Werribee by-election, 2025

@Mick moderate Liberals are not “left”, they are right-leaning centrists.

Not a good result for Labor here but not all good news for the Libs either. They were unable to harness much of the anti-Labor swing. It shows that an anti-Labor campaign won’t necessarily translate to comfortable Lib victories.

John Lister’s lead has increased from 441 votes to 593 votes after counting another 2230 postals today.

Only around 1500 issued postals are yet to be returned, I assume most of them won’t be received with the deadline being tomorrow, so this should seal a Labor retain now.

This will help Labor retain the seat in 2026 I think because the byelection was likely the best chance for the Liberals to gain it, it will likely swing at least a little bit back towards Labor at a general election. Labor also have a chance to demonstrate that they are prioritising the west / Werribee over the next 18 months to make it feel like John Lister is delivering.

This whole result is incredibly embarrassing for the Liberals. They clearly put effort in yet failed to win in such a winnable seat, that they targeted as part of Battin’s strategy. Prahran at least is a bright spark for them.

Liberals really, and I stress really, should have gone with Rajan Chopra. He would have done well among the large Indian/South Asian community here.

The issue is now Labor will have to properly dedicate resources and announcements towards Melbourne’s north and west otherwise they will lose and that makes seats in Melbourne’s east like Box Hill or Ashwood more vulnerable especially if there is a pause or cancellation of SRL.

ABC has also called this seat for Labor.

I think the Liberals would rather have won Werribee than Prahran, because they would have had more chance of holding it in 2026 and therefore it would have counted more towards the 17 seats they need to win to form government (16 on paper now but realistically 17 if you exclude Prahran).

If the Liberals won Werribee, it would have put them in a good position where even if Labor then went hard on focusing on delivering for Werribee over the next 18 months, that could risk translating into a perception of “Wow see what happens when we elect a Liberal? Stuff gets done!” And if Labor don’t invest in & deliver for Werribee, then Steve Murphy wouldn’t get the blame because Labor are still in government, so it would be win-win for the Liberals.

However, John Lister winning means Labor have 18 months to deliver some investment into Werribee that John Lister can take the credit for, and along with incumbency and not having the heightened swing of a byelection, they’re in a good position to retain and pad their margin by another few % in 2026.

Prahran gives them a nice media narrative out of the byelections but really no long term benefit since the nature of the win indicated that the seat remains no more winnable for them at a general election than it was in 2018.

Obviously last election protecting marginal seats worked.
For the liberals to win should they fail to win the marginal seats and the middle range seats eg Carrum or Bentleigh
Must then win seats like Weribee which they cannot hold.
This along with their lack of Success in
Bendigo Ballarat and Geelong means they have not got a long term prospect despite what the opinion polls say.
This is similar to what happened 2010 to 2014

Compare the situation.of the Kennet Govt to now

I actually think slightly differently Trent.

John Lister is a former staffer of Tim Pallas. Labor are unlikely to deliver anything for Werribee before 2026, continuing their tradition of ignoring the west.

This gives liberals a better chance to win the seat than they had in the by-election, and next time they can possibly field a candidate that lives in the seat.

Lister as a candidate is a complete flop, just like Murphy was. The anger in the west isn’t going away before 2026.

Either way, will be interesting to watch.

There has to be some sort of process within both major parties to engage the community in preselection. The reason why the Liberals didnt win Werribee was their candidate and the reason they did win Prahran was their candidate. It is such an important factor and can swing so many votes, something needs to change so the Liberals dont stuff up again like they did in Werribee

I don’t want to defend Steve Murphy too much, but I saw an interview the Friday before the election where he explained that he:

* Lived in the area until 2020
* Moved to Essendon during lockdowns to be within 5kms of his adult children
* Had worked as a public servant in the area (teacher or cop IIRC) now has a real estate business in Werribee.

If that is true, then he is a local forced out by Dan’s lockdowns who retains links to the area. A good party machine would have made this into a positive story rather than let it fester. I think that is the Liberals biggest issue, the party machine is just so poor.

We already know that there are two things which will happen between now and 2026 which will at least indirectly benefit Werribee: the end of major roadworks on the Westgate, and the opening of the Metro Tunnel (which will presumably allow additional Werribee line services; I’m surprised they didn’t use the campaign for an announcement there). I wouldn’t underestimate the first of these in particular; in 2022 Labor held Pakenham when no-one expected them to, and I don’t think it was a coincidence that major Monash roadworks were finished a few weeks before election day.

Given that by-election swings usually at least partially unwind in the next general election, I would expect Labor to hold Werribee in 2026 unless their statewide position deteriorates significantly further (say, a 46-54 loss or worse).

If I was Brad Battin, I would be cracking heads in the Western Suburbs and Western Victoria generally.

The Metro Tunnel opening will no doubt help Labor defend their sub-7% margin in Sunbury as well.

I tend to agree with BT that if the Liberals didn’t pick up Werribee at the byelection, they’d be a bit less favoured to do so at the 2026. It’ll still be a seat to watch that could go either way, but I think Labor would be favoured to hold it.

Looks like my prediction was close enough (it’s pretty close to 1% margin now). If the Liberals couldn’t win this seat in this by-election when Labor is hugely unpopular, then it’s hard to see them have any chance at this seat next year as Labor will be the incumbent and have the upper hand with their projects and investments, not to mention if they actually pay attention to the ‘West’ and do something about the infrastructure and services.

I mean, the LNP won Ipswich West last year on a bigger swing against a bigger margin in QLD, yet they lost it when the LNP swooped to power. This suggests to me that even if the Liberals get a shot in power it most likely won’t be a path through Werribee or any outer western seats apart from Melton perhaps.

Don’t think the libs can win with
a right wing leader ever

There’s good reason to believe that it was a huge “send a message” swing and chance to make their voices heard without changing the government. It did give Labor a scare and a run for their money with the 10% swing. Tim Pallas’s vote held up in 2022 relative to most other seats west and north of the Yarra so a major swing was imminent.

If this were a general election, the swing would probably be smaller and the result most likely, would’ve been declared on election night. I agree with comments above that this was the Liberals’ best chance of picking up a “red wall” seat and it would be trickier next time as resources would be spread more thinly.

The issue for Labor is that by November 2026, their overall western suburbs support might drop even more and Werribee would be caught up in the decline. There are infrastructure projects that’ll come online, namely Metro Tunnel and West Gate Tunnel, that could be the saving grace.

Given the big swing towards Paul Hopper, I think he would be more likely to win in 2026 than the Liberals. If he made the 2CP count Labor would be in trouble I think. Although I expect Labor’s vote to increase relative to the byelection so they should be safe.

Based on a 10% byelection swing here and West Gate Tunnel opening this year, I can see the Liberals getting 2PP swings averaging 6-7% range across the outer west & north, except Werribee will probably swing back about 3% to Labor (making it a -7% swing from 2022 as well).

That’ll gain them Melton and Yan Yean but not much else in that region. Sunbury’s 6.4% margin will probably be saved by the Metro Tunnel.

That will make the Liberals’ path to government more difficult because I think the 7%+ margins in seats like Box Hill will be harder to erase, as will the 8%+ in the sandbelt, and while Battin will have a good advantage in the seats that surround Berwick (Narre & Cranbourne), those 9%+ margins will be too much to overcome, especially since like Sunbury they will be the main beneficiaries of the Metro Tunnel.

Prahran will go back to the Greens, which also resets the Libs’ requirement to be 17 seats gained, and I think Hawthorn will be vulnerable because Pesutto’s personal vote (boosted by the promise of him becoming leader) was a big factor in his narrow 2022. If someone like Rob Baillieu runs as an IND, he could very well beat Pesutto (if Pesutto even recontests).

If the Liberals had flipped Werribee by the same margin as Prahran, I’d still be more surprised by Prahran. Werribee showed that people were deserting Labor but weren’t running to the Liberals in droves. There was a primary vote increase for the Liberals but way more went to Hopper. The other votes scattered around to the Greens, VIC Socialists and various other candidates. The allocation of preferences was messy and could make or break Labor’s ability to retain.

I also think Hawthorn would be vulnerable if a strong independent runs. This is because Labor will run dead. Last time, an incumbent Labor MP and an independent split the non-Liberal vote.

I don’t understand how some are mentioning the westgate tunnel as a vote winner.

It’s a terrible project and when it opens and makes no difference, that’s not going to bring votes to Labor.

@Mark, just the 10 years of construction on the West Gate Fwy finally finishing will be a positive for a lot of people who use it daily.

Not when there’s no difference to traffic flow and the budget blowouts are causing other services to be cut.

It was supposed to be finished over 2 years ago. The government doesn’t have any goodwill left out here in the west.

The West Gate tunnel was the western end of the cross city tunnel – cancelled at vast cost by Daniel Andrews. It will just dump a lot of traffic into North Melbourne. It is quite possible that population growth in the western suburbs has outstripped the traffic projections and there won’t be much improvement after a year or so. How many times have they widened the Monash? More capacity but no great improvement.

I definitely agree that in general, road projects have a short lived benefit. The whole endless “one more lane will fix it” as traffic is induced.

I think the money from both West Gate Tunnel and North East Link would have been better spent elsewhere. That said, WGT at least adds another river crossing.

But I agree that better PT coverage in the west would have a bigger impact on reducing traffic (and that also involves better urban planning so people live near the PT).

Politically I think it’s too hard for Labor to back out of SRL East since it’s already started, will look like desperation, and will hurt them in the seats it runs through like Box Hill and Glen Waverley.

But, I think it would be very smart for federal Labor – whose budget is in better shape than state Labor – to announce in partnership with Allan that they will fast track SRL West to occur before SRL North, and for federal Labor to match what they have contributed to SRL East, on the condition they also fast track the airport rail.

SRL West will be much cheaper than SRL East because it runs the a far less developed area and most of it can be elevated. Airport Rail actually forms part of the SRL anyway as it’s the link between Sunshine and Airport.

So bundling the two together makes a lot of sense because all in one go, you link Werribee, Sunshine, the airport and the new Metro Tunnel all together creating so much more connectivity in the west, and all of that will probably be cheaper and faster than SRL East.

SRL West waiting for SRL North to happen first really makes no sense and is why SRL still feels like some pie in the sky “won’t be done in my lifetime” project, because SRL North is another expensive 15 year tunnel project like SRL East is.

Really, federal funding for SRL West / Airport to be fast tracked could mean that instead of only SRL East being done by 2035, that by the time that’s done only the missing link between the airport and Box Hill still needs completing.

I think that would save a lot of seats in the outer west / north at both federal and state level.

I don’t think people oppose the SRL in principle, they don’t like the idea that only the eastern suburbs which are already so well serviced will see any benefit by 2035 (at a huge cost) and the rest seems like it will never be done. SRL West can provide a quicker win.

Labor likely in trouble if Hopper goes around again in 2026 and the libs put up the proper desired candidate

Something we saw here which I suspect will happen in a lot of western/northern suburbs seats is that although the non-major vote is large, it’s split across too many candidates for any one of them to seriously challenge to get into the 2CP. This is accentuated because these sites are likely to have a significant vote for both left- and right-wing minor parties (which in an outer suburban context includes the Greens), and a lot of voters for those parties will probably preference a major ahead of minors on the “other” side (in particular, you’d expect large numbers of Green/Socialist/Legalise Cannabis voters to prefer Labor ahead of One Nation or the like). An independent with good name recognition can get around that, but it’s hard to get that name recognition in a suburban seat unless you’re already well known (or have a lot of money behind you), especially as suburban media is more or less extinct and in a general election individual seats won’t get much attention from major media outlets.

(clarification: I meant here that in the outer suburbs the Greens are a minor party, not that they’re right-wing).

The danger with the splintering is that the major parties will start to back – they may already be doing so – ‘dummy’ candidates to act as preference feeders. This is fundamentally dishonest and cynical and does put the system in disrepute. There will be an unacceptable electoral event at some stage – maybe not 2025 – that will force change – not dissimilar to the end of Group Voting Tickets – except of course in the Peoples Democratic Republic of Jacintastan.

I tend to think a couple of things here.

I wouldn’t assume that we at the low point of the current Governments popularity. I also think the 2022 margins are a bit inflated, so if the Liberals can come up with a reasonable plan for the West then margins upwards of 10% are not insurmountable. Also, the volatility in not just Australian but western politics generally is off the charts.

I also don’t think large scale projects like West Gate Tunnel are necessarily a vote winner – I tend to think smaller scale projects (think more trains or PSO’s in PT) are better- cheaper for a start so you can do a lot of them, and are more tied to current needs, WGT is almost certain to be inadequate for the traffic required at opening.

@Mostly Labor Voter – Things like PSOs (and more train services) tend to be recurrent spending that on PT the feds tend to shy away from – instead they contribute to capital projects, leaving operating funding to the states. But I like the concept of some sort of deal from Labor where the feds fund infrastructure and state funds service (eg trains every 10 min to Werribee, Craigieburn, Mernda & Ringwood) they could sell as a partnership.