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.
- Nathan Chisholm (Independent)
- Rachel Westaway (Liberal)
- Janine Hendry (Independent)
- Geneviève Gilbert (Family First)
- Alan Menadue (Independent)
- Tony Lupton (Independent)
- Mark Dessau (Libertarian)
- Angelica Di Camillo (Greens)
- Dennis Bilic (Sustainable Australia)
- Buzz Billman (Independent)
- Faith Fuhrer (Animal Justice
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.
I think the issue here Trent is that you are seeing this election as being separate from the wider political debate, of which the Greens (being charitable) pro Palestine position is a very big one. Just because a local campaign doesn’t mention that doesn’t mean the election campaign is immune to the wider zeitgeist (?). When you have the State leader resign so she can run a highly visible pro Palestine campaign in Wills, when another state member turns out to support a violent protest at an arms fair (which was basically an anti Israel protest) then I don’t think you can then turn around and say “but we didn’t mention Palestine so why did it matter?” when of course it is the most visible position the wider Greens party hold in the overall public discourse.
It is bit like Bill Shorten in 2019 trying to spin one line on coal in Central Queensland and another in Sydney and Melbourne – it is not hard to get found out. I think the last 18 months have very much polarised attititudes towards the Greens – a lot more people have gone to the bottom of the garden and not just fund the pixies but Hamas and the CFMEU there as well – and they don’t like what they see.
As I said, I do agree that it contributes to the overall voter perception, but the points I am making are simply that:
a) That perception gets amplified by the Greens’ opposition focusing their attacks on it; and
b) There’s irony in the Greens’ opposition focusing their attacks on it, when they are trying to spin it into the local candidate not having a local focus, when it is actually their own campaign that is distracting from local issues
I’m not saying the broader actions of the Greens are not influential, of course they are, and they do open the Greens up to these attacks.
But, are you saying that if their opponents campaigns had not focused on that, had not attacked them for it, that the voter perceptions would be identical to if they had? That the Liberals & Lupton focusing on the Greens’ pro-Palestine position didn’t increase that voter perception even by a fraction?
And, would you say that it was 100% honest, without a trace of exaggeration of being misleading, for a Tony Lupton and/or Liberal campaign to claim that Angelica Di Camillo personally is entirely focused on international issues and has zero focus on local issues?
That’s what I take issue with, the fact that they exaggerated it, and were not truthful.
To their credit, the Greens’ campaign in Prahran did not attack the Liberals or Tony Lupton at all. They basically ignored that Tony Lupton existed (much to his annoyance), and the extent of them attacking the Liberals was just saying to vote the Greens to keep the Liberals out, but they never once attacked Rachel Westaway.
Unfortunately, the same can’t be said about the others who resorted to negative attacks.
That’s is all I am saying. I never said there wasn’t a broader perception of the Greens being too focused on Palestine, nor that some of their own actions aren’t to blame for that, I simply said that dishonest campaigning by their opposition AMPLIFIED that perception, and I struggle to see how anybody could disagree with that…
Yes I am Trent.
This isn’t a minor issue that pops up 23 articles down the state issues page, it has been front and centre for 15+ months. Even if this group is getting its media from tik tok et al this would still be very high profile and the Greens position well known.
I know the Greens really grew in inner city areas due to lots of door knocking, local canvassing etc, but the party is now too big to try and run individual ‘independent lite’ campaigns that ignore the wider party positions, no matter how much they try.
So, in the entire seat of Prahran, not even 1 possibly disengaged voter who doesn’t pay attention to broader politics wouldn’t have been influenced by the Liberals’ attack flyer in their letterbox and formed their opinion based on that? Ok…
There is also a strong possibility that the Greens focus on local issues is why they lost, due to crime:
a) Keeping the public housing towers (which many would see as an epicentre of crime), and
b) the perception that the Greens are the kind of people who see the perpetrators of violent crime as victims.
I tend to think the reason the Greens didn’t talk about Israel/Palestine/Gaza is they suspected (knew?) it was a vote loser, even here.
Seriously, do you think everyone lives in a curated bubble Trent? In fact, I would say it is far more likely that the only thing a disengaged voter knew about the Greens before the campaign was their position on Israel/Gaza, maybe alongside being pro renters and wanting to soak the rich.
Not even environmental concerns any more.
I don’t know how many times I have to repeat myself.
I never said there wasn’t a voter perception about the Greens being focused on Palestine. I never said that the actions of some of their own MPs didn’t contribute to that. I never attributed the Greens losing to that either.
I simply made two points:
1. That I believe, at least at the local level, the Liberal candidate & Tony Lupton made more of the issue than the Greens’ candidate did, and tried to exploit/amplify the issue; and
2. There was irony in those two claiming that Angelica Di Camillo was personally not focused on local issues, when their campaigns were actually less focused on local issues, and I took issue with that because it was dishonest.
That is literally all I said, and people disagreed. The debate around how much impact it actually had is a completely separate discussion, I was simply saying that the Liberals focused on it more than the Greens, in this particular byelection. That is all. End of story.
@Trent , that the Greens candidate for Prahran had marched in the anti-Jewish, pro-terrorism rallies that so repeatedly disrupt others in the Melbourne CBD made her unfit to hold public office in any sphere.
Bringing this to electors’ attention was legitimate even if the Greens candidate didn’t want to explicitly disclose it during her campaign. Hamas for instance is on the list of terrorist organisations in Australia.
I am not Jewish but what’s been occurring has led to many Jewish people believing that what they once viewed as the sanctuary of Australia is no more.
She may have avoided speaking about it prior to the by-election, but there’d be no doubt had she been elected that once in Parliament she’d have plenty to say about it.
Fortunately a number of voters will have seen through her pretence.
How are the Pro-Palestinian rallies either anti-Jewish or pro-terrorism?
The rallies stand against the Israeli crimes against the Palestinian people, which have been proven in a court of law. The actions of Hamas are horrible, and while it is true that at those rallies there is a small minority that support them, overall the rallies are in favour of the Palestinian people, which includes standing against Hamas, as well as the Israel occupation of Gaza and the West Bank.
I say this as a Greens supporter, who is descended from Holocaust survivors, and has family in Israel who have not been heard from by any of our Australian family since Oct 2023.
Because they are Darcy.
We know this because the very first one, the one on the Opera House, was on October 9th, a month before the invasion started. There were a number of rallies between then and the start of the Israeli military action all of which, I repeat all of which, glorified in the slaughter of Israeli’s. Just because Hamas started losing once the war began so the nature of the rhetoric changed in no way changes the fact that the rallies all glorified what happened on October 7th. That doesn’t mean a majority of those attending aren’t there for genuine reasons (and it is fascinating some of the vox pops done where attendees have no idea what is actually happening) but those organising the protests are genuine anti semites.
Interestingly, there has been such a distortion of facts that a surprisingly large number of people believe the whole thing started with an Israeli attack on October 7th.
@Mostly Labor Voter , yes, it’s easy to airbrush how so many Israelis were kidnapped/murdered/raped/tortured on 7 October 2023 and subsequently.
But airbrush it we in the West must not, unlike the defeated Greens candidate in Prahran who doesn’t appear to understand that Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East and that Palestinians who’ve facilitated, supported or stood silently by while terrorists carried out atrocities must bear much or all of the blame.
Israel was merely defending itself.
Back to Trent’s comments – no, it is not dishonest to tie a candidate to their parties position. Just as it would be fine for the Greens to tie Ged Kearney in Cooper for example to the pro mining Madeline King or the failure of the environmental laws Plibersek just tried to push through, even if she doesn’t mention or even explicitly disavows those positions. She is running on a party label and is as much responsible for the party policies as any other member of the party.
@Darcy, I’m with you and the conflation of criticising Israel and being anti-semitic is what I think is causing the most division. No doubt there were some bad elements at the protests too, but I think the exploitation of this issue for political gain – which was evident in the Prahran byelection – has been really unconstructive.
But as I’ve said, my biggest gripe is not even about Israel vs Palestine. I personally don’t even really care about the issue much, nor do I have a strong opinion either way. I am generally anti-war and anti-religion in general.
My issue is with the hypocritical take that if an MP or political party holds a pro-Palestine view, they can’t possibly have the capacity to also focus on local issues; but if an MP or political party holds a pro-Israel view, somehow they can. That was the clear message the Liberals & Tony Lupton were trying to send at the byelection: the Greens are pro-Palestine and therefore somehow that means they can’t focus on saving the Windsor Children’s Centre, but Tony Lupton & the Liberals being pro-Israel means they can…?
The reason and context behind why I find this so hypocritical, is that I have lived in Melbourne Ports / Macnamara since 2006, and for 13 of the 19 years I have lived in the seat, I had the misfortune of being represented by Michael Danby, who was possibly the least locally-focused MP to ever sit in parliament at any level. He had zero interest even in domestic politics let alone local issues.
So to have allies of Michael Danby telling voters that a candidate can’t be locally focused unless they share his views, was just laughable.
To summarise, the problem I have is not with people tying a candidate to their party’s policies, that is entirely normal and acceptable.
The problem I have is tying a party or candidate’s view on an international issue, with their ability to also focus on local issues.
To say Angelica Di Camillo is running for the Greens so must support the Greens’ view on Israel is absolutely fine.
To say Angelica Di Camillo shares the Greens’ view on Israel and therefore that equates to an inability to negotiate outcomes on train stations, childcare centres and primary schools, is absolutely ridiculous. There is no connection between the two.
And in trying to say there is, that implies that being pro-Israel somehow enhances the ability to get action on childcare centres & train stations, which is equally ridiculous especially for someone who suffered through 13 years of Michael Danby.
Trent
In your last post, you put the argument very well.
One part of a party’s policy can overshadow all else in the mind of a voter and turn them off irrespective if they can deliver locally or not. Conversely, what may drive away Voter A may also attract Voter B again irrespective of local advocacy. And again conversely, success at local advocacy may attract Voter C who may also be holding their nose about other policies a party has.
Thanks, it took me a while to get there haha, but the thing that bothered me that I was trying to express was the idea that one’s view on the Gaza issue – regardless of which side of the issue you’re on – somehow impacts whether you can also be “focused on the community”. Thinking about Michael Danby made that clearer for me, because it illustrated that you could argue the same on both sides.
You’re right that in Prahran, there would have been voters turned off the Greens due to their stance on Palestine, others attracted to them due to their stance on Palestine, and others who couldn’t care less about it and are looking for who can deliver locally.
I believe the Liberal & Lupton campaigns were trying to turn some Voter Cs into Voter As, by framing the Greens’ stance on Palestine as somehow hindering their ability to deliver locally, rather than just competing on the local issues Voter C cares about.
I think for a not insignificant number of voters, party views or at least perceived views on Israel/Palestine and Gaza have become the number one issue dwarfing all others. They might agree with one party on virtually every other with regards to more local closer to home/domestic issues but this issue is the decider on whether they support them or go to another candidate…in some cases become a Voter C as @redistributed has described, they hold their nose when doing so, or are doing so to protest against their usual party just on this one issue. Case in point those Muslim independent movements organising to preference the Coalition ahead of Labor.
But isn’t it more that:
Angelica Di Camillo shares the Greens’ view on Israel and therefore that equates to an inability to negotiate good outcomes on train stations, childcare centres and primary schools?
That is, she is so wrong on this subject that she will be wrong on all others. Kind of like a Peter Fitzsimmons column.