Western Metropolitan – Victoria 2010

Incumbent MLCs

  • Khalil Eideh (ALP), since 2006.
  • Bernie Finn (LIB), since 2006. Previously Member for Tullamarine 1992-1999.
  • Colleen Hartland (GRN), since 2006.
  • Justin Madden (ALP), since 2006. Previously MLC for Doutta Galla 1999-2006.
  • Martin Pakula (ALP), since 2006.

Geography
Western Metropolitan region covers the electoral districts of Altona, Derrimut, Essendon, Footscray, Keilor, Kororoit, Niddrie, Pascoe Vale, Tarneit, Williamstown and Yuroke.

All eleven seats are held by the ALP. Eight of those eleven seats are held by margins of between 19.4% and 25.6%. The remaining three seats are held by margins of between 11.2% and 12.5%.

2006 result

Group Votes % Quota
Labor 219,706 58.69 3.5208
Liberal 91,604 24.47 1.4679
The Greens 35,201 9.40 0.5641
Family First 15,032 4.00 0.2409
People Power 5,098 1.36 0.0817
Democratic Labor Party 4,029 1.08 0.0646
Democrats 3,741 1.00 0.0599

Western Metropolitan is a very strong region for the ALP. In 2006, the ALP safely won three seats, and gained over half a quota for their fourth candidate.

The Liberal Party won a single seat, and the second Liberal candidate gained just under half a quota in surplus.

The Greens candidate polled 56% of a quota.

After the distribution of minor party candidates, Greens candidate Colleen Hartland outpolled the fourth Labor candidate by only 129 votes. The full votes at that point were:

  • Reynolds (LIB) – 0.7022 quotas
  • Hartland (GRN) – 0.6330
  • Barlow (ALP) – 0.6309

The Labor preferences then pushed Hartland over a quota, defeating the second Liberal.

  • Hartland (GRN) – 1.0939
  • Reynolds (LIB) – 0.8310

Candidates
Sitting Labor MLC for Southern Metropolitan Robert Smith is running in Western Metropolitan. It is unclear who else is running for the ALP. The Liberal Party is running sitting MLC Bernie Finn and candidate Andrew Elsbury. Sitting Greens MLC Colleen Hartland is running for re-election.

Political situation
It is safe to say that the first three Labor seats and the first Liberal seat are all safe. The seat up for contest belongs to Greens MLC Colleen Hartland, who won in 2006 on Labor preferences with barely half a quota in primary votes, and outpolling the Labor candidate at the critical point by only 129 votes.

A slight increase in the Labor vote would push a fourth Labor candidate ahead of the Greens, and give them the seat on Greens preferences. Things are more complicated if the Labor vote declines. A relatively small swing against the ALP would probably still produce a Greens win, whether those votes go to the Liberal Party or the Greens.

At the final count in 2006, the Greens outpolled the Liberal candidate by about 4.38%. An overall decline in the combined Greens/Labor vote of over 4% could produce a result of 3 Labor and 2 Liberal.

Having said that, while the Greens are certainly vulnerable in this seat, a swing against the ALP would likely benefit both the Greens and the Liberals, and while the Liberals would come closer to the Greens on the final count, they will probably still hold out.

7 COMMENTS

  1. Justin Madden is running for the lower house seat of Essendon, but I can’t imagine his absence from the ballot will make much difference for the ALP.

    Colleen Hartland for the Greens has been campaigning really hard on a number of local issues.
    Surely her profile has been raised a little bit higher and she should get over the line.

  2. ALP is migrating Robert Smith MLC from southern metro region into safe third position.

    The man likes to travel …

    Nice analysis but there’s a typo – where you say 2 greens could result from a decreased greens vote, you meant 2 libs.

  5. The Greens either have to hope the Liberal vote stays down or the ALP get more than a half quota less and the Liberals preference the Greens.

  6. This is a seat that was decided on a recount. The number of total votes between count A and Count B had changed with 500 less votes being recorded then in Count A. What happened to these votes is unclear. The recount resulted in the Greens winning the fifth seat by a margin of less then 150 votes. Copies of the below the line preference data files for count A was deleted with no backup copies made. This prevented the parliamentary Matters Committee form undertaking a proper review and analysis as to where the errors and changes in the count occurred. Overall the conduct of the election was dubious at best. It is hard to believe that a professional Information technology department failed to make backup copies of important data. The Chief Commissioner claimed that the data was overwritten. This raised concerns about the quality of the software used on counting the votes. By comparison the software used by the AEC retrains both count A and count B verification data. The VEC has indicated that this election they will be undertaking a full double entry data quality verification process and unlike 2006 they will produce a reconciliation report prior to finalisation of the data-entry process and the counting of the vote. The VEC spent millions of dollars duplicating software that was already developed and used by the AEC.

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