ALP 0.6%
Incumbent MP
John Kennedy, since 2018.
Geography
Eastern Melbourne. Hawthorn covers central parts of the Boroondara local government area, and specifically the suburbs of Hartwell and Hawthorn and parts of the suburbs of Burwood, Camberwell, Canterbury and Surrey Hills.
Redistribution
Hawthorn shifted to the east, taking in part of Surrey Hills from Burwood and Box Hill, and losing the remainder of Glen Iris to Ashwood. These changes slightly increased the Labor margin from 0.4% to 0.6%.
History
Hawthorn has existed as an electoral district continuously since 1889. In that time, it has been dominated by conservative MPs, and had only been won by the ALP at one election prior to the Labor win in 2018.
The seat was won in 1902 by George Swinburne. He ended up serving as a member of the Commonwealth Liberal Party before his retirement in 1913.
He was succeeded by William Murray McPherson. McPherson served as Treasurer in the Nationalist state government from 1917 to 1923, and as Premier from 1928 to 1929. McPherson resigned from Parliament in 1930.
He was succeeded by Nationalist candidate John Gray at the 1930 by-election. Gray served as Member for Hawthorn until his death in 1939.
His seat was won at the 1939 by-election by the United Australia Party’s Leslie Tyack. He lost the seat at the 1940 state election to independent candidate Leslie Hollins, who had links to the Social Credit movement.
Hollins held Hawthorn for two terms, losing in 1945 to the Liberal Party’s Frederick Edmunds. He also held the seat for two terms, until in 1950 the Liberal Party replaced him with his predecessor Leslie Tyack.
Tyack was defeated in 1952 by the ALP’s Charles Murphy, the only ALP member to ever win Hawthorn. He left the ALP in the split of 1955, and lost his seat at that year’s election to the Liberal Party’s James Manson.
After one term, Manson moved to the new seat of Ringwood in 1958, and was replaced in Hawthorn by Peter Garrisson. He was re-elected in 1961, but in 1963 he resigned from the Liberal Party, and lost his seat as an independent in 1964.
Walter Jona was elected as Liberal Member for Hawthorn in 1964. He served as a minister in the Liberal government from 1976 to 1982, and retired in 1985.
Hawthorn was won in 1985 by the Liberal Party’s Phillip Gude, who had previously held the seat of Geelong East for one term from 1976 to his defeat in 1979. He served as a minister in the Kennett government from 1992 until his retirement in 1999.
Since 1999, Hawthorn has been held by Ted Baillieu. Baillieu won re-election in 2002, 2006 and 2010.
Ted Baillieu was elected Liberal leader shortly before the 2006 election, and led the Coalition to defeat in 2006 and victory in 2010.
Baillieu served as Premier from 2010 until March 2013, when he resigned as Premier and Liberal leader under pressure from his party’s MPs. He retired at the 2014 election, and was succeeded by Liberal candidate John Pesutto.
Pesutto held Hawthorn for one term, losing the seat to Labor’s John Kennedy with a big swing in 2018.
- Faith Fuhrer (Animal Justice)
- John Kennedy (Labor)
- Ken Triantafillis (Family First)
- Richard Peppard (Liberal Democrats)
- Melissa Lowe (Independent)
- Nick Savage (Greens)
- John Pesutto (Liberal)
- Stratton Bell (Democratic Labour)
Assessment
Hawthorn has traditionally been considered a safe Liberal seat, but a cumulative swing of 17.1% to Labor since Ted Baillieu’s retirement in 2014 saw them grab the seat. It wouldn’t take much of that vote swinging back to restore the Liberal hold here, but if the Liberal Party doesn’t receive much of a bounce back Labor could hold the seat.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| John Pesutto | Liberal | 17,231 | 43.9 | -10.6 | 43.9 |
| John Kennedy | Labor | 12,646 | 32.2 | +8.0 | 32.9 |
| Nicholas Bieber | Greens | 7,167 | 18.3 | -3.1 | 17.7 |
| Sophie Paterson | Sustainable Australia | 960 | 2.4 | +2.5 | 2.4 |
| Catherine Wright | Animal Justice | 885 | 2.3 | +2.3 | 2.2 |
| Richard Grummet | Independent | 367 | 0.9 | +0.9 | 0.8 |
| Informal | 1,462 | 3.6 | -0.2 |
2018 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| John Kennedy | Labor | 19,793 | 50.4 | +9.0 | 50.6 |
| John Pesutto | Liberal | 19,463 | 49.6 | -9.0 | 49.4 |
Booths have been divided into three areas: central, east and west.
The Labor Party won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, with just over 52% in the centre and east and 57% in the west. The Liberal Party narrowly won the pre-poll vote and won the remaining vote more convincingly.
The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 12.3% in the east to 21.5% in the west.
| Voter group | GRN prim % | ALP 2PP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| Central | 17.0 | 52.1 | 9,807 | 22.7 |
| East | 12.3 | 52.2 | 6,135 | 14.2 |
| West | 21.5 | 56.9 | 5,796 | 13.4 |
| Pre-poll | 18.1 | 46.5 | 13,503 | 31.2 |
| Other votes | 19.3 | 49.6 | 8,018 | 18.5 |
Election results in Hawthorn at the 2018 Victorian state election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, Labor and the Greens.
Given that Pesutto holds a marginal seat (1.7%), he’s quite vulnerable to a teal, rather than Labor. He’s in a precarious position.
Labor will likely run dead in 2026. In 2022, they had an incumbent member and also Dan Andrews and Labor were somewhat popular east of the Yarra River. It was how they came second, and not third, on primaries and after preferences in 2022. It might be a teal vs Pesutto in 2026.
One of two scenarios could play out in Hawthorn.
There’s a sympathy vote amongst moderate liberals who would vote for him but not his party. They support him to minimise the Liberals’ drift to the right. It could be more effective than the Keep Josh campaign as Josh Frydenberg was part of the government and he copped an anti-government swing. Pesutto on the other hand is in opposition.
The other possibility is that the party, may not be Pesutto himself, drifts to the right and alienates moderates. This might happen following the vindication of Deeming. A teal would leverage this to capture moderate liberals and social progressives and could open battles on two fronts for Pesutto.
Peta Credlin has called on the Victorian Liberals to dump Pesutto and labelled him “a weak little man”. I agree with Votante it is likely to LIB V Teal in 2026 in Hawthorn. Labor will be much less popular in a seat which is economically conservative, changes to payrol tax, private school fees will hurt Labor but Teal will provide a fiscally conservative but socially moderate option if the party drifts further right.
A few issues will hurt Labor in seats like Hawthorn, Brighton, Sandringham, Malvern & Nepean:
– Land tax changes
– Private school payroll tax changes
– Activity centre backlash in suburbs like Camberwell, Malvern, Sandringham, Hampton & Brighton
Fortunately for Labor, they are all Liberal seats already so they won’t contribute to the 17 seats the Liberals need to win to gain government.
This is where Labor are quite politically astute. Their most controversial policies will tend to hurt their vote most in the seats that won’t contribute to the outcome of the next election. Meanwhile if seats like Hawthorn become vulnerable to a teal, that actually sets the Liberals backwards in their pursuit of gaining 17 seats.
….and Sam Groth has just resigned from the frontbench:
“It is with regret that, following yesterday’s Federal Court judgment against John Pesutto and his subsequent decision to remain as Liberal leader, I have decided to resign from his frontbench. In good conscience, I can no longer continue to serve in this role.”
Sounds like the groundwork for a leadership challenge against Pesutto.
Brad Battin was spotted in a restaurant with Peta Credlin
https://www.heraldsun.com.au/subscribe/news/1/?sourceCode=HSWEB_WRE170_a_GGL&dest=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.heraldsun.com.au%2Fnews%2Fvictoria%2Fbackroom-baz-liberal-frontbencher-brad-battin-meets-with-antipesutto-warrior-peta-credlin%2Fnews-story%2F82d28991126db12abf9b74917b3be1ad&memtype=anonymous&mode=premium&v21=ULTRALOW-Segment-1-SCORE
@Nimalan, Trent
This looks to me the seat most vulnerable to a teal, not Mornington (which has the narrowest Lib vs teal margin).
If the Liberal Party drifts to the right and focus more on culture war issues, a teal could see potential to fill the void here. The teal could campaign on renters rights and integrity whilst running an economically conservative, old-school Liberal agenda.
It might be better for Pesutto’s political career for him to move to the backbench as he can focus more on retaining his own seat.
@Votante or he could do what he had been doing and stand up to the factions and win the election.
I don’t understand why Moira Deeming hasn’t joined One Nation yet. They said they wanted her.
@ Votante
I agree Mornington does not have any young renters while Hawthorn does. Labor will run dead in both seats as well as Malvern and Sandringham to give the Teals a chance.
@ Nether Portal
If most Liberal members in Victoria were like you we would not be having this discussion. Unfortunately, the Liberal party has been losing members and those who have joined are generally very socially conservative The party has been undergoing Talibanisation, as more people with fringe ideas join those with a more mainstream view of the world leave. Tony Barry did say that the Victorian branch is where the “hope goes to die” and that the Victorian Liberals if you gave them a chance can ruin Taylor Swifts’ career in a month if you give them a chance. Today a lot of Victorian Liberals care more about whether people maintain their virginity until marriage than they do about the debt/economic policy. While Moira Deeming has been on the cross bench she has actually been voting more with Labor. Read up about Timothy Dragon who the Libs ran in Narre Warren North last time and let me know what you think.
@Nimalan what Timothy Dragon said was unacceptable and he should never have been the candidate for Narre Warren North.
As for the Victorian Liberal Party, I can’t really comment on how conservative the rank and file is (I would say the voters are more moderate because most Victorians live in Melbourne which is more) as I’m a member of the Queensland LNP which has gone under moderatisation.
I definitely hold some moderate views, but I see myself as being middle ground. I personally don’t think that abortion for no reason is a good idea but I’m not gonna judge anyone for it which is why I support the right for a woman to choose because it affects them not me. Though for someone who grew up in a rural area I would be considered moderate.
I’ve tested my views with ChatGPT and Vote Compass before and it generally seems that I’m right-leaning economically and centrist socially and environmentally. I proudly voted Yes to gay marriage but I voted No to the Voice, but I don’t hate Indigenous people and I grew up in a town with lots of them and saw the struggles they had but I didn’t think Canberra could fix it.
Pesutto has done nothing but attack his own members and hasn’t laid a glove on Labor. The Coalition polling has only improved because of Labor being in office so long and being so phenomenally bad with fiscal policy and their crazy left-wing social activism.
Pesutto will never be Premier.
Neither Portal
Moira Deeming in an MLA already. There’s not much to be gained from endorsement, and there is no Pauline Hanson’s One Nation PARLIAMENTARY PARTY to join. PHON is secular, and of little interest to Mrs Deeming
@ Nether Portal
Something that is often missed is shared social values do not guarantee electoral success in the right areas. When Australia voted for SSM, Labor did not suddenly win the 2019 election eventhough Scomo was against SSM personally. All those who voted No in seats like Blaxland, Watson and Calwell did not decide to vote Liberal. While the electorate of Spence voted No to the Voice strongly, the Libs aint going to win that seat it is way too economically deprived and the residents there probably care more about what their welfare payments will be. I personally dont like Abortion or Euthanasia myself but the issue is that i dont care enough about it that i will vote for a candidate for that reason. Most of my life, Kevin Andrews, was my local MP while both of us may have agreed on that i never voted for him because other differences persisted. The seat of Narre Warren North overlaps with Bruce. The electorate of Bruce voted against SSM and has a large Muslim community. However, the local MP Julian Hill is gay and an atheist. Some will argue that the Libs could campaign on LGBT issues to win that seat and could put up billboards on Princess Highway to point out he is Gay and Athiest. The risk with that is the Teals will weaponise this in other seats, Labor in seats like Boothby/Deakin/Macnamara and the Greens in Inner Brisbane and in the end they may not even win Bruce because many people who voted against SSM will still prefer left wing economic policy. Some argue that Timothy Dragan may have been a good fit for Narre Warren North as it is Outer Suburban Religious area he actually lost votes for the Libs on primaries and was 20% behind Labor on primaries and TPP swing to Libs was less than the state average.
Nimalan is right, I don’t see how the DLP could win seats in the lower house and thus a DLP-esque Liberal Party would not win an election, especially in Victoria or South Australia which are less conservative states.
In the UK, Kemi Badenoch who is like Peter Dutton has become leader. While they might take votes from Reform they won’t win back seats from Labour except ones they only lost because of how bad the defeat was in 2024. Cities of London and Westminster for example is small-l-liberal. In fact they may not even win Chelsea and Fulham which is supposed to be a safe Conservative seat.
In the same vein, Peter Dutton won’t win seats like Brisbane or Ryan and he may struggle in Sturt unless COL comes into play.
It is my view that if Dutton loses the next election and is wiped out of any capital city where the Liberals previously held seats then he must resign.
@Nether Portal Badenoch isn’t doing too badly, she’s even leading Labour in some polls.
If the UK had preferential voting, Ztarmer would be stuffed.
BREAKING NEWS
the vote to readmit Moira Deeming was 14 all. Pesutto used his casting vote not to readmit her. The party is split down the middle. I think this is the worst possible circumstance as this will drag on now. Yesterday Pesutto was ordered to pay Deeming’s costs.
This is just going to drag out, I predict that this will hurt them at the by-elections, federal election and state election. The Victoria Liberal party have to seriously got get it together or like some people mentioned who back the Liberal party in another discussion thread they could be in opposition for decades.
At least Pesutto didn’t do a Gorton and vote to let her back in.
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It’s a funny old world when someone who appeared on the podium at a rally organised by 3rd Wave feminists is championed by the Hard Right of the Victorian Liberal Party to the point that they’re prepared to throw electoral success down the drain for her?
How was it 14 all? Aren’t there more the 28 members?
@Death Vader, there are 30 Victoria Liberal MPs with 2 being absent as they went away
Do we who the 2 absent were if they have another motion in January it will be interesting
@Nimalan, the member who moved the motion was asked the question and intimated that it could have been 15 all.
I think we should start preparing for a by election page. Using the casting vote like this was weak leadership, this is basically stating adding Deeming back in means the numbers are against him, that those who voted for Deeming today won’t change so it only needs one the other way for Pesutto to fall.
Is it that needed an absolute majority for Deeming to rejoin?
Pesutto might’ve just bought some time. If he had let Deeming back in, Deeming and her supporters would call a leadership spill. The alternative is that some of her supporters give him a pass for now, after feeling vindicated.
@votante as much as i support moira deeming i am not wanting a leadership spill. pesutto fo all his faults has done well against the allen labor government and is ahead in the polls. why would change the jockey of a horse that is winning? deeming should be allowed back in to the party to create harmony within he party but it should be at a time when they cant tamper with a party that is doing well.
To use your analogy John, you change your jockey when your horse is winning because it is better the opposition despite say running ungenerously and you have a jockey in the wings who can get the horse to race more tractably, particularly if you are moving up in class and racing better horses.
In this case, it is pretty clear the Libs are in front due to the inadequacies of the opposition, and a leader who is better able to manage the fractious wings of the party would do even more damage.
*Inadequacies of the Government
Way back in the late 60s a chap.named Bolte allowed the hanging of Ronald Ryan this was opposed by parts of the liberal party the Vic catholic church and the dlp-ncc complex. Yet Bolte was reelected why? Because the alp was not seen as being capable of Governing .
This truism still applies today except the the positions are reversed and the libs are seen as incapable of governing.
Imagine suing yr parliamentary leader for
defamation then expecting to be readmitted to the parliamentary party?
Noone who isn’t a terminally online leftist or hard-line conservative gives a solitary fuck about this. Werribee is far from the most turned on place politically and the sands are shifting against Labor there.
I agree that Pesutto is largely only ahead due to the utter incompetence of a now decade old government, but you don’t change when you’re ahead. I doubt Battin would be ahead if he was leader, I doubt he even be doing that much better in Melbourne’s red wall compared to Pesutto
It wasn’t a casting vote, the pro-Moira crowd needed an absolute majority (16) and they didn’t have it
Yet that’s what nearly happened.
Why is Tony Abbott involving himself in Victorian Liberal politics?
Kath Deves ran on an anti Trans platform and the Liberals lost 675,000 votes in 2022?
How could they expect that bringing Moira back won’t have a similar result in Victoria?
The two MPs who were absent were Cindy McCleish and Nick McGowan. Given Cindy McLeish was one of the 5 that brought the original motion to expel her i dont think she would have voted to readmit her. Nick McGowan has supported Moira Deeming in the past so it could have been 15-15 if all members attended. In such a case, it would have still failed the absolute majority threshold. Those who supported Moira Deeming has said this is not over and Credlin has stated there will be a leadership spill in the new year. Tony Abbott is also furious and lashed out. Jacinta Allan will be happy because Moira Deeming has been supporting Labor on key legislation. Moira Deeming lashed out recently saying that Pesutto was Labor Lite but she has actually been voting with Labor including helping Labor stop the rental inquiry.
Doubtful they only needed a majority of 15-13 a 14-14 tie was always gonna end in failure. Pesutto getting the casting vote is not gonna break a tie against his own position. Pesutto should have cut his losses early apologised and that would have been the end of it. The liberals would be miles ahead in the polls if not for this saga. Which is of Pesuttos own making.
It looks like Pesutto’s leadership is coming to a close. The Age is reporting that after this morning’s events, MPs (both backers and opponents) have approached Pesutto urging him to step down as the extremely narrow margin had cost him key support. One MP claiming he would face a leadership challenge if he didn’t within the next 24 hours. Meanwhile three MPs are saying Brad Battin and Jess Wilson are being pushed as a leadership team to unite the two divided factions after this morning’s events. I would guess that assuming he goes which seems all be certain now (whether he’s pushed out or resigns), Moira Deeming will be accepted back into the party room at some point…and likely Pesutto will probably not contest the next election after all these events.
It’s a real shame, to me. I’m a Green, and Pesutto is one of the few times I would have been happy if we would form a government. He really seemed like someone who could loosen the Labor grasp. However, this in itself is a symptom of leadership problems, as Greens like me find him appealing and not his own party.
@Nimalan Deeming is a plant.
This party just doesn’t seem to want to win elections in Victoria.
Matthew Guy gets absolutely pummelled in 2018.
Then they reinstate him as leader prior to 2022 and Labor increase their majority by 1 seat.
Then Pesutto wins back his seat, becomes leader, steers the ship while Labor suffer a -9 primary vote swing in the polls, Libs +3 and around +5 on 2PP, best position in a while decade leading around 51-49 and genuinely competitive despite a very difficult electoral map, and even his supporters are urging him to step down.
They seem to be allergic to government.
If he loses the leadership, wouldn’t be surprised if he resigns. It’d feel like “what’s the point”. He only re-contested in 2022 to try to change the Libs’ direction. If he goes, so might Southwick. What a shambles!
@ Scart
I am not a supporter of Moira Deeming and i am a fierce critic of Credlin and Sky After Dark but they have turned her into a Joan of Arc type figure. Nicole Flint talks about the “Aura of Moira” and Alex Antic/Claire Chandler are loyal supporters of her. Unless Moira Deeming becomes Pro-Palestinian i cant see anyway they will not give her a free pass notwithstanding anything she does.
@ Trent
I have spoken to the some Liberal rank and file members it seems they are not interested in economics and almost want to become DLP lite. They keep saying that Pesutto upset their base. The Base meaning the membership. It is estimated that there are 10,000 Liberal members in Victoria in a state of 6.6 million which is only 0.15% of the population. In a an AFL loving state Melbourne Storm has more members than the Liberal party. In the glory days of the Liberal party they had 50,000 members out of a population of 2.5 million or 2%. the membership therefore is not actually a good representation of Liberal voters these days. There are more people who speak Dari in Victoria than are Liberal members.
If Pesutto is dumped and gets replaced by Brad Battin and Battin loses the election what happens then? What’s the excuse?
The Liberals just physically can’t win in the Western Red Wall unless it’s an absolute landslide for the Coalition or there is a random major geographical and ideological shift in that region. The only reason the Conservatives in the UK won Red Wall seats in their 2019 landslide is because Labour under Jeremy Corbyn was quite unpopular and very left-wing which didn’t sit well with the traditional working-class voters in places like Manchester and Leeds, but even then they didn’t win the majority of seats in Greater Manchester and still didn’t win a single seat in Merseyside or Sheffield.
And with Battin they can’t win in the Eastern Suburbs, so if it’s a lose-lose situation then what the hell do they do then?
As for membership, state Labor branches seem to have around 15,000 members while state Liberal branches seem to have around 13,000 members (this is in NSW, Victoria and Queensland).
However, the federal Labor Party has exactly 60,085 members while the federal Liberal Party has about 80,000 members.
@ Nether Portal
Credlin will argue that Moira Deeming will be an asset in the Red Wall by talking about trans issues etc. I mentioned before a rank and file liberal member who is a friend of mine once said Moira could get Muslims to vote Liberal (before October 7th) by driving a wedge among ethnic traditionally labor voting communities on these matters. My personal view is why people who share those views dont join the DLP instead. The DLP does well in the Red wall but not enough to threaten Labor and their preference generally flow to Labor over Liberal despite their HTV saying to preference Liberal.
Boris won the Red Wall in 2019 with a wedge issue being Brexit. Could trans issues/LGBT issues be the wedge that Liberals need to win these areas. Pesutto preferred to talk about the economy rather than than wedge issues so they labelled him “Labor Lite”.
You’d think that the opposition would be on track to win with polling numbers showing Pesutto as preferred premier and LNP in front on 2PP. Gone are the days where there’s a near uniform swing or where all seats are traditional ALP vs LNP contests. It could be possible that the ‘swings’ to the LNP are in western red wall and south-eastern red wall seats or in rural seats.
Sandringham and Caulfield are both blue-ribbon Liberal seats that sit mainly within the Macnamara and Goldstein and have strong support for Greens or teal at the federal level. Because of the small margins and susceptibility to the teals, Brad Roswell and David Southwick were probably driven to support Pesutto. I’d say Hawthorn is most at risk to the teals but interestingly, they fell way short last election here and in Kew.
@Nimalan @Nether Portal both Pesutto and Battin can win a decent number of red wall seats. They certainly won’t turn it into their new heartland though.
The difference between them is that Battin will screw them in the affluent east, which ensures that he can’t win.
@Nimalan She votes with Labor on most substantive economic legislation, and she may be the only thing Vic Labor will still have to campaign on after 12 years of shitshows by 2026.
It seems that a leadership coup is set for after the New Year, possibly after Battin and co get the numbers. It might even be after the Werribee and Prahran by-elections.
i dont know why they are planning a coup when they are winning….
When is the earliest possible for a leadership spill. Due to holiday break when many people will be away it may not be possible to schedule until 2nd week of January.
@ John that is a question that you should be able to answer not us as you are a Liberal member/campaigned for them
@nimalan if i knew the answer i wouldnt be asking. i am moira supporter and hate the way pesutto acted but even i wouldnt roll him
The right flank of the party has more power when they aren’t in government. They can’t claim schools are indoctrinating children when they’re in government.
What Pesutto needs to do is preselect new candidates for seats where right-wingers hold seats, like how right-wing Tim Smith was replaced by moderate Jess Wilson in the moderate seat of Kew which would be a teal seat on federal results. Replace Brad Berwick as the member for Berwick with someone else.
Winning ethnic seats doesn’t require DLP-style politics. The NSW Liberals are moderate and hold ethnic seats and held even more during the 12 years they were in government for (though they weren’t the less advantaged ones like Mount Druitt but rather seats like Parramatta, Riverstone and Ryde).
Pesutto has called a party room meeting for the 15th of January, where he intends to move a motion to readmit Deeming to the Parliamentary Liberal Party.
“…it has become clear that there is now a definite absolute majority of my colleagues who want this issue resolved with her readmission…”
This can hardly be called anything but total victory for Deeming. She has utterly sunk the leadership of Pesutto, probably rendered him personally bankrupt, generated far more attention for her cause than one gate-crashed rally ever could and spent the past few months frequently (maybe 30-40% of the time from my cursory glance at the LC minutes) voting against her own party without consequence. No doubt the champagne will be running freely at Chez Credlin tonight. Elsewhere, knives sharpen.
Looks like the spill will be this Friday, even earlier than 15th of January, with a letter signed by among several others, (now) former Pesutto ally James Newbury – and if it’s called this early, those who support the spill most likely have the numbers (Brad Battin seems to be the favourite to win, and perhaps with Jess Wilson as deputy). I gotta say, this is a very sad ending to Pesutto’s leadership – the hopeful among moderates and many swing voters alike (even some normally Labor leaning people), showed himself to be rather politically inept in the end. The last minute about-face to re-admit Deeming showed these past months to largely be all for nothing. Money, time, endless internal squabbling. I’d say that also goes for Pesutto’s leadership team too, and assuming this spill succeeds which I expect it will, they also will be removed from their positions, probably shadow cabinet too (primarily David Southwick and Georgie Crozier, less so Evan Mulholland – he may stick around just not in the leadership team).
I think had Deeming been re-admitted straight away after the lost court case, maybe Pesutto could have gone on further as leader, but I also figure at some point, he would have been undermined whether before 2026 or even if as a hypothetical Premier, as any support for her as a Liberal would be undermined by his own past actions, and neither would fully trust each other, nor each other’s supporters.
Brad Battin a former policeman, can’t see him winning Government in rebellious Victoria.
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My opinion, their best bet is a merger with the National Party.
As a ploy, Pesutto’s calling a meeting for Jan 15 and proposing to readmit Deeming lured the whiteants out into the open, they’ve got 5 days to find another leader or rally round Pesutto.