Victorian election
Political junkies will be interested in this article from The Age and will recognise the significance it holds for the seat of Morwell, which includes Traralgon where I grew up.
Several high-profile members of the Traralgon ALP branch have quit the party and one, Lisa Proctor, will stand as an independent and direct preferences to the Nationals.
Another who resigned, Derek Amos, formerly held the seat for Labor. Apparently the current Member doesn’t live in the electorate.
I met Proctor when I was consulting for Pauls and she struck me as an impressive lady. As a Latrobe councillor she was a fierce advocate for Traralgon. I had no idea she was a member of the ALP until reading The Age article.
I’m pretty sure she would have been opposed to Traralgon’s forced amalgamation by Jeff Kennett with Morwell and Moe to form Latrobe. That was probably one of the worst amalgamations in the state and it caused a lot of bitterness in Traralgon, which had a strong identity as the capital of Gippsland that has now been devalued.
The Nationals candidate in Morwell is Russell Northe, a relatively young man who lives in Morwell and formerly played football for Traralgon. He’s a good candidate and can be expected to poll between 15 and 20 per cent. If it’s at the higher end he could win the seat.
Assuming the Liberals are ousted first in the preference count, either Northe or Proctor will win on the other’s preferences if the Labor primary vote is restricted to less than 45 per cent.
That will be a significant blow for Labor in a working class industrial heartland.
The possibility of Bracks losing the election is remote, but it now appears possible.
For the Nationals, if they happen to win Morwell and Benambra, where sitting Upper House member Bill Baxter is running after the long-serving Liberal MP Tony Plowman retired, it would be their best result for decades.
Preferences have to be finalised this weekend and there’s talk that Labor and the Liberals will do a deal to freeze out the Greens and Nationals. I think the only seat where the Nats will need Labor preferences is Shepparton, although pundits have mentioned Rodney, Swan Hill and leader Peter Ryan’s Gippsland South electorate as well.
Labor appears vulnerable to the Greens in a couple of inner city seats, so they would clearly benefit from Liberal preferences.
It’s shaping to be a much more fascinating election than first thought.
I'm a 41-year-old father of four working as a newspaper editor at Mount Gambier in South Australia.
