Bulleen – Victoria 2022

The comments made by guy could hurt him in his own electorate, there isn’t a big buffer this time around

You would have to think he is favoured. But I did see a comment in Menzies that suggests this could be close.

Guy clearly only cares about power, that is why he unfaithfully removed and backstabbed O’Brien who was clearly doing better. What was the logic of reinstating a leader who lost badly last time? The moment I think Andrews secured an increased majority was Guy’s disastrous pre-election rally the one when he said ”I will be the premier of Victoria for every Victorian” Mate you can’t pledge to be the premier for everyone when your policies will clearly divide the state, and your divisive rhetoric welcoming Peter Dutton to your campaign this year?

I hope the voters here show him the door, Dutton is unpopular in Eastern-Melbourne and another disastrous election result could mean Peter Dutton losses the leadership to Dan Tehan.

Labor’s path to 60 seats lies here (and a Brackslide) (if they lose a few seats in western Melbourne and outer-suburban area’s.

On the federal election swings in the area, Guy is at risk of losing his seat. If Labor puts effort in here, which they should to compensate for possible losses in their traditional heartland, I can see them winning here. An announcement to fast track the construction of the SRL to Doncaster would be an easy way to win support in this very politically neglected electorate.

Daniel, there is a different between Matthew Guy and Peter Dutton is that Guy is Right-libertarian with anti lockdown and anti-vax mandate views unlike Dutton who is more national security hawk nationalist. I’ve said in the past thread that Vic Libs is pretty much Right Wing even compared to the federal faction. Guy seems to be Australia’s version of Pierre Poilievre in Canada or Ron Desantis in Florida with all three being anti-mandate populism. In addition, given Poilievre is most likely going to be the next Candaian opposition leader, this may affect the Tories in western countries given alongside Dutton, Australia and Canada will have no moderate alternative in their elections soon.

In addition,I found Toronto’s and Vancouver’s equivalent of Kooyong,Wentworth,etc voted for Justin Trudeau Liberal (centre-left party). Is it because Canada’s Liberal are effectively one mega equivalent of our Teals?

Marh, agree with your last point. I found the Liberal Party of Canada is like the Liberal Democrats (Lib Dems) in the UK – a mostly centrist but somewhat centre right, conservative lite party fitting neatly between Labour and the Conservatives. They would also be considered similar to the Australian Democrats who were dominant during the late 90s and early 00s as a ‘keep the bastards (major parties) honest’ group.

As someone who is a lifelong resident of this seat i do feel that some competition would mean that this seat is not taken for granted. Regarding Rail. I am hoping there is a planning i hope that a proposed Doncaster station on SRL is located in Doncaster Hill near Westfield and the heart of Doncaster and a major activity centre not in at the park and ride which is on the fringe of Manningham. Also there needs to planning that it allows for an interchange for the eventual Doncaster to City rail line. As one railway station for over 100,000 residents in the City of Manningham will lead to a very crowded station and will just lead to crowding on the Ringwood and Hurstbridge lines as city bound commuters use SRL and then interchange to city bound services on the existing rail network. The other new infill stations on SRL such as Monash, Burwood (Deakin) and Bundoora (La Trobe) have railway stations in adjacent areas unlike Manningham. Also Melbourne metro 2 (MM2) is a key enabler for a Doncaster-City Rail line and a new branch to Wollert. I would hope that there is planning money allocated for MM2 and funds allocated to purchase property etc at Doncaster for rail station.

@Marh and Yoh An Tee, I think it’s important to note that the BC state Liberal Party is different from the Ontario state Liberal Party and the federal Canadian Liberal Party. The BC state Liberal party (encompassing Vancouver) is basically the equivalent to the Liberal Party in Australia, as in it’s the major right-wing party whereas the state NDP is the major left-wing party. The federal Liberal Party in Canada is basically like the ALP except it’s more progressive on social issues than economic issues which is a bit like the Teals. Their economic stances are really a hybrid between the ALP and the Libs in Australia. The Ontario state Liberal Party (encompassing Toronto) is similar except that it barely has any seats (7 out of 124 in the Ontario parliament) after losing govt in a wipeout election in 2018. In that state, the NDP functions as the main left-wing party (they’re basically a hybrid between the Greens and the Labor left faction).

@Nimalan That’s true, it’s pretty ridiculous Manningham is the only LGA in Melbourne with no rail service, probably due to Manningham being historically safe Liberal which is starting to change this year. I would say the SRL alone is not sufficient to service Manningham as a whole and a direct City to Doncaster train line is necessary. Ideally there would be train services in other areas of Manningham too like Bullen, Templestowe Lower and Doncaster East, not just in Doncaster. If there is a decision to build a station in the Park and Ride, it could provide an opportunity to redevelop the park and ride to perhaps have more high density or a shopping mall with more facilities etc. since right now it’s basically just open unused land. That being said, if only one station can be built in Manningham, it must be in Doncaster Hill and connected with Westfield rather than the park and ride.

@John Smith It’s very unlikely that Labor will lose traditional seats in its heartland in this election, sure they may have big swings against them there but most of the seats are on very safe margins. The only two i can think of that are under 10% out west are Werribee (9.2%) which was most likely because of backlash to the jail been built in the area and Melton (5.4%) which had an outgoing member that was found to be gaming the system and then they had a late replacement close to the election that didn’t live in the seat. It’s unlikely that the Libs win either of those seats.

If there’s a swing to the Liberals in northern and western Melbourne, and a swing to Labor in eastern Melbourne, then unless the scale of the former is well into the double digits, the net result is a wipeout of the Liberals.

@Nicholas that’s kind of what happened in the federal election in Vic. The state-wide swing was only 1% to Labor but the Libs lost 4 seats and barely held 2 on a margin of <1% (including some very safe Lib seats that has never been won by Labor). And that's considering Labor already did pretty well in 2019 in Vic and most commentators brushed Vic off as somewhere that Labor could gain many seats.

I’m not a Victorian but I heard that the federal Libs banked on an anti-Dan Andrews campaign all over Melbourne. I even heard that UAP would go hard in safe Labor seats on an anti-lockdown, antivax platform in the western and northern suburbs. I actually thought Dan Andrews would hurt Labor’s federal vote. Too bad for the Libs, the swings happened in safe Labor seats.

Matthew Guy has at least a 5% margin and I’d be surprised if he loses his seat even based on federal swings (which was probably due to a hatred of Scott Morrison). Like I mentioned in another thread, it is rare for a two-term government to have a net gain in seats at three elections in a row. I’m not sure what the sentiment is out here but I did mention that I’m not Victorian so I can only assume things.

Votante I agree that I think Matthew Guy will hold here – he was as unpopular in 2018 as he is now, and opposition leader both times – so I don’t think the swing against him will be particularly more dramatic.

Although I think there may be one because this seat includes Doncaster where the SRL may be popular.

The impact though will be that Guy’s margin of only 5.7% will mean the party will need to dedicate some resources to sandbagging it. They will hold with a reduced margin but probably at the expense of other seats.

The Libs’ problem here is that they have a LOT of “at risk” seats.

– 3 seats held by <1% in the inner south where they are the most toxic;
– 2 seats held by <1% in the outer east, where they suffered 4-5% swings in May;
– 1 seat held by 1.5%, within the boundaries of Chisholm (8% swing in May);

Then on top of that, you have affluent east & southeast seats like Kew, Bulleen, Malvern & Warrandyte all held on between 3.9% and 6.6%.

That's a lot of territory to defend, while trying to make inroads on an electoral map full of double-digit Labor margins with only a handful of winnable seats (Pakenham, Nepean, Hastings, Ringwood, Hawthorn, Melton) and no guarantee they'll win anything other than Pakenham!

Also the neck of the woods I grew up in – one thing I think people might be missing here when analysing the Federal result in Menzies is the absolutely massive Chinese population, and that the backlash against Morrison from many within the Chinese community which isn’t going to necessarily be replicated at state level.

I expect enough to revert back to the Libs after voting against them at the Fed Election that Bulleen and Warrandyte will be held by the Libs reasonably comfortably even if they go backwards on their 2018 result. Bulleen and Warrandyte also aren’t Hawthorn, Kew, Brighton etc., while there’s definitely some ‘teal’ voters around I don’t think there’s enough to get Labor over the line here.

The only way Labor can make this winnable is to include Doncaster in the first phase of the SRL, but quite frankly Labor may want Guy to hold on as after the election he’ll either be an unpopular Opposition Leader who’s lost twice, a destabilising force on the backbench again, or cause a by-election that the Libs will need to spend money on that they don’t have and could be more susceptible to a teal candidate.

MD43, Vic Libs does share the same anti-china stance like the federal counterparts. Also Vic Libs has an anti-vax mandate stance by LNP standards so that wouldn’t go well with the Chinese Community, Moderates and the elderly.
Yes, I do agree Labor is still less likely to gain there compare to the areas south of Manningham like Glen Waverley.

Should also point out that this seat not only has a large Chinese community but it also has a large elderly population which are the two demographics which would be turned off by the Vic Libs’ effectively anti-vax stance.

The seat of Menzies does have different Chinese communities to be fair.
Newer 1st generation less assimilated ones in Box Hill and Doncaster. Doncaster East seems a more assimilated ones with a lot being 1.75-2nd generation in addition to the older 1st generations

@ Marh, Great point when i was in school in the 90s-early 2000s in this seat there was a lot of HK Chinese and Malaysian Chinese. Today the Mainland Chinese community has grown significantly. This seat also does have a large Italian, Greek (maybe the largest % of any seat in Vic by ancestor and growing since 2016) and Persian community which often gets overlooked in discussion.

I think the Mainland Chinese in Manningham there also quite assimilated compared to the areas South of it. Many Mainland Chinese in Manningham are from Guangdong (Many HK Chinese immigrants are actually born there and most hail their ancestors there) but they tended to migrated to Australia before 2000 so many do have Children born in Australia. Mainland Chinese in Whitehorse (especially Box Hill) and Monash (GW less so) are either students, newer immigrants or working class migrant workers

@Marh I reckon you’re right in saying Manningham councils Chinese population is quite assimilated. Lots of immigrants in Manningham are wealthy and well integrated and assimilated, their also seems to be a lot more 2nd and 3rd generation in Manningham, especially in regard to the southern Europeans in the area.

To add to the Southern Europeans, Greeks to keep their culture alive even the third generation without compromising their assimilation so this explains why they can still be fluent in Greek. Italians are a bit different as most who assimilate (1.75 generation onwards) already lost many of their Italian identity so they can’t speak Italian fluent and some not at all. So the Italian culture seems to only be alive in the Northern Suburbs.

https://www.tallyroom.com.au/vic2022/bulleen2022/comment-page-1#comment-773204

That might be for religious reasons because religious Italians are mostly Latin-rite Catholic, whose religious services are generally in English in Australia (previously in Latin, prior to Vatican II) and also the Catholic school system is not specifically Italian due to there being other Latin-rite Catholic groups in Australia (e.g. the Irish who were most of the Catholics until post war migration took off). In contrast religious Greeks are mostly Greek Orthodox, so Greek would (I believe) be a greater level of Greek exposure in church and religious schools for a greater proportion of Greeks than Italians.

Even though Matthew Guy should be able to stay on as Lib leader until the election, I don’t think he will last very long after that especially with the heavy scrutiny and scandals he’s facing now. Even if the Libs improve their position, he will be under a lot of pressure to resign as Lib leader and perhaps quit politics altogether especially if John Pesutto manages to win Hawthorn. The only thing that can save him really is if he somehow becomes premier after the election which is extremely unlikely.

I think Bulleen is highly likely to stay Liberal, if it wasn’t lost in 2018 it won’t be lost in 2022.

I read recently somewhere there’s two scenarios this election folds out. Best case a reduced majority for Labor, worst case a minority government with the Greens. I just don’t see any path where the Coalition can pick up 18 (I think) seats to form majority government, and the Greens will never side with the Liberals either.

An independent could possibly do well in Bulleen.

It’s not the prime teal demographic as it’s a bit more conservative and suburban but one of the main motivations to vote teal/independent is to remove the sitting member without voting Labor.

I imagine a lot of Liberal voters in Victoria are sick of Guy and wouldn’t mind ridding the party of him. The electors in this seat are the ones who have a chance to do so, but I don’t think Labor will improve their vote here.

In virtually every seat currently held by the Liberals, the teal only needs to overtake Labor to win. If a seat is currently 55-45 Liberal to Labor, only around 10% (i.e. more than 5 in 55) Liberal voters need to “defect” to the independent for the independent to win against the Liberals on the 2CP. That’s not a tall order. They just need to actually get into the 2CP by obtaining a sufficiently high primary vote to eliminate Labor. It could even be said that what is more important is that there are enough Labor/Green voters willing to support the independent.

It’s the same reason why Menzies was a missed opportunity for a teal independent. If Labor could bring the 2CP versus the Liberals to within one percent, a teal would’ve won it – so long as they made it into the 2CP by surpassing Labor.

i would love to see a Teal run in this areas but as local resident of this seat myself, i would say this area is no where near as affluent or elite as Kew, Brighton, Albert Park, Malvern, Hawthorn, Sandringham etc. All suburbs in Manningham are some variation of Middle Class. If a Teal could do well here then the Libs have an existential problem if they are only left with a handful of Rural safe seats and some marginal outer suburban seat.

I would still say a Labor canadiate would have an easier won than a real. Melbourne eastern middle ring (Mannigham,Whitehorse and Monash) has a large middle class and non Anglo population so these voters believe only a major party is representative to the community

IMHO, the main reason the teal wave happened a few months back was due to socially liberal voters leaving the LNP, whom they perceived as too socially conservative for their interests (this counts environmental matters as a social matter btw). At the state level, social matters tend to be of little concern compared to the federal level, especially in more middle class areas such as here. Whilst I expect the Liberal vote to fall in the inner eastern suburbs, it will probably only matter in seats with margins <2%. I do expect that this seat could get within 1% in a worst case scenario for the LNP. But I genuinely don't know if Matthew Guy is well liked as member, or what the mood is on the ground here.

If I could compare this seat to one in NSW, I would say Epping; an established middle to upper middle class area with a sizeable Asian vote that leans more socially & economically conservative than the state average.

@ Boof head, yes i would say Epping is a good comparison especially Beecroft etc but maybe including parts of Castle Hill as well since Templestowe is similar to Castle Hill/West Pennant Hills. There is also a Persian community which the corresponding suburbs in Sydney have as well. However, maybe one point of difference is the Southern European community which does not seem to be present in North West Sydney. This seat i believe would have the largest % of people of Greek ancestry.

Epping nsw on federal election figures votes labor

@Mick Quinlivan I believe it is still Liberal by 0.5%

Menzies was a missed opportunity for the Teals, due to the Teals performing strongly in middle class suburban booths similar to Bulleen and Doncaster. Comparing Menzies with Sydney, I would say its a mix of northern Sydney and the Hawkesbury. And, when it comes to Bulleen, its hard to see the Liberals losing Bulleen, however, they are performing poorly that anything is possible.

On the federal figures, I think this seat falls to Labor since there were very violent swings especially in the southern end around Doncaster.

Federal results in Bulleen district:

Election day polling places within Bulleen district:
51.6% Liberal vs Labor

Adjusting for vote type based on results in the Division of Menzies:
52.6% Liberal vs Labor

Why hasn’t this man resigned as leader? Wasn’t the last election and a new poll showing 60-40 to ALP, enough for him to realize the people of Victoria do not want him as their premier?

@Daniel, is there anyone else in the party they can pick though? The Victorian Liberals are essentially just a marketing firm masquerading as a political entity. However, I would encourage people in the thread to name an ideal Liberal leader for Victoria currently in Parliament.

They had one, O’Brien in Malvern until he was deposed in a bloodless coup. But if it can’t be him then Brad Battin or Ryan Smith probably would work. They both could lose their seats, but I suspect Battin holds on because of his region.

Cindy McLeish could be a wildcard.

Guy simply doesn’t appeal to ordinary Victorians and people don’t care about Daniel Andrew’s mistakes, they care more about a good opposition. same reason why Morrison won in 2019, because the opposition leader was not popular. Name one unpopular opposition leader besides Abbott who won gov.

Matthew Guy has to be the worst opposition leader of all time.

Today he’s announcing that if elected, his government will scrap the Suburban Rail Loop. You know, the one that runs through must-win seats like Glen Waverley (LIB 0.9%), Ashwood (ALP 2%) and Box Hill (ALP 3.2%), not to mention that it starts at the seat boundary of Sandringham (LIB 0.4%) and Phase 2 would even finally bring rail service to his own seat of Bulleen.

His announcement says that the $34b cost of the SRL will be redirected to healthcare, but The Age pointed out that only $11b of that cost is a state expense, the majority is private investment. So he doesn’t even have his figures correct.

At this point, announcements like this feel like he’s actually trying to lose the election. It’s hard to imagine a politician having such terrible political instincts.

Not to mention that now Labor can very easily campaign on how the SRL is also a Doncaster Rail line once Stage 2 is built and how Mathhew Guy is anti Doncaster Rail which would make Guy very vulnerable in his own seat.

Matthew Guy may not be the Premier but he has his party’s backing and is perhaps their best choice and even “save some furniture”.

Normally opposition leaders who lose their first elections but win seats get to stay on to fight another election. Think Tony Abbott, Bill Shorten, Kim Beazley, Bob Carr (NSW). Mark McGowan (WA) lost seats as a first-time opposition leader in 2013 but it wasn’t as bad as Matthew Guy in 2018. At least Mark McGowan redeemed himself in 2017 and people could smell an election victory coming.

This electorate is quite rusted on, I would tip the LNP to hold here just

I’ve noticed the electorate is littered with Matthew Guy posters. Might suggest the Libs are at least a bit worried about their chances here even though Labor hasn’t even announced a candidate yet.

Federal figures for Menzies suggest it will go down to the wire. Note, this was an open contest.

I still see Matthew Guy holding due to incumbency.

@Votante the fact Menzies was an open contest helped the Libs narrowly retain it. If Kevin Andrews was still around, the seat would’ve been lost given the issues that led to this seat having such a large swing.

That being said, Matthew Guy is no where near as unpopular as Kevin Andrews so he should be able to hold on though his stance of the SRL won’t be popular here so I expect a notable swing to Labor here.

Sanjeev Sabhlok is running as an independent here. His platform seems to be entirely anti-vax and has repeatedly questioned the science regarding vaccines and the pandemic which won’t be popular here, explaining why when he ran in Menzies in the federal election, he got the lowest primary vote out of any candidate. I thought it’s interesting to note in the federal election, all the candidates apart from the major 3 were right-wing anti-vaxers, will be interesting to see if that flows on through to Bulleen or Warrandyte. Labor doesn’t seem to be taking this seat too seriously given they don’t have a candidate yet but then again Naomi Oakley was preselected late in Menzies.

The Age is reporting that Mathew Guy’s primary vote is 41% here (I believe via a RedBridge poll). If that is true, Labor would gain the seat, probably quite convincingly.

@Corey not necessarily though that certainly would be very worrying for the Libs. In the federal election, the Libs managed to win Menzies with 42% of the primary vote, due to the fact that all the other candidates apart from Labor and the Greens were right wing antivaxers and there were strong preference flows to the Libs. Since the state Libs have adopted a more anti vax stance than the federal Libs, right wing antivaxxer preference flows might be even stronger meaning he could still scrape a narrow victory with a 41% primary vote.