Warrandyte by-election, 2023

@Adam

The ALP would be fools to not run. The Gold Coast and Victoria (particularly eastern Melbourne) are two different worlds. While there may have been a Dutton advantage in Queensland, it is a disadvantage in Victoria. Combine that with:

– The loss of a 16-year MP’s personal vote
– The Deeming Saga
– An enduringly popular state government (especially in the east) and a still-popular federal government (though drag, the state government’s age and the present economic landscape will also play a role)
– A thin margin to begin with

And Warrandyte is a seat seriously in play, and one that could affect Pesutto’s retention of the leadership if it goes poorly. Elements within and outside the Liberal party are designing his downfall, and this could be the flashpoint.

Less than six weeks out, Labor don’t have a candidate in the race. Every day they delay it is less likely they will run. It is almost the inverse of Aston, Labor had a candidate ready to go and the Libs had to start from scratch and only had five weeks to establish name recognition. Nicole Werner was selected a few weeks back and so has had time to establish some sort of profile. With various rumours swirling about that Daniel Andrews is planning to go, Labor may not want an adverse by election result to muddy the waters or a good by election result that also might muddy the waters. Low turnouts in by elections don’t help Labor either – they lose provisional and absentee votes that they normally win.

Looks like Labor won’t preselect a candidate. I gave possible reasons in a previous post. If they wanted to run, they would’ve preselected ages ago because this seat is winnable, given the low-ish margin and Dan’s relative popularity in Eastern Melbourne. Staying put might just be a smart choice for Labor.

Todays announcement about the Commonwealth Games puts paid to Labor running a candidate in Warrandyte. No way in the world they could come close after this fiasco.

Agree Redistributed, i think in affluent seats such as this the state debt and private school tax will not work in Labor’s favour even if there is no anti-lock down sentiment here.

That was a weird announcement. Dan basically just decided he was too lazy and it was too expensive to fund regional Victoria for once and he couldn’t just put it all in Labor seats in Melbourne. What a dickhead.

Now the state governments of other states are saying no, even though the NSW Opposition Leader Mark Speakman and the Lord Mayor of Perth Basil Zempilas have urged the Premiers of their respective states to bid for the Games in NSW and WA respectively. The only states and territories that have not said no at the moment are South Australia and the two territories. Maybe they’ll bid for it; it seems Peter Malinauskas is pretty keen on bidding for sporting events and the territories might want a bit of extra money to come into the economy. It seems reasonable for Queensland to say no given they had it on the Gold Coast in 2018 and they’ve got the Olympics in Brisbane in 2024 coming up, but it would have been a great opportunity to hold it elsewhere. All these Labor Premiers don’t seem to realise that regional and rural people never get any sort of events like this because they cancel it all the time. I mean the Opposition knows but still. Coffs Harbour for example has a stadium that has hosted several international sporting events (the world record biggest win in an international soccer game was between Australia and American Samoa in like 2006, the score was 31-0 and it was in Coffs), so Chris Minns should’ve booked some events there and maybe a few in Port Macquarie if they upgrade the stadium, as well as of course in other parts of regional NSW and it would be great for the regional tourism economy. But that of course would be funding Opposition seats so they say no.

Maybe Singapore or somewhere in the Pacific (i.e New Zealand or maybe a joint Pacific bid between countries like Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Vanuatu, etc, that would be cool). What always confuses me though is that while South Africa has hosted the Commonwealth Games before, the Olympics have never been held in any African country ever. They really should hold them in Africa soon; Johannesburg or Cape Town would be able to, as I’m sure Cairo, Casablanca and many other cities would be able to. It seems a bit unfair that the biggest sporting event in the world has never been held in Africa yet they have had the Commonwealth Games and the World Cup successfully in South Africa.

Also it’s worth noting that the Australia vs. American Samoa match was not just a friendly, but a World Cup qualifier, held in Coffs. It was actually one of the reasons why Australia moved from the OFC (the Oceanian Football Confederation, i.e going against Oceanian countries) to the AFC (the Asian Football Confederation, i.e going against Asian countries): because the Socceroos and the Matildas are so much better than the teams of Oceanian countries, even New Zealand, in fact they do well in Asia too (they get into the Men’s and Women’s World Cups frequently and they only really struggle against Japan, Saudi Arabia and (I think) South Korea).

The stadium in Coffs Harbour is called C.ex Coffs Harbour International Stadium. It also hosted another soccer match where the Socceroos had another big win, 22-0 over Tonga.

Also a correction above: it was 2001 not 2006.

Just thought I might explain a bit further.

Nether, it’s 2032 not 2024 for Brisbane Olympics, also Dan is a failed premier by cancelling the games, building new stadiums is pointless if you don’t fill them in with sporting events, so it’s a huge waste of money by not hosting the games, this state could get millions of dollars in tourism and now the premier is just more focused on the election that year, how disappointing.

Pessuto should capitalize on this and may help him score an historic upset victory in 2026, I will also add this means the Libs could very well turn this into a reasonably safe seat even if Labor does contest at the by-election. The cracks are really starting to show in Labor.

There’s declining interest in hosting the Olympics and Commonwealth Games generally. They’re used to be a time when several cities bid seven years in advance for hosting rights. Now it’s whoever wants it will get it. It’s costly, controversial and an invitation for corruption. Personally, I prefer that Australia hosts international single-sporting events e.g. Soccer, Rugby, where existing venues are used.

Whilst I agree with Dan’s decision to cancel the hosting, it’s poor form to take on the hosting and then back out. It is reputation-damaging, brings to light budget pressures and gives the federal and state opposition more political leverage and ammunition. The real political volatility will be in regional Victorian cities which were slated to host the events. Luckily for Labor, but unlucky for the Liberals, the next election will be in 3 years, after the Games’ planned start date.

After this announcement today, there’s no way Labor will run in this by-election and risk humilation. It could backfire on the Liberals if they are seen as pro-Games and voters actually support the cancellation of the games in favour of spending on other infrastructure. It depends on whose argument the voters will buy.

@Nether, I just want to correct what you posted above. South Africa has never hosted the Commonwealth games, Durban was due to host the 2022 Games but pulled out due to the cost being to high (exactly like Victoria), leaving Birmingham to have to step up to host.

Adelaide initially showed interest in hosting this 2026 addition but declined to bid due to the costs associated. Calgary, Edmonton, Cardiff and KL all also considered hosting for 2026 but never submitted formal offers as it no longer represents any value.

The Commonwealth Games as we know them are probably dead now, too expensive for a third rate event. If they continue in any way it will probably be as a series of Commonwealth Championships for different sports spread across multiple cities or even countries in existing facilities with no need for the pomp and village set up of a Games type event.

@Daniel T yeah sorry that was a stupid mistake. I know it’s in 2032 but considering this is an election blog I must of mixed it up with the 2024 state election. But yes, it is pretty stupid that he decides now to cancel the Commonwealth Games. If he couldn’t afford it then why did he bid in the first place? And yes, Pesutto has a perfect opportunity to campaign on this. If he campaigns hard on these issues from now all the way to the election, then yes, he could win in a landslide. I mean it’s definitely possible given that Pesutto’s a Moderate Liberal (as were Victoria’s last two Liberal Premiers, Ted Baillieu and Denis Napthine) and Dan Andrews has been in power since 2014, so nine years. Maybe he won’t be Premier in 2026 but still. There is still over three years for polling and the people turn their backs on Labor and the Greens.

My theory (and others have proposed this too) is that post-Howard era Australian federal and state/territory politics outside the ACT seems to be in a cycle with some outliers, but both major parties need to be relatively centrist (i.e centre-left for Labor and centre-right for the Coalition) and relatable to the general public to speed up the political cycle and win elections. When Kevin Rudd became PM in 2007, every state and territory government was Labor. Then in 2008, WA elected a Coalition government. In 2010, Victoria did the same. In 2010, the election delivered a hung parliament, but Labor under Julia Gillard managed to get a minority government. In 2011, the Coalition won the NSW state election in a huge landslide, winning 69 seats, with Labor being knocked down to just 20 seats. In 2012, the NT elected a CLP government and Queensland state election was a landslide win for the LNP, with Labor winning just seven seats (so if QLD Labor in 2012 was a soccer team, they would only need to lose one player (i.e seat) then they would need to forfeit the match). Then in 2013, Tony Abbott and the Coalition won a landslide victory at the federal election (winning 90 seats) against Labor under Kevin Rudd. In 2014, the Liberals won the Tasmanian state election in what would be classified as a landslide under Tasmanian standards (at least at the time, given that the Parliament has been re-expanded for the next state election). But then things changed pretty quickly. In 2014, Labor won the Victorian state election. In 2015, Labor won a minority government in Queensland. In 2016, Labor won a landslide in the NT. In 2017, Labor won a landslide in WA. By then the Coalition only had the federal government and the state governments of NSW and Tasmania. Then in 2018, the Liberals won the South Australian state election. Then all of the elections in 2020 and 2021 saw incumbent governments re-elected where elections were held (the NT, the ACT, Queensland, WA and Tasmania). In 2022, Labor won the South Australian state election and the federal election. In 2023, Labor won a minority government in NSW, meaning they now control the federal government and every mainland state/territory government, leaving Tasmania as the only state with a Liberal government (and Tasmanian Premier Jeremy Rockliff doesn’t have to face an election until 2025). So in 2024, maybe the cycle will favour the Coalition again. The LNP is already increasingly tipped to win the 2024 Queensland state election and the NT (which has an election in 2024) is a real possibility too for the CLP.

Yes, Dan missed a big chance to cut down the Victorian deficit by not selling the commonwealth games to the Saudis? We could have “backed” the whole commonwealth into the deal & maybe thrown in King Charles of Australia as contracted CEO with appropriate restraints? The Saudis will pay billions for any sort of ownership with sports’ rights? and given they own half of London there would be economies of scale & economic efficiencies in owning the commonwealth too?

There have been some articles popping up that seem to imply Dan Andrews may pull the pin relatively soon. And tbh, if he does go, coupled with big scale announcements like the Airport Rail Link and C’wealth Games being frozen or cancelled, it does seem like it’s a ripe opportunity for the opposition….if they can actually seize it. I recall one of the media pieces having a Liberal say that it’s “game on” once Dan Andrews leaves.

WL
The implied successor has been Jacinta Allan but as Minister for the Commonwealth Games she has serious questions to answer and will be tainted. Looking through the cabinet list, there are few ministers with name recognition until you get down towards the more junior. Daniel Andrews might need to stick around because there is no one else.

@redistributed
Ben Carroll may challenge Allan, he’s probably their next best hope. The latter is an absolute dud (Kirner 2.0) and should never be Andrews’ successor for their sake. Andrews will probably stay on since Carroll is a factional rival, Allan’s incompetency, and he doesn’t want anyone else in his cabinet overshadowing his legacy.

Allan and Carroll are two peole that were probably in line to take over Andrews but this recent controversy with the Commonwealth games probably doesn’t help Allan and Carroll is minister for public transport so could face criticism as he’ll be linked with budget blowouts and delays (some even in his own electorate).

I think it’s a foregone conclusion now that Nicole Werner will be the next MP for Warrandyte. The Libs are genuinely starting to look like they are finally recovering. That being said, the Libs shouldn’t be too complacent. In terms of federal implications, I think it’s doing Labor better to not contest than it is for them to since I doubt Labor would get any swing towards them at all. Labor has never put in any effort in the Manningham area so Menzies being an ALP target will make for a very interesting contest.

@Dan M
This Roy Morgan poll seems to suggest so.
https://www.roymorgan.com/findings/support-for-victorian-government-and-premier-daniel-andrews-plunges-after-cancellation-of-commonwealth-games

With the recent poll there is not a chance Labor will run here and this also signifies that Andrews will resign as leader however I wouldn’t get to confident as a Liberal as there they are still internal fighting. I don’t think Labor will win the federal seat Menzies won’t be won by Labor as the local member seems to be well liked and has been building a strong local profile I suspect he’ll hold on.

@Dan M the Labor targets are odd. One of the seats they are targeting is Bass in Tasmania, which, while normally a marginal seat, is becoming safer and safer for Bridget Archer (Liberal) over time and on the state level is normally Liberal-dominated. Though comparing state and federal politics in Tasmania is like doing the same in Queensland but the opposite; at the last state election the Liberals won a plurality of the vote in every Tasmanian seat (even the inner-city seat of Clark in Hobart, which Labor normally wins a plurality of votes in). What this does mean however is that the federal Liberals, if they select a good candidate and appeal well to the people of Tasmania, would certainly have a chance of picking up Lyons from Labor (which they almost did in 2022, in fact they had a higher primary vote than Labor due to a 13% swing to them on primaries) as well as a chance of getting a big swing in Franklin (then making it in play for future elections) and making the TPP contest in Clark (currently it’s a very safe seat for independent Andrew Wilkie and ever since he was elected in 2010 (when it was called Denison) it has been an independent vs Labor contest). But of course the Liberals would have to try really hard to get a swing in Clark or Franklin; in Lyons they would need to try but nowhere near as hard as in Clark or Franklin. My guess is that in 2025 (or whenever the next federal election is called, which is almost certainly sometime in 2025) the Liberals will retain Bass and Braddon with slightly increased majorities and they could gain Lyons, given that Labor only won it by a bee’s dick of a margin in 2022. I would be pretty confident in them holding Braddon, especially due to Premier Jeremy Rockliff being one of the state members for Braddon and being quite popular there, plus it’s also the most conservative seat in Tasmania and Bridget should be able to retain Bass.

Confirming what we all already knew, Labour won’t run.

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/victoria/labor-won-t-run-in-warrandyte-byelection-mps-told-20230726-p5drd6.html

My big question now is how well will the Greens do.

Deputy Mayor of Manningham is semi-noteworthy position, and the Green vote is relatively higher than average in some areas of the seat.

They’ll obviously make the TCP, but will it be a figure that’s noteworthy at all..

I would take the Morgan poll that Ian cited with a grain of salt. It is a Snap SMS Poll conducted after Daniel Andrews announced Victoria would no longer host the 2026 Commonwealth Games. Polling analyst Dr Kevin Bonham said SMS polls were pretty unreliable and polls conducted ad hoc immediately after a major news event were prone to “voter enthusiasm” bias, where supporters of a particular party are less likely to take part during a bad news cycle for that party. What’s more, net negative approval of Andrews’ performance, better Premier lead and majority approval of the cancellation of the 2026 Commonwealth Games in Victoria all only reflect a majority of those who replied to that question. Morgan has not published information on the response rate to subsequent questions among those who answered the first question on voting intentions. Therefore there is no evidence that the majority of Victorian voters disapprove of Andrews’ performance.

Above all, a single poll does not provide sufficient evidence to show that the Victorian Liberals are genuinely starting to look like they are finally recovering.

@Connor given that Labor isn’t running then that’s most likely going to be the case.

Question is, How big will the swing will be TO the Liberals. not against. Labor isn’t running because they are scared, and the Greens won’t come close but could make the final count. I suspect a 58-42 to 61-39 Liberal hold.

Pesutto will be out next premier of Victoria if Andrews stays until 2026.

Why is the premier absent from Parliament? past 2 days he hasn’t been there, Deputy premier has been answering on his behalf, Is he on holiday or is he sick?

The Latest Renee Heath saga has once again damaged a party that was starting to make inroads after the Commonwealth Games saga.

If the member for Ringwood is found guilty could the libs win the by election

@John I think Ringwood is most certainly winnable for the Libs in a potential by-election but it won’t be easy and will require effort on their part. The 3.2% margin in 2018 was already considered very inflated for Labor in what was a landslide election and the Libs went even further backwards here in 2022. With COVID fading away from voter’s minds and the Andrews’ govt problems with debt and integrity + the Commonwealth saga, its popularity in the eastern suburbs is fading away while I suspect it’s improving its position in the western and northern suburbs that had huge swings in 2022 but didn’t deliver any seats to the Libs. As I said, the 7.5% is not as safe as it seems but it would require the Libs to pick a decent local candidate, not another dud like Cynthia Watson.

I agree with Dan M if hypothetically there was a by-election in Ringwood and Greenvale on the same day for the same circumstances. I would say Labor would do much better in Greenvale especially with each passing day as Covid is more distant Issues such as integrity/Commonwealth Games saga is less pressing for those who are economically deprived in areas like Meadow Heights, Labor may even get a swing to them in booth around Meadow Heights.

Sportsbet currently has the odds at 1.06 for the Liberals and $9 for Labor. Labor must be in pretty good shape considering there is no Labor candidate.

@Douglas yeah it’s odd given that Labor has officially announced that they won’t run (so it’s not like “Oh, Labor will or might nominate a candidate, they just haven’t yet”, they actually said they won’t) yet Sportsbet has not changed their odds. For Fadden they had markets for all nominated candidates, Warrandyte should be the same. They did not have any odds at all for Rockingham though.

Who comes third? DLP from name confusion? or is there an independent who could put up a fight?

With the absence of Labor and the large amount of candidates in this electorate I say Liberal hold with a swing in the tpp towards them.

Easy Liberal win with swings toward them on both primaries and 2PP. The presence of DLP, Freedom and Family First can bolster the Liberal 2PP vote. Given it’s the eastern suburbs of Melbourne, I don’t expect a strong result for Vic Socialists or Freedom like they got in the west in 2022.

For a while, I’ve been wanting to know why by-elections attract way more candidates per seat than general elections. There’s 12 in this one. Wikipedia says that 8 of them ran at the state election in 2022 either for other seats or the legislative council. They saw this by-election as another opportunity.

Or, in the case of Cary de Wit, other Legislative Council Regions.

The mystery candidate in Warrandyte is Philip Jenkins – no online presence that I can see and no registered HTV card.

il wager that Maya tesa will finish in the 2CP count.

> For a while, I’ve been wanting to know why by-elections attract way more candidates per seat than general elections.

> … They saw this by-election as another opportunity.

@Votante – that’s certainly it for the returning candidates. I’ll try and give a perspective for the others.

By-elections are a different allocation of resources than a general election.

In a general election you’ll see many small parties focus on the upper house. This is both because it’s proportional and because a vote won any given district is worth just as much as a vote the next district over, so you might as well let your supporters campaign where they live. When you do get lower house candidates, they’ll stand in the seat where they live, too, so they’re spread out – maybe this seat gets an Animal Justice candidate, and that seat gets a Cannabis candidate, and sometimes there’s a Fusion candidate, etc etc.

But for a by-election there’s no competing upper house campaign and more chance of running an out-of-district candidate. Someone who’s otherwise a strong candidate (and, you’d hope, not too far out-of-district) is usually going to get the nod for a by-election over a “sure I’ll fly the flag” candidate who does actually live in the district.

The big oddity in my mind was that Aston only had 5. I think most minors expected it to be a bit barren for them (to be fair Aston seems to be a pretty mainstream area).

I wouldn’t be surprised if DLP finishes third on primaries and 3CP. Their name will confuse some Labor voters and pick up votes from last year’s Labor voters, just like how the name LDP misleads some Liberal/Coalition voters into voting for them. Add to that, socially conservative candidates and minor right parties like Family First and Freedom have DLP ahead of most other candidates on their HTV cards.

@AlexJ, 2022’s state election was the most contested ever. There were more lower and upper house candidates than ever. There were 8.4 candidates per lower house seat on average. The number of ‘leftover’ candidates is high and so there’s motivation for them to just put their hats in the ring, especially for a neighbouring seat. You raise good points about using their lower house candidacy to market their party for upper house votes. This by-election is a contest purely local and without the presidential-style contest between party leaders nor the contest for upper house seats as you’ve alluded to.

@ Votante
The name might confuse some voters. However, in most circumstances i would say this is unfriendly territory for them. A socially conservative Catholic Italian who lives in East Doncaster and whose children go to Whitefriars College will not have a class or ethnoreligious based aversion to voting Liberal. I would say the DLP generally does well in Northern/Western Melbourne areas like Scullin where there a socially conservative working class voters. However, one interesting point about the DLP voters is that there are notorious for ill discipline when coming to following HTV. Last state election DLP preferenced Libs second in nearly all seats and ALP towards the bottom but most DLP votes flowed to Labor over Liberal suggesting that once these voters express their social conscience voting DLP they follow their economic interest to preference Labor this in contrast to the era between 1955-1975 when then DLP preferences preventing Labor from winning government.

It is by election day today. There has hardly been a peep of news from Warrandyte for weeks. Anybody out there got any idea of what has been happening on the ground?

Let the games begin…

With no Labor candidate, this should be an easy Liberal hold/retain.

Missed opportunity for Labor but I think the Greens pull off an upset because of the Vic Libs still being in shambles.

@Ian If this by-election was held between 4 to 6 months ago, I could see that happening but not so much anymore. The Vic Libs are starting to show signs of recovery while Labor seems to be making its own problems worse and worse which won’t help the Greens in this seat.

@Ian the Greens will not win.

I can imagine the turnout being very low – that will not help the Greens.

Ian…. How are the greens looking lmao

Looks like I was wrong, maybe the Libs have a winnable chance in 2026, but never write off Labor or the Greens in Melbourne.