ALP 13.9%
Incumbent MP
Maria Vamvakinou, since 2001.
Geography
Outer northern suburbs of Melbourne. A majority of the seat covers southern parts of the City of Hume, along with northern parts of the City of Brimbank. Calwell covers the suburbs of Broadmeadows, Sydenham, Taylors Lakes, Keilor, Tullamarine, Broadmeadows, Coolaroo, Meadow Heights, Greenvale and Roxburgh Park, as well as Melbourne Airport.
History
Calwell was created for the expansion of the House of Representatives in 1984. It has always been a safe Labor seat.
The seat was first won in 1984 by Andrew Theophanous. Theophanous had previously held Burke since 1980. He served as a Parliamentary Secretary in the final term of the Labor government from 1993 to 1996. He came under fire for allegations of migration fraud. He resigned from the ALP in 2000 and served out his term as an independent, losing in 2001. He later served time in prison.
Calwell was won in 2001 by Maria Vamvakinou, and she has held the seat ever since.
Candidates
- John Hsu (Liberal)
- Maria Vamvakinou (Labor)
- Natalie Abboud (Greens)
- Megan Searls (Animal Justice)
- Michael Lakkis (Independent)
Assessment
Calwell is a very safe Labor seat.
2013 result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Maria Vamvakinou | Labor | 42,819 | 49.8 | -7.8 |
| Ali Khan | Liberal | 24,490 | 28.5 | +3.0 |
| Joanna Nevill | Greens | 4,632 | 5.4 | -5.8 |
| Bryce Letcher | Palmer United Party | 3,728 | 4.3 | +4.3 |
| Nevena Spirovska | Sex Party | 2,367 | 2.8 | +2.8 |
| Paul Graham | Family First | 2,175 | 2.5 | -2.2 |
| Maria Bengtsson | Australian Christians | 2,121 | 2.5 | +2.5 |
| Brett Watson | Katter’s Australian Party | 1,915 | 2.2 | +2.2 |
| Omar Jabir | Democratic Labour Party | 1,310 | 1.5 | +1.5 |
| Charles Rozario | Rise Up Australia | 415 | 0.5 | +0.5 |
| Informal | 7,398 | 8.6 |
2013 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Maria Vamvakinou | Labor | 54,906 | 63.9 | -6.2 |
| Ali Khan | Liberal | 31,066 | 36.1 | +6.2 |
Booth breakdown
Booths have been divided into three areas: central, north and south. Polling places in the City of Brimbank have been grouped as “South”, and those in the City of Hume are split into “Central” and “North”.
Labor’s two-party-preferred vote ranged from 57% in the south to 70% in the centre.
| Voter group | ALP 2PP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| Central | 70.3 | 20,996 | 24.4 |
| South | 57.3 | 20,100 | 23.4 |
| North | 65.6 | 16,266 | 18.9 |
| Other votes | 62.8 | 28,610 | 33.3 |
This seat contains some relatively affluent areas such as Keilor and Taylors Lakes (the big Liberal booth and the weakly Labor booths around it) and Greenvale (the 52-55% Labor booths in the north). But the Broadmeadows-Craigieburn corridor is absolutely thumping for Labor.
Keilor is a bit of an odd fit in this seat; the airport and surrounding industrial/commerical areas really cuts the western parts off from the rest of Calwell. You can see the great big gap in the centre of the seat where this is literally no population at all.
Calwell just got even safer for the ALP: the Liberal candidate has just been disendorsed!
Be interesting to see where those voters go.
That happened in that state election in 2014 when Liberal candidates in this part of Melbourne were organising a bollywood strippers tour. The Family First vote went up quite significantly too.
As it would… there’s just the small problem of there being no right-wing candidates left in the seat (that independent might be, but he has no net presence whatsoever).
The Liberal will still be listed on the ballot paper even though he’s been disendorsed – those notionally Liberal voters will still vote Liberal regardless of whether there is an active campaign here or not.
That makes this seat really interesting, Alex.
With no Liberal and no other notable right wing candidate, how will votes flow?
Let’s suppose that there’s a net swing of 5% against Vamvakinou (in primary vote, if Liberals had a candidate). It’s probably an extreme supposition, but bear with me.
42% of the 2013 votes were on the right if we take parties like PUP and KAP to be right wing (they’re kind of strange cases). Now let’s suppose that 4% of that goes to Labor (mostly from the Liberal candidate), 20% goes to Greens, 15% to Lakkis, and 3% to Animal Justice. Let’s also assume that Sex Party votes flow to Greens.
Labor is now on 48.8% primary vote. Lakkis appears to be a “sole trader”, so I’m guessing he’s actually right-wing… but the fact that I can’t even find a picture of him online implies that he’s probably not going to be a serious factor (that is, I’m not sure many people will even know he’s right-wing). But generally, I’d say that those who don’t vote for Labor on first preference probably aren’t going to put Labor ahead of Greens on their ballot.
So I could conceive of a situation where the Greens actually pick up Calwell, especially if they start campaigning hard in the area in response to this dropping of the Liberal candidate.
Probably won’t happen, but it’ll still be interesting to see how the Liberal vote splits. I’m guessing a significant portion will actually vote Liberal anyway (I could be mistaken, but I believe that the ballot is set now, can’t be changed), so the “first preference” I mention above are really second preferences for a lot of people who vote Liberal.
Yeah there is no way i could envisage anyone but Labor wining this seat. Even with a left wing independent that would be difficult for them to challenge
I’m basically thinking of the Reps result now as being essentially a reversion to 2010, except now the Coalition have the sophomore surge in the marginals.
In that election Vamvakinou got 56% primary. Game over.
As for disendorsement — yes, Hsu should still appear on the ballot, unless the federal laws are different to the Qld ones.
An LNP-candidate-disendorsed event happened in the Brisbane ward of Tennyson earlier this year (held by an ex-LNP Independent).
The LNP primary at the councillor level dropped from 35% to 18%.
At the lord-mayoral level it dropped from 58% to 50% (and mayoral swing was about 8.5% against the LNP city-wide).
Turnout seemed to be about the same, low 80s.
So… we should see the Liberal rump primary drop below 20%, and then scatter. Not that it will matter, in the context of even a tiny Lib->ALP direct swing.
(side note: looking over at the Wills thread there’s another Alex. They were probably here first; henceforth I’ll be posting as Alex J.)
The Greens candidate seems more focused on winning a Moreland Council seat (no overlap between the council and the electorate). Should be the safest ALP seat although I wouldn’t be surprised if Liberals still manage to take 2nd