Berwick – Victoria 2022

If labor have a good night they’ll pick this up.

is Brad Battin running here?

Daneil,
Yes he is. Also I think the LNP would be the favourites to hold here at this stage as this electorate is all the more liberal friendly parts from Bruce, La Trobe & Holt.

The Liberals won here on federal figures with over 60% of the 2PP count. I think it’s safe to say this seat is a foregone conclusion. Pakenham will also probably flip, maybe Cranbourne on an extremely good night.

Berwick equivalent in Sydney seems to be the area around The Ponds, Marsden Park and Scholfields

Agree Boof Head and Marh, Berwick and Pakenham in the far south east of Melbourne behave in a similar manner to the North west suburbs of Sydney (basically the area between Blacktown and the Hills district), being swing districts but leaning more towards the Coalition.

If comparing to Brisbane, I probably see this area akin to a place like Burpengary/Deception Bay (Moreton Bay council area south of Caboolture), a rapidly developing community that is quite favourable for the Liberals/LNP.

The aforementioned areas in Sydney swung very strongly to Labor in the federal election (could be due to the messy Lib preselection there) while Berwick/Pakenham swung to the Libs, possibly due to backlash against the lockdowns, mask mandates and the vaccination policy. This area, along with the Mornington Peninsula is basically the only positive area for the Libs in metropolitan Melbourne when they nearly lost everything they hold.

Dan M, Jason Wood’s incumbency could be a big factor given he seems to be active in the community in contrast to other MP’s.
Pretty much most of Brisbane (outside the mega Brisbane Council, Northern Logan, and Ipswich which the latter two are working-class areas like Werribee) has an atmosphere, demographic and economic similarities to areas like Berwick, Boronia, and Croydon.

@Marh, Outer NW Sydney is a good comparison to Berwick but i could also add some of the Camden area such as Harrington Park, Oran Park, Mount Annan etc . I wonder if this will be the safest Liberal Metro seat after the election similar to what happened at the Federal level. The Northern part of the seat is more settled and affluent while the southern part is mortgage belt/growth area.

This should be an easy Lib win based on demographics and federal results. These types of very outer suburban seats are the areas where the UAP / anti Dan / anti lockdown sentiment is strongest.

Agree. If Labor are extremely unlikely to hold Pakenham, they’re not going to gain Berwick.

I expect substantial swings to the Liberals in all of Pakenham, Berwick, Cranbourne, Narre Warren North and Narre Warren South; the latter 3 will just be less likely to flip because the margins are around 10%.

I remember on the federal election thread, someone mentioned that 10 years ago they would never have guessed that Aston would be the safest Liberal seat in metropolitan Melbourne (which it was prior to the federal election). Could say the same about La Trobe now!

@ Nicholas, you have asked an excellent question. I have always wondered if the area around Berwick could become the next Aston. In the aftermath of the election in May, i asked that exact question to Mark Mulcair as he grew up in Knox/Aston and has seen the area change significantly in voting patterns and demographics to see if there are any comparisons. There is one significant difference at this stage. See question and response on La Trobe thread from May 22
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/archive/aus2022/latrobe2022/comment-page-1#comments

Joel van der Horst is listed as the Family First candidate. He ran as Labour DLP candidate in Deakin in 2019. He is also listed as Labour DLP State Secretary on their website. So:

1. Has he parted company with the DLP?
2. Are the DLP and Family First sort of interchangeable?

redistributed id say their almost identical, i was looking at both websites just before and what i think is family first are defenently more vocal on upholding the controversial traditional values, obviously im against all that backward thinking, so i am putting those parties, one nation and the freedom party last on my ballot.

This seat would normally be
Reliable for the liberals..that
Is most times they would win here. But the margin is very tight
This like Caufield and similar
Will be the battle ground in the
Current pro Labor climate. It
Will come down to campaign and candidate quality. I would
Prefer to be the liberal here .but
An alp win would not surprise. If the liberals are heading for a disaster.. then…..

If the speculation is true that Battin has the numbers (even the betting markets have him favoured over Pesutto) then the Liberals can expect to lose even more ground at the next election and lose a 4th consecutive election.

I bet Labor will get rid of Andrews midterm and Labor will have a new premier who will be more popular than Andrews and against an arch-conservative Battin, 2026 will be no match provided there isn’t a policy disaster for Labor.

When is the last time Labor was in power 12 years or longer? The Cain-Kirner government was 10 years. And the Bracks-Brumby government was 11 years.

Liberals are really risking 16 years in opposition. It still could be that Battin if elected leader could be toppled midterm by Pesutto of the polling is poor. But will the Vic Liberals allow it to occur or will they keep stabbing themselves in the foot like they have been doing lately?

i am not sure if i describe Battin as an arch conservative. He certainly more conservative than Pesutto. He said the party should focus on the mortgage belt and growth areas. He talks about his support among ethnic communities The Conservative wing of the party would support him especially those who represent regional and more suburban seats. Important to remember that the growth areas of Melbourne are not working class and in Sydney the Libs appeal to Growth areas. Personally, i doubt he will campaign against action on climate change as the Victorian Libs dont actually have any working class seats (the Nats have Morwell but that is it). Yes this will be longest period of Labor government in Victoria’s history

The Libs haven’t really done that well in the growth areas this election, showing that their strategy of pandering towards the anti-vax and freedom party vote hasn’t exactly worked in their favour. Point Cook, Pakenham and Melton didn’t flip to the Libs while Labor gained Hastings and Bass. The swing was almost entirely concentrated in the established working class Labor heartland in the outer north and west. It is not a bad idea to focus on mortgage belt and growth areas since the affluent Lib heartland won’t be enough to win elections but they should not sacrifice their heartland or the traditional marginal eastern suburb seats by focusing 100% on the growth areas because the Labor heartland is still very much out of reach.

Having a leader from this area could benefit LNP as if they want to win they’ll need to win neighbouring seats in this area.

@ Dan M, Agree with you 100% i think if we read between the lines of Brad Battin’s statement he is in effect saying that the appeal to Cooker vote did not work and that while they may have got a sugar hit in the Established working class Labor heartland this time around it is probably just that. Important to remember that far-right populism and conspiracy theories dont work in growth area which often have above average incomes and educational attainment and tend to be very ethnically diverse. I agree with you if they sacrifice their affluent heartland, sandbelt and marginal eastern suburbs then their is no path to victory even they do really well in growth areas the maths dont work.

It’s also worth pointing out despite the massive swings against Labor in the west and Labor getting swings to them in the eastern suburbs, the Labor margins in the sandbelt and eastern suburb seats are all on the most part much lower than the margins in the north and west. So in swing-wide terms, the Libs would still be more likely to gain seats by focusing on the east than on the north and west.

Electorally, Battin as leader makes more sense as he’s in the midst of the growth areas and his electorate is closer to the marginal seats of the east, south-east and Mornington Peninsula. He has stronger selling points than Pesutto who is from a traditional Liberal heartland seat. Battin’s 2PP margin is much higher than Pesutto’s and he doesn’t have to be as anxious in defending his own seat.

@Dan, I’m not sure I agree. I listed the 17 most 2PP-marginal Labor seats which are the path to victory for the Coalition, which at the time included Bass and Pakenham, on my Wednesday post.

Prior to the election, the equivalent list had only 1/19 in the north of west of Melbourne. Now it’s 6/17.

So yes there are technically more in the east of Melbourne (9/17, with 2 in regional Victoria) but there’s a lot more seats in the east. Overall the north west now has a lot more marginals than it used to.

Prior to the election, i thought this maybe one the safest seat in metro Melbourne. While there have been an increase in the margin significantly and it now safer than Kew etc. If we examine closer it is probably not that surprising. It is only growth area seat that the Libs currently hold. It seems that Labor made a decision to sacrifice competing in this seat and run dead to sandbag all the neighboring seats which in the end made have been a brilliant decision for the Labor party to hold Pakenham/Bass etc. They have turned this seat into a blue island in a Red Sea. If we look at booth results its is probably not that great for the Libs the northern part of the seat is strongly liberal as it consists of Green Wedge areas and upmarket hillside suburbs while it is the southern part of the electorate which is mortgage belt and is still growing. The Southern booths are still Red. Clyde North is demographically similar to Officer which had a swing to Labor and in the Clyde booth in neighboring Bass there was no swing at all to Libs and Labor won the TPP 58:42. It seems the anti-lockdown backlash was limited to deprived areas like Meadow Heights, St Albans etc and did not extend into growth areas.

@Nimalan agreed. Point Cook only slightly swung to the Libs with the independent doing pretty poorly even with a retiring high profile MP. The big swings are in the deprived working class areas in the north and west that Labor held by 20+% margins but all it did is turn them into 10% margin seats, still safe for Labor.

@ Dan M
Even if we look at Point Cook electorate, it seems the be the case the biggest swing there occurred in Altona Meadows which is an established working class area where Labor usually gets over 75%TPP. Demographically, Altona Meadows is very different has very few South Asians and much less educated in stark contrast to Point Cook. In Altona Meadows, Joe Garra performed the worst in the electorate. The swings in Point Cook itself was much less even though this is a demographic that could vote Liberal. Looking at the results in Mitchell Shire as well i am not convinced there is anti-Labor mood there. There was actually some swings to Labor in the part of the LGA in Euroa and while Wallan in Kalkallo had a small swing to Libs around 3-4% but that was in Yan Yean last time where there was a dis endorsed candidate

I say Point Cook has some similarities to the Eastern Suburbs being full of upper middle class professionals and I wonder why Tarneit and Truganina hasn’t appealed to them to the same extent Point Cook does indeed have a very diverse mainly with South Asian and an unusually high percentage of Chinese

@ Marh, I would say the natural geography has made Point Cook more desirable as it is quite coastal and has a lot of Wetlands, Lakes etc while Tarneit is on a flat plain. I have often said that natural geography has determined the destiny of suburbs. I would say the suburb of Williams Landing shares similar demographics to Point Cook including a lot of professionals of South Asian and Chinese background.

I looked on the census for both Tarniet and Point Cook and I noticed even the South Asian Community is completely different. Tarniet seems to be Indian from Punjabi-speaking Sikhs (I heard they made most of the recent Indian immigrants) and Point Cook tends to be Hindu and speaks Hindi.
I wonder if those who speak Hindi have a higher class than Punjab’s result from the caste system?

Small swing to the libs still
Marginal

@ Marh, i would say the Sikh community is perhaps more blue collar than other South Asians. The Sikh community also tends to extend into regional Australia more than other South Asian communities they can found around Coffs Harbour, North Queensland, the Goulburn Valley, Riverland (SA) etc. In India, Sikh atends to be disproportionately represented in the military etc. Just one point of clarification, not all Punjabi are Sikh for example Rishi Sunak is Punjabi Hindu. I would actually say it the South Indian community especially those who speak languages such as Telugu, Malayalam etc that tend to be most white collar educated etc. South India tends to the most industrialized part of India and is where all the tech companies are etc.

It seems true, it seems quite common for Punjabi speakers to work in manual blue-collar jobs whilst still studying at University at the same time. I point out the Punjab region is home to much of India’s agriculture so many Punjabis In Australia were very passionate about the issue of the farming protest last year. I also say Indian immigrants have a diverse range of fields more than any other immigrants with a mix of highly educated Hindus/Southern Indians (pretty much India’s brain drain) and those who want to study/work in Australia for remittance for families (and potentially bring the family here once they got citizenship).

This has been mentioned as a potential labor target, I personally don’t Labor expanding rather defending at the next state election I’m well aware that the current polling looks good for them while the state LNP are infighting but if they get it together and most likely replace the leader with brad battin or sam gorth who will appeal to voters out here. Its also natural for voters to start feeling fatigued with an old government and it especially won’t help having a federal labor government which voters might confuse with. Its worth noting this will be the longest labor government that Victoria has had in 2026 while I see Labor winning I don’t see expanding their lower house majority again as the resources they need to defend a bunch of inner city seats that are at real risk to the Greens. These inner city seats will be focussed on as its more difficult (they to date haven’t won seats back off the Greens) to retrieve those electorates. However, I am factoring one major thing and that is the LNP stops infighting.

The issue is the Southern Part of growing very fast around Clyde north which is friendly to Labor. Clyde North voted strongly YES in the voice referendum. Last time as mentioned by my comment above. Labor ran dead here to they could sandbag all neighbouring seats and turned this into a Blue Island in a Red sea a bit like Rowville is.

I think in the next redistributions in Victoria they’ll put a new seat called Clyde.

@ Space Fish yes i think they maybe a new seat called Clyde which would be very winnable for Labor and this would make Berwick stronger for the Libs. I reckon there maybe a new called Rockbank as well in the west in another growth area.

I’m sceptical about Brad being able to unite the party, however having the leader near a bunch of key swing seats is strategically smart as if the LNP want to get back into office the need to win seats like Pakenham, Cranbourne, Hastings, Narre Warren North & South as well as Bass.