By Corey Everitt
“Governments need to stop assuming there are safe seats” is what Cardinia Shire Mayor Jack Kowarzik said in a plea for the major parties to learn the lesson of the Werribee by-election by addressing the issues of voters in outer Melbourne.
Appearing this Friday 14 February on ABC Melbourne, Kowarzik spoke on behalf of advocacy group Outer Melbourne Councils (OMC) to state their view on the Werribee by-election.
The chair of OMC said the issues that affect Werribee apply to all residents on the urban fringe and pleaded with both Labor and Liberal to not take their issues for granted.
“I think the Government and the opposition won’t be properly learning the lessons of Werribee if they think those voter frustrations stop at the Ring Road and that is fair to say for both the State and Federal Government,” Kowarzik said.
OMC represents 10 councils that wrap around Melbourne from Werribee’s Wyndham City to Cardinia Shire.
Traffic congestion, infrastructure gaps, local jobs and overall quality of life were the matters Kowarzik raised regarding the 1.6 million people who live in outer Melbourne.
In Cardinia, 70 percent of residents travel outside the shire for work where many of which take a congested Monash Freeway to “Dandenong or even the city”.
“I think politicians need to stop assuming there are safe seats and respond better to voter concerns,” Kowarzik said.
“The impacts of growth are two-fold. Firstly, new residents rightly demand infrastructure, but also with those new residents, it means there are a lot of first-time voters in these seats, no one really knows who these people will vote for and that is certainly enough to swing any of those seats.”
The Werribee by-election saw an unprecedented collapse of the Labor Party’s vote in the seat they have held safely for decades.
Recording a 16.5 percent swing away, Labor’s primary could not break 30 percent where it was previously polled at 45 percent in 2022.
The South East is strongly Labor with the exception of opposition leader Brad Battin’s hold of Berwick.
Pakenham and Bass will be key seats to pick up for the Liberal Party in 2026 as they are held by margins of less than 0.5 percent.
Narre Warren North, Narre Warren South and Cranbourne are all held by 8 percent for Labor. That margin may not feel as comfortable after Werribee was taken from a safe 10 percent lead to a razor-thin margin that is still being determined almost a week later.
However, Kowarzik was referring to both parties because even though the by-election was held as a victory by the Liberal Party it was far from a mandate stating Werribee wanted them in office.
Rather, the Labor vote splintered across many small parties. The Liberals only recorded a 3.7 percent swing in first preferences.
The Victorian Socialist saw almost the same amount of votes move to them at 3.5 percent.
In total, parties outside Labor and Liberal recorded a primary vote of 41.9 percent.
This is a trend that continues on the Federal level with current opinion polls predicting a hung parliament for the upcoming election.
Roy Morgan recorded the Coalition’s primary vote bump up 2 percent after the Werribee and Prahran by-elections to 40.5 percent.
This is higher than their result in 2022, but if it were to occur it would still be one of their lowest primary votes in history.
The ALP sits at 29 percent, they won the 2022 election on their third-lowest primary vote in history at 32.6 percent.
Roy Morgan predicted 30 percent of the primary vote would move away from Labor and Liberal. In 2022, 31.7 voted for third parties.
