Cause of by-election
Sitting independent MP Sam Hibbins, until recently a member of the Greens, resigned after recently quitting his party due to the revelation of an affair with a staff member.
Margin – GRN 12.0% vs LIB
Incumbent MP
Sam Hibbins, since 2014.
Geography
Inner southern Melbourne. Prahran covers the suburbs of Prahran, South Yarra and Windsor and parts of St Kilda and St Kilda East.
History
Prahran has been a state electorate since 1889. It has alternated between the ALP and conservative parties, before falling to the Greens in 2014.
The ALP first won the seat in 1894, holding it until 1900. Liberal MP Donald Mackinnon held the seat from 1900 to 1920. The ALP and conservative parties alternated in control until the 1930s, with the Liberal Party holding the seat until 1945.
In 1945, the ALP’s William Quirk won the seat, holding it until his death in November 1948. The ensuing by-election in 1949 was won by Frank Crean, who had previously held the seat of Albert Park. He left the seat in 1951 when he moved to the federal seat of Melbourne Ports. He served as a federal MP until 1977, playing a senior role in the Whitlam Labor government.
The 1951 Prahran by-election was won by the ALP’s Robert Pettiona, who held the seat until his defeat in 1955.
Since 1955, Prahran has been won by the ALP only four times. In 1955, the seat was won by Sam Loxton, a Liberal candidate. Loxton was a former test cricketer who had been part of Don Bradman’s Invincibles team and played VFL football for St Kilda.
Loxton held the seat until 1979, when the ALP’s Bob Miller won the seat. He held the seat for two terms, and in 1985 unsuccessfully contested the Legislative Council province of Monash.
The Liberal Party’s Don Hayward won the seat in 1985. He had previously held the upper house seat of Monash from 1979 to 1985. He served as Member for Prahran until the 1996 election.
In 1996, the Liberal Party’s Leonie Burke won Prahran. Burke was defeated in 2002 by the ALP’s Tony Lupton. Lupton was re-elected in 2006.
In 2010, Lupton was defeated by Liberal candidate Clem Newton-Brown.
Prahran produced an unusual result in 2014, with the third-placed Greens candidate Sam Hibbins overtaking both Labor and Liberal candidates to win narrowly.
Hibbins was re-elected in 2018, again coming third on primary votes and then overtaking Labor and Liberal to win.
Hibbins gained a sizeable primary vote swing in 2022, with Labor reduced to a clear third place, and he also increased his majority after preferences.
Hibbins resigned from the Greens in November 2024 due to the revelation of a previous affair with a staff member.
- Angelica Di Camillo (Greens)
- Tony Lupton (Independent)
- Rachel Westaway (Liberal)
Assessment
Prahran has effectively two different axes on which competition takes place – between Labor and Greens to be the leading progressive party, and between those parties and the Liberal Party on the two-candidate-preferred count. The race was close on both axes in 2014. In 2018 the Liberal Party wasn’t competitive but Labor and Greens were still close. In 2022, Hibbins won easily on both.
This seat could be competitive on either axis in Hibbins’ absence, particularly considering the circumstances of his departure.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Sam Hibbins | Greens | 14,286 | 36.4 | +8.1 |
| Matthew Lucas | Liberal | 12,198 | 31.1 | -1.6 |
| Wesa Chau | Labor | 10,421 | 26.6 | -3.9 |
| Alice Le Huray | Animal Justice | 1,263 | 3.2 | +0.9 |
| Ronald Emilsen | Family First | 626 | 1.6 | +1.6 |
| Alan Menadue | Independent | 449 | 1.1 | +0.8 |
| Informal | 1,223 | 3.0 |
2022 two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Sam Hibbins | Greens | 24,334 | 62.0 | +3.0 |
| Matthew Lucas | Liberal | 14,909 | 38.0 | -3.0 |
Booths have been divided into three areas: central, north and south.
The Greens topped the primary vote in all three areas, with a vote ranging from 39.1% in hte north to 45.5% in the south.
The Liberal Party came second, with a primary vote ranging from 18% in the south to 29.2% in the north. Labor’s primary vote ranged from 24.5% in the centre to 29.6% in the south, and outpolling Liberal in the south.
The Greens two-candidate-preferred vote against the Liberal Party ranged from 64% in the north to 76.3% in the south.
| Voter group | GRN prim | LIB prim | ALP prim | GRN 2CP | Total votes | % of votes |
| North | 39.1 | 29.2 | 25.9 | 64.0 | 5,206 | 13.3 |
| Central | 43.9 | 26.3 | 24.5 | 68.3 | 3,879 | 9.9 |
| South | 45.5 | 18.0 | 29.6 | 76.3 | 2,865 | 7.3 |
| Pre-poll | 35.4 | 32.7 | 26.6 | 61.1 | 18,980 | 48.3 |
| Other votes | 30.5 | 35.2 | 26.9 | 56.5 | 8,357 | 21.3 |
Election results in Prahran at the 2022 Victorian state election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Greens vs Liberal) and primary votes for the Greens, the Liberal Party and Labor.
@Nimalan, given Peter Dutton starting to wedge to some No Voters about the Indigenous Flags and potentially Welcome to the Country next, I assume there will be no longer Bipartisian use of the flags and WtC and which leaders greater resentment to use them.
@ Marh
I agree with you on that, i suspect he is playing to white working class voters in the Hunter Seats and Blair which have low margins rather than ethnic working class seats where there is less interest and a lower “No” vote. The seat of Spence had a very high No vote and while i suspect there will be a swing to Libs it is no where near enough to win the seat which so economically deprived.
The Greens would be smart to make Dutton a focus of their Prahran by-election campaign.
While voters are usually very good at discerning state from federal, a byelection happening not only outside a broader state election campaign (which itself reduces the influence of the state leaders), but at the same time as a federal election campaign (increasing the visibility of the federal leader), will no doubt have an impact when it comes to voters associating the parties with their federal leader moreso than they usually would during a state election.
While I agree with your last sentence @Trent, that is not really what I am talking about. To take a fairly benign example, no one asked for ‘Welcome to Country’ at sporting and cultural events. They sort of just appeared. No one really knew what to make of them, but once some got a bit more political it became ‘I don’t go the footy to be lectured on the evils of colonialism’. Now Melbourne Storm are pulling back from having them at every match, and the overwhelming response is ‘Meh’.
This is one example, and as I said pretty benign, but there are lots and lots of these out there, and some of the more radical actions get pushback, and when they do the response is often ‘why are you perpetuating a culture war?’, ignoring that it was the left that fired the first shot, so to speak.
That is a response to a bit further up the thread obvs.
@ MLV
Is there a particular issue that you would like to raise that concerns you that you would like to raise that you feel are more radical. I have criticized the Far Left on a few things like you would have seen above in my comments.
BC/AD vs BCE/CE is mostly not a debate on culture. Different parts of the world have often used different notations, some Jewish communities adopted the use of VE (Vulgar Era) and CE (Christian Era) as a way of referencing Christian years as opposed to their own year system.
Different types of notation systems have existed for hundreds of years in different places so that two different year systems could be used by various religious or cultural groups.
It’s mostly a question of style and what each publication thinks is clearer or more academically correct. The same as each publication decides how they apply use of commas and spelling choices (US vs UK spelling etc).
The main advantage of BCE/CE is that it is more consistent across different languages because BC/AD is a different abbreviation in many languages such as northern Europe where Christ is spelled with a K.
Just wanted to make that clear that it’s never been a culture war/Woke thing.
Oh, and I was tossing up between welcome to country and three flags as an obvious example of left wing culture wars.
I guess I just don’t see either as a culture war. Anything that even makes one person feel more accepted, but doesn’t harm a single person in the process, just seems like natural positive progression to me.
If the actions aren’t going out of their way to negatively impact, harm or disadvantage somebody, and is simply including more people, that’s not really a culture war.
I’d define a culture war as something where there are competing interests and the outcome would necessitate that one side has to be (or at least feel) disadvantaged at the expense of the other.
If someone was to actually ban Christmas celebrations – something I have never actually seen happen in reality, it’s usually a faux outrage about nothing – that would qualify as a culture war.
Similarly, items in the religious discrimination bill about what religious schools are or aren’t allowed to do are something I can genuinely see as being a culture war too because someone has to give something up. As a non-religious person I may not agree at all that religious schools should be able to discriminate based on something I don’t believe in, but I can reasonably see how they would think it attacks their faith-based rights.
But a Welcome to Country or the use of indigenous flags literally harms, divides or disadvantages no one, so in those cases I really only see the backlash as a culture war as that is trying to unnecessarily make it an issue (mostly for political gain) that it’s really not.
@ MLV/Trent
Is the Republic/potentially changing the National Flag a culture war it was Paul Keating who started it. Paul Keating also was not interested in Anzac Day/Gaillipoli and wanted to shift focus to Kokoda was that the reason Labor lost Lindsay in 1996?
Considering how front & centre Pesutto and Southwick -both likely to lose their leadership positions within a week – have been to the Libs’ campaign here, in light of the recent events and impending leadership spill, I see the Greens probably getting closer to a 60-40 2CP now.
I saw the Libs campaigning in St Kilda yesterday – Pesutto, Southwick, Crozier and the candidate Westaway – and nobody was talking to them, and everyone declining their material.
Yet there are Greens corflutes everywhere, not just in the St Kilda area but also walked through Windsor and Prahran today and saw heaps. Mostly on fences of expensive houses too (and renters in flats are even more likely to vote Greens than people in $2m+ detached Victorian houses).