built there.

If the creek is not an issue, there may be a case to realign the electrodes of Willis and Cooper from North-South to East-West with one electorate focusing south of Bell Street and another North of Bell Street. I wonder if the hyptothical electorate south of Bell Street would be another Green Seat?

@Marh A seat made up of the southern parts of Wills and Cooper would likely be a Greens seat, especially in the long run. The only thing is i don’t know if it would be over quota and a northern seat would be under quota. There would also have to be a very big and legitimate reason to realign the seats this way other than ‘giving the greens another seat’. This realignment would have to happen over multiple redistributions.

With Respect to Wills, i would also note that Pascoe Vale and Oak Park are solid middle income rather than gentrified inner city suburbs such as Brunswick hence a better Liberal vote. Demographically Oak Park and Pascoe Vale have a large Italian /Catholic community maybe this is more an extention of Essendon/Strathmore. However, one you cross into Glenroy the demographics change it becomes more working class and more Middle Eastern etc. Fawkner for example remains very disadvantaged.

my Wills will become a target for the greens it takes in the rest of coburg from cooper and the rest of brunswick from melbourne. on the other side of the coin cooper becomes safer for labor and melbourne becomes more marginal.

I don’t think the tiny bit of Coburg from Cooper and the tiny bit of Brunswick from Melbourne would make much difference to the margin. I think that part of Coburg would be quite safe for Labor anyway.

Im not sure about 2022 but in 2019 coburg voted 60/40 labor

Cooper or Wills could become an east-west, south of the Latte Line, notional Greens seat. Created a rough map using Kevin Chen’s SA2 redistribution tool.
https://ibb.co/f1kswcN
https://kevinchen870.shinyapps.io/VIC_2023_redistribution_tool_SA2/

The Labor margin here didn’t change much and hides the fact that there was a shift from Labor to its left flank, in particular to the Greens and the Socialists. The Labor 2CP vs Greens didn’t change because the loss of Labor vote to its left was offset by stronger Liberal preferences (51.5% to Labor in 2019 vs 73.3% in 2022), though in 3PP terms though, the Greens increased to 35.6% (+4.1%) and Labor decreased to 42.6% (-4.7%)

Khalil’s primary vote is getting shaky at only 38.9%. In addition, Khalil appears to be one of the most ardent supporters of the AUKUS agreement in Labor, and you can only assume this AUKUS is a massively unpopular policy in a place as left-wing as Wills. 10.3% of Wills identify as Muslim compared with 4.2% in Victoria, and the current conflict in Gaza could be an issue for Labor – from what I’ve seen, Khalil’s rhetoric on this issue is not as strong as Maria Vamvakinou in Calwell.

I think Kearney in Cooper is safe as houses for as long as she’s the incumbent, but I think Khalil is quite vulnerable, far more so than the margin suggests.

@ GPPS
We actually had a good discussion on the Calwell thread about the Palestinian conflict and its effect on certain seats. I actually stated that i think the Victorian Socialists will increase their vote in Muslim communities. They have been prominent in Pro-Palestine protests. Others also made similar comments. You are correct Peter Khalil has a Hawkish foreign policy and very Pro-AUKUS which i agree will be unpopular in most of Wills. AUKUS will be less popular now among Muslim voters as they will perceive at as pro-American. Maria in Calwell has been more Pro-Palestinian that Peter Khalil. The Socialists will preference Greens over Labor so they may tip the seat to the Greens.

/www.tallyroom.com.au/archive/aus2022/calwell2022/comment-page-1#comment-795908

Labor actually only polled above 40% in 5 booths here (Glenroy, Glenroy East, Glenroy North, Fawkner, Coburg West). The thing that keeps this safe for Labor is the Libs still outpoll the Greens in most of the northern booths. There’s not much of an excuse by now that the Greens are still getting outpolled by the Libs in most of these booths despite the fact that this is a Green target seat and the Libs put in no effort whatsoever here. Until they can start getting >25% of the vote in Fawkner/Glenroy/Oak Park it’ll stay an easy Labor seat.

The Greens have a bit a problem with Wills and Cooper. The southern half of Wills is much more left wing/pro green than the sth part of Cooper but the northern part of Cooper is much better for the Greens than the nth part of Wills. If you could somehow combine the sth part of Wills with the nth part of Cooper you’d have a very competitive seat.

Wills has much more diversity of political opinion than Cooper. Most of the booths in Cooper are in the ALP 50-60% range but Wills ranges from ALP 40-70% booths. It’s only really Reservoir North-West that is rock solid Labor territory. I think the Greens might even be doing better in the northern part of Cooper than they did in 2016, it’s just the southern part that is in love with Ged Kearney.

There are factors why Cooper South is more Labor Friendly than Willis South
-Older Average age so they are more likely to be traditional centre-left progressives rather than the younger socialist
– Slightly more immigrants
– Ged Kearney is progressive enough so she could appeal to many younger and progressive block who would otherwise vote for The Greens
Nevertheless, the ALP vote seems to be inflated

Based on current boundaries, there’s still a strong enough Liberal Party support base in the north and even in Pascoe Vale South. As Drake mentioned, even the Liberals without putting in effort can still outpoll the Greens. I agree that Wills is a bit more vulnerable to the Greens than Cooper as aforementioned.

It’s worth noting that the Labor primary was eroded in 2022 due to a surge in anti-establishment parties like the Greens, Socialists, UAP and ON. In 2025, the non majors could hold up or even increase their vote not just because of the Israel and Gaza issue but also on housing and cost of living.

I think despite predictions from that Greens will win Cooper (previously named Batman) and Willis from were going to be Green seats by 2019/2022 , Labor somehow managed to hold on still a a sizable margin. I checked on Pollbluger and found out there is still a sizable Labor vote in Cooper/Willis South compared to Melbourne which is literally a very strong Green vote.

Good Points above just to add to it
*There is a decent Liberal Vote in Pascoe Vale, Pascoe Vale South & Oak Park. These areas are more middle class and some what a transition zone between the affluent Essendon/Strathmore area and the economically deprived areas to the North. These suburbs are less Muslim and more Italian/Catholic so the Palestine conflict will not have as much of an impact either way here.
*Where the the Gaza conflict will have most impact will be around Fawkner, Hadfield & the eastern part of Glenroy which are economically deprived. These are the most Muslim parts of Wills. These suburbs also had an anti-lockdown backlash last time and are more like Calwell than Brunswick.
*The Socialists already are doing well in Economically deprived ethnic suburbs so for the Greens to win Wills, The Socialists will need to do much of the heavy lifting and pull down the Labor primary in these suburbs and their vote to flow to Greens over Labor in the 2CP.
*So far Peter Khalil has been good and having a seperate message to Brunswick around renewable energy etc and a more traditional blue collar message to the North. However, i wonder if longer term Labor would seek to have a more progressive MP like Ged Kearny.
* In Cooper, the only area which has a decent Liberal vote in Bundoora-Macleod which is more middle class and fits better in Jagajaga.

It’s been reported Victorian Greens state leader Samantha Ratnam, planning to quit state politics. To nominate for preselection in the seat of Wills. I’m wondering if the Greens internal polling is doing well here that she is considering this play.

https://www.canberratimes.com.au/story/8580079/vic-greens-leader-eyes-labor-seat-at-next-federal-poll/