Pakenham – Victoria 2022

And as of now, it’s at 81.5% counted (92.1% of expected) and… exactly tied at 18,267 votes each!

Still barely any absent votes have been counted and Labor has been drawing even on postals and prepolls so this is looking increasingly like a Labor retain. Similar story with Bass too which would leave them with 56 seats.

ABC has finally called pakey, Emma Vulin wins it for labor

Great almost 3% it went closer than I expected but result was as expected. Morwell was I think the only seat with a 3% margin on adj 2019 figures that Labor list,

That’s a surprise. Last time I checked, Liberal was ahead. Late postals and absents?

@Votante they did a recount and found 230 votes that were considered informal to be valid which tipped it to Labor.

Dan
The liberal vote was overstated by 300, the Labor vote understated by about 300 and they found 230 MORE informal votes. This was just on early votes alone. The VEC should have an enquiry on how they got it so wrong.

A very disappointing result here for the Libs. I assumed with a small margin and no sitting MP for Labor this would be the first seat to fall on election night especially given the federal results. However, Labor actually some swings to them in Officer which is a growth area. The Liberals did not manage to flip a single Red booth in this electorates and the only two blue booths are in the Green Wedge.

Agree Nimalan,
This electorate should have been an easy pick up for the LNP given the lockdowns with suburbs through this electorate locked down longer than majority of the state, Daniel Andrews (supposedly), federal result in La Trobe & a 8 year old Labor government.

I expected this to be the case
The result in la trobe is not
The same. Also this area is
One of massive demographic
Change

Sadly the Member for Pakenham Emma Vulin has revealed she has been diagnosed with early stage Motor Neuron Disease (MND). MND is a neurodegenerative disease that can cause difficulty breathing when climbing stairs or lying down and difficulty in speaking. Eventually an MND patient could lose the ability to walk or even to speak. In Emma Vulin’s case, depending on how fast her disease progresses, she may have to not contest the next state election or even resign from Parliament before that, if MND renders her unable to continue representing her constituents. She is staying on as the Member for Pakenham for now and has promised to continue fighting for her community as long as she still has the ability to do so, but it’s entirely possible a by-election will be held for the seat of Pakenham before November 2026 due to her illness. I am sending my love and best wishes to her and her family.

@Joseph even as a lifelong Liberal voter I hope she’s well and doing okay.

Condolences, however there is hope because I’m pretty sure Stephan Hawking lived 55 years with a MND. so it is not a death sentence as long as you follow guidelines and treatment I hope that she does this and continues to serve her constituents for many years to come.

This is #1 target for the Libs, and one of the only seats I can see Battin helping the Libs if he becomes leader as this is not a young/tealish area. The Libs can go more conservative and their chances wouldn’t be affected here, but would be wiped out of Eastern Melbourne including Malvern.

This is likely to be one of the first seats to fall to the Liberals, along with Hastings and Bass, although the latter will be interesting.

I’m not super sure Battin will be the next leader, he has a Dutton-esque appeal that isn’t all that popular across Melbourne. The next leader is in my opinion likely to be Brad Rowswell or James Newbury, maybe even Chris Crewther or Sam Groth.

Such awful news for Emma Vulin I truely wish the best for her and her family. If she doesn’t go to a by-election before the next state election I suspect regardless this electorate will almost certain go to the LNP as a 15 vote difference isn’t enough.

Correction not 15 votes not sure where I got that from.

The seat of Ripon had a 15 vote difference after a re-count in the 2018 election, that might be what you’re thinking about.

Ah yes Trent that’s probably it, how I muddled those up is beyond me.

TIL: Pakenham is one of the most populous suburbs of a city in Australia, with over 54,000 residents. Not many single suburbs have even more than 30,000 people. As of the 2021 census, Sydney only has one suburb with over 50,000 people (Blacktown) and another 10 with over 30,000 (Castle Hill, Auburn, Baulkham Hills, Bankstown, Merrylands, Ryde, Hurstville, Liverpool, Maroubra and Parramatta, in that order apparently). Another big suburb I can think of is Gosford which might even be the most populous in Australia (it would have to be in the top 10).

Pakenham is one of the fastest-growing suburbs in the entire country. The population forecast on Profile.id says that the Pakenham area has an estimated population of 58,000 as of 2024 which is projected to grow to almost 83,000 in 2041.

This might have to be split into two electorates soon.

@Spacefish the margin here is 307 votes on TCP and on primary votes it’s 550. These days it’s very rare in metropolitan seats for the Liberals to finish second and still win since Greens preferences very heavily benefit Labor and the right-wing minor parties tend to have little presence in most metropolitan seats with some exceptions in the outer-suburbs (e.g One Nation has occasionally had double digit primaries in places like Logan in Brisbane and Port Stephens in Newcastle). But in saying that it seems that both major parties lost significant ground in Pakenham in 2022 to minor parties; the 11.5% swing against Labor on primaries was half-matched with the 9.8% swing against the Liberals on primaries, and in the end the TPP swing to the Liberals was only 1.8% compared to the statewide TPP swing to the Coalition of 2.3%.

As much as Melbourne has continued to sprawl and sprawl further out, at least the contiguous development had been contained within Pakenham until now. But I see that Lend Lease are now constructing a new community east of Deep Creek and a new East Pakenham station is planned. And so the sprawl will continue further and further, leading to more car-dependent, environmentally damaging lifestyles. I predict this will lead to more Liberal voters, as the Liberal Party tends to be more friendly to road projects.

@ Wilson
I actually disagree that the urban sprawl will lead to Pakenham having more Liberal voters. I actually feel most of the Growth areas in our capital cities are what i describe as “Tommorow’s Australia” compared to seats such as Lyons which are very much “Yesterday’s Australia” which have an ageing Anglo population by contrast most Growth areas have a younger and more ethnically diverse population. Areas like Officer have many ethnic minorities especially South Asians. To give a Brisbane example it is like Greater Springfield which actually hurting the Liberal’s long term prospect to win Blair. The nearby suburb of Clyde North voted strongly in the voice referendum for YES. The right flank of the Libs often talk about abandoning the Latte Sippers of the inner city and want to focus on outer suburbs. They dont realise this is increasingly the Masala Chai belt.

@ Wilson that may be true, although I don’t think the lean of these new outer suburban seats would be STRONGLY Liberals, although that lean would probably be there. But the danger/reality for the Liberals in Victoria is any gains in outer SE Melbourne would be offset by the what I think is a real potential for loss in Kew and Hawthorn and to a lesser extent (maybe not 2026 but 2030) Malvern and Sandringham. So what benefit is it really to the Liberals to continue this pursuit of over suburbia, when there is an obvious risk of loss in inner Eastern Melbourne?

Agree with @Nimalan. There seems to be an assumption that new suburban areas will vote Liberal. Recent history shows that’s not the case.

I think it really depends on where the new suburban areas are. North Kellyville is relatively new but since it’s in the Hills District of Sydney (North Kellyville is in the federal seat of Mitchell and the state seat of Kellyville), it votes heavily Liberal. In contrast, suburbs like Tallawong and The Ponds in the eastern part of the City of Blacktown LGA (the eastern part of the City of Blacktown is the mediator in the major divide in Sydney between the conservative and upper-middle-class Hills District with large European and Asian communities and the working-class Blacktown area with large European and Middle Eastern communities) seems to be more bellwether.

Put it this way: if I made a new suburb in the Division of Maranoa, it would be very conservative, but if I made a new suburb in Division of Melbourne, it would be very progressive and woke. Even if both of those suburbs had young populations and large ethnic communities the outback Maranoa suburb would still vote for the LNP while the inner-city Melbourne suburb would still vote for the Greens.

@ NP
I do agree with you to a large extent. However, Pakenham used to be a solid Liberal voting satellite city a bit like who Gawler in SA used to be Liberal voting. As it has been absorbed into Melbourne it is becoming more like Cranbourne, Narre Warren etc which 25 years ago where much better for the Liberals at a state level. Greater Springfield is actually a cause for concern as it is making Blair become more diverse and better educated. The same thing may occur in McEwen longer term with growing suburbs such as Wallan, Beveridge, Mernda, Donnybrook having a younger and more diverse demographic and more an extension of Calwell/Scullin. The only area that has really trended more conservative in Victoria is the La Trobe Valley due to the decline of Coal industry. After the 2022 federal election La Trobe looked like a post Teal heartland for the Libs but at the state election a few months later that was not repeated. A more urbanized version of La Trobe could indeed fall to Labor.

@daniel t it is a death sentence as it will inevitably kill you as you lose the ability to breathe.