The pressure is on for Peter Dutton to win the seat of Dunkley, unless he wants to make history in all the wrong ways.
When the Liberals lost the vote for Aston last April, it was the first time an opposition had been defeated by a government in a federal by-election in more than a century. Losing two in a row, in the span of a year, would be unheard of.
By Sunday afternoon we’ll know who the Liberal Party will nominate as its challenger for the Victorian seat. Three candidates are up for preselection that day, Crikey understands: Frankston Mayor Nathan Conroy, former local state MP Donna Hope, and former local state parliamentary candidate Bec Buchanan.
A fourth candidate, David Burgess, is understood to have dropped out of the race.
A Victorian Liberal source told Crikey Conroy, a three-term mayor, and Hope are seen as most likely to win the nomination. Dutton, the opposition Leader, is not expected to weigh into the process.
Labor on Thursday named Jodie Belyea as its candidate for Dunkley, an outer Melbourne seat on the Mornington Peninsula that was vacated following the death of Labor MP Peta Murphy from breast cancer, aged 50.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said he had personally supported Belyea’s candidacy and said she had been recruited to the Labor Party by Murphy after she and Belyea met through their work for a community organisation.
“Peta was always on the lookout for other local champions, and in Jodie, she has found one. Jodie is someone who will be an outstanding representative for this community here in Dunkley,” Albanese said at Belyea’s campaign launch.
As is common in by-election campaigns, both sides are seeking to portray themselves as underdogs. The Liberals will have to choose a good candidate and mount a strong campaign to overcome a 6% Labor margin, the party source who spoke to Crikey said.
The likely Liberals all have strong local name recognition, unlike Labor’s candidate, the source said. However, they acknowledged Belyea’s ties to Murphy would be a boost for her.
Pollster and RedBridge Group chief executive Kos Samaras previously told Crikey the government’s chances of retaining Dunkley would depend on whether or not the local community felt like sending Labor a message of protest.
“By-elections are largely about casting protest votes — because the outcome is not going to determine who’s in government, it’s a matter of, ‘do I send the government a message or not?’” he said.
The seat has changed hands between Labor and the Liberals several times since the 1980s, most recently in 2019 when Murphy won it on a 2.7% margin, which she increased to 6.3% in 2022.
The by-election date hasn’t been set, but it’s expected it’ll occur sometime in February or March.
Coupled with his brain f@rt call to boycott Woolies because they’ve decided to stop selling jingoistic Chinese made Australiana tat (all destined for landfill in an instant) for the simple reason that they no longer sell, a loss in Dunkley will not augur well for Dutton.
It’s clear he’s making a play to the rusted ons and for One Nation voters in Queensland (whose votes come back to the LNP via preferences anyway). It’s is likely to play completely the wrong way in seats he needs to win, such as Dunkley, and those held by the Teals. One has to wonder if he’s actively trying to stop a return by a Frydenberg, or a Wilson, or a Falinski (Sharma has been neatly removed from the equation by being booted to the Senate) and creating a situation where any likely challenger can’t get back into Parliament. Which leaves us with the prospect of Ley, or Taylor, or Hastie rolling him eventually. I shall stop now, my sides are starting to hurt.
He’s doing what he was always destined to do, and providing a further proof (as Abbott and Morrison so clearly did) of the Peter principle.
Classic conservative, offers nothing on substantial issues like duopoly and prices but happy to engage in culture war and start dictating what nationalistic paraphernalia a supermarket should carry.
Tend to agree, going all the way and being manipulated into partisanship on The Voice, may have played to the regional &/or oldies’ vote, but may have harmed the LNP in urban electorates, esp Melbourne, Sydney etc..
Yeah Jackson, Dutton’s call to cancel Woolies blowing up in his face was a knee slapper. BTW, Frydenberg has pretty much ruled himself out of contesting Kooyong. A wise decision considering the Liberals are doing nothing to increase their appeal to professional women, or disaffected former Liberal voters in the Teal seats. Furthermore, more rusted-on Libs will have died between 2022 and 2025 and been replaced with a younger demographic. See below.
https://www.smh.com.au/politics/federal/surgeon-throws-hat-in-the-ring-to-take-on-ryan-in-kooyong-20231212-p5eqxj.html
Can we please call them female professionals instead of professional women? What qualification do you need to be a professional woman rather than an amateur woman? Is that like a professional athlete, or an amateur athlete, where you’re paid to be an athlete or not, so women are paid to be women or not?
Point taken Psycho. Female professionals is a better name for that category of voters. Language matters.
“[Aston] was the first time an opposition had been defeated by a government in a federal by-election in more than a century.” Well, no; it was the first time an opposition had lost one of its own seats to the government. Dunkley isn’t an opposition-held seat in the first place, so it wouldn’t be “two in a row” in that sense: governments usually hold their own seats in by-elections.
Fair point
The test of Dunkley will be whether people are feeling angry enough over the economic pain they are feeling. It’s a mortgage area, so high interest rates and inflation will be dominating the conversation. Expect migration to get an airing as the Libs will try to dog whistle to see if it gets any traction (given the LNP are Big Australia proponents, racism is all they have).
Pity James Campbell’s wife Roshena isn’t having another go….. to watch him ducking being included in PR photo-ops.
Toxic Dutton is likely to be asked to stay away.