Mulgrave – Victoria 2022

Ian Cooks time has come.

Ian Cook ran an exit poll that he won. He does not have community ties like Dai Le

Jacinta Allan would almost certainly be the replacement premier

@nimalan but with the king now dead surely the time to strike is now

@marh
That would be very good for Ben Carroll because she’ll face all the public flack leading up to 2026. Objectively, Ben Carroll is Labor’s future in Victoria not her.

@ john
i agree the King is gone but the Queen will have her coronation soon. The people who voted for Ian Cook were just liberal supporters who thought he was the best chance to oust Andrews. i dont see what incentive the ethnic communities such as the Vietnamese have to vote for a middle aged White Businessman who appears on Sky after Dark. The only reason Ian Cook got a lot of attention was the that he was running against Andrews. The other issue is that SE Melbourne Labor did not suffer a backlash like they did NW Melbourne eventhough demographically it virtually identical.

@nimalan the libs and ian cook mananged 40% of the vote both in 2pp and 2cp the libs and cook would be mad not to try and capatilise now

@Ian, it’s already confirmed on Allan’s Twitter that she would run. I do agree Carroll could have a high level job but i believe he may be the deputy premier.

Of course they will attempt to Capitalize on it, just how effective it will be is another question especially as the pandemic becomes increasingly distant memory. On the current boundaries it is not really winnable and with low primary vote i am not sure how much preference discipline they will be. Ian Cook said after the election that many of his voters gave their second preference to Labor. There was no distribution of preferences so we dont actually know for sure what the real 2PP and 2CP was.

@nimalan that may be true but he finished second. and if you look at the 2pp and the 2cp the libs scored higher on the 2pp so obviouslt there was a distribution of preferences and given that dan andrews barely made 50% the next labor member will defeinately need predferences to get through

John

The time has passed for Ian Cook. His chance was last November, when the remnants of lockdown grievances were not yet faded away. He didn’t even get the Labor primary below 50%. The problem inherent in Cook’s campaign, as Nimalan pointed at, is that it is inherently white and middle class. His entire policy platform was revenge. When you are living paycheck to paycheck or wondering whether you’ll be able to make rent for the month, you do not naturally gravitate to a revenge campaign like Cook’s, because that does not serve your immediate material interest. Not to mention that with Andrews gone, what would be the point? Kevin Bonham has indicated that there may be a slight negative personal vote for Andrews based on LC vs LA results in Mulgrave booths. Mulgrave 2022 was a moment in time, never to be repeated again.

The Liberals and half the parties at the last state election made the election a referendum on Dan Andrews. I read that Dan Andrews featured heavily on both the Labor and Liberal campaign material. There wasn’t much about Matt Guy. The rug has been pulled from beneath parties like Sack Dan Andrews and Freedom Party as they made Dan appear synonymous with lockdowns and tapped into the anti-lockdown anger. Now, their key policy platforms have to shift.

Dan’s primary took a big hit as there was a high-profile independent candidate, Ian Cook, and a plethora of other candidates plus of course, the anti-Dan vote. It’s been over 10 years, I think, since there was a Victorian by-election featuring both major parties. I wouldn’t be surprised if the Liberals sit out the by-election.

@Votante

One small detail – “Sack Dan Andrews” weren’t a real party, it was essentially a sockpuppet party name Glenn Drury put on the ballot to harvest preferences from low-information voters.

@expat yea they actually preferenced labor

@john, they didn’t actually. That was a myth perpetuated in the media and latched onto by cookers, based on the ‘Sack Dan Andrews’ party running a split ticket in only 1 of the 8 LC regions (Southeast Metro I think), in which both Labor & Liberal were near the bottom of their preference allocation but on one ticket Labor was higher and on the other the Liberals were higher, meaning their preferences – only if they got down that far – would have split 50/50 between them in that one region.

In the other 7 of 8 regions, they only ran single tickets in all of them that preferenced the Liberals higher.

So the cookers basically jumped on the misrepresented news about that one split ticket in Southeast Metro and started spreading that ‘Sack Dan Andrews’ were preferencing Dan Andrews. Which is completely false anyway because Dan’s in the lower house where they didn’t even run, and of course in the upper house – unlike most lower house seats – the final seat in each region usually goes to a minor or micro party rather than the majors anyway which means even that split-ticket in Southeast Metro was meaningless because those preferences probably went to neither major party.

I should correct myself actually, it was less the cookers who latched onto that, but mostly Liberals who used it as a way to tell voters the only way to get rid of Dan is to vote Liberal and not independent/minor, because “they’re preferencing him”. Not that it worked!

On South-East Metro specifically, the 4th and 5th seats went to Legalise Cannabis and Liberal Democrats, so as expected that split-ticket was completely inconsequential because the distribution of their preferences never would have gone further than those two parties which they put higher than both the majors anyway.

ICYMI, I am sad to report that the new Member for Mulgrave, Eden Foster, has been diagnosed with stage 1 Lymphoma, a type of blood cancer. Thankfully she was diagnosed early and the prognosis is good. She said in a statement that she’s determined to fight and win this battle and would shortly start chemotherapy. She’s a truly tenacious and resilient woman.

I would like to send her my love and best wishes for a speedy recovery. I hope she can continue to represent the people of Mulgrave for as long as she likes.

@Joseph – That is very sad news. It’s encouraging to see she is ready to fight a horrible condition. Best wishes to her and I pray for a speedy recovery.

Best wishes for Eden Foster from myself as well. Hope she has a speedy recovery as well.

Best wishes to Eden Foster and hopefully she can recover quickly.

Is she running at the next election or is she too unwell?

She hasn’t said. Next election is due in 2 years so things could change but she should be able to run again in 2026 barring any preselection debacles.