The iron law of aromatics that explains why politicians are sweating on Victoria

You don’t hold a marginal seat for the best part of 20 years without picking up some survival skills. Jason Wood, the Liberal MP for La Trobe, says an important one is knowing when your party is on the nose.

Wood has been at this caper since 2004. In that time, he has won six elections and lost one. In some years, he has run with his party affiliation as little more than fine print on his campaign material. In others, he has been booster-in-chief for the Liberal brand.

Liberal MP Jason Wood back in 2022. Credit: Eddie Jim

The trick, he explains, is understanding public sentiment and campaigning accordingly. “When you know your party’s brand is bad you don’t use it,” he says.

It is timely advice for government MPs as they head into a campaign in which Victorian voters, and particularly those in Melbourne, will for two reasons have a decisive say in who forms the next federal government.

Iron law of aromatics

The first is basic maths. There are 22 federal electorates in metropolitan Melbourne and of these, the Liberal Party holds just two – Menzies and Deakin. For Coalition parties needing to pick up a whopping 19 seats to form majority government, greater Melbourne looms as a target-rich environment.

The second is the odour emanating from Victorian Labor.

If you think of national politics as a fridge, Victoria’s 10-year-old, debt-ridden state Labor government, led by a hand-me-down Premier in Jacinta Allan, is the packet of chicken someone left on a shelf weeks ago and forgot to cook.

Premier Jacinta Allan and her government may be a crucial factor in Victorians’ voting decisions this federal election. Credit: Penny Stephens

The smell won’t overpower the entire federal campaign but for anyone uncertain about whether to stick with federal Labor, it may be enough to put them off their meal.

For the sake of ascribing a numerical value to it, the last polls by Resolve Political Monitor published by this masthead had federal Labor’s share of the primary vote in Victoria at 24 per cent and state Labor’s at 22 per cent.

These figures are well below Labor’s internal polling and disputed by ALP strategists, who insist the situation is difficult in Victoria but not diabolical. They are also, most likely, out of date. Since the last national poll was published in February, Anthony Albanese has had one of his best patches as prime minister and Peter Dutton one of his more difficult since becoming opposition leader.

But if the Resolve results are close enough to share a postcode with current voter sentiment, Labor in Victoria is in all sorts of strife. Anthony Albanese won the 2022 election with 33 per cent primary share of the Victorian vote. Melbourne-born Bill Shorten lost in 2019 with 37 per cent.

Labor hardheads believe the best thing the party has going for it in Victoria is Peter Dutton.

The opposition leader isn’t as unpopular here as he used to be, but the ALP is convinced Victoria doesn’t want him to be the next prime minister. From an ALP perspective, this makes Dutton the great white hope for keeping Melbourne seats.

Labor is hoping Opposition Leader Peter Dutton is a positive for them in Victoria. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

This is why Labor has already revived a version of Mediscare, with a sharp focus on the role Dutton played as health minister during the short-lived Abbott government, when GP co-payments were announced – and later abandoned – and funding cut to Victorian public hospitals.

In Victoria, the federal election shapes as a choice between a party with a whiff about it and an Opposition Leader that only a mother could love. But beneath this less-than-inspiring take-out, there are fascinating plots and sub-plots to play out over the next five weeks.

Scaling the Red Wall

The three major issues here are the same as everywhere else – cost of living, cost of living and cost of living. Crime will get a cameo, schools, hospitals and childcare spending plenty of attention and Trades Hall Council will inflate an oversized Blinky, the three-eyed fish from The Simpsons, to lampoon Dutton’s plans for nuclear energy. But in the end, this campaign will never stray far from our hip pockets.

Credit: Matt Golding

The Liberal Party should pick up Aston, Chisholm and Dunkley without much ado. Aston is nominally Liberal and Chisholm and Dunkley are perennial marginals within Melbourne’s traditional east and south-east suburban electoral battleground. If the Liberal Party can’t win these three they can forget about the rest.

McEwen, a shifting, peri-urban electorate that straddles fast-growing Gisborne, newer, commuter estates in Doreen, Donnybrook and Wallan and tree-change hamlets in the Macedon Ranges, is also a forever marginal seat but one that Labor’s Rob Mitchell has held since 2010. If McEwen goes, it is a sign of more serious trouble for Labor.

It is notable that Albanese was campaigning in Donnybrook, a cluster of new housing estates off the Hume Highway in the heart of McEwen, the day before the federal Budget was handed down.

The prime minister campaigning in Donnybrook earlier this week. Credit: Chris Hopkins

If the swing is on, the Liberals could also pick up Bruce, a complex, melting pot electorate which starts in the blue-collar suburbs of Dandenong North and Doveton and finishes on the edge of Cranbourne.

The tripwire for genuine ALP alarm in Victoria is Hawke. Labor MP Sam Rae, the former state secretary with the jelly roll quiff, is in a nominally safe seat heading into this election. He is also on the fault line of a much bigger battle between the major parties for the votes of millions of people who live and work on the edges of our largest cities.

Hawke takes in Bacchus Marsh, Melton and Sunbury. If it changes hands, it will be the first brick removed from Labor’s great red wall stretching across Melbourne’s west and northern suburbs. If Hawke falls to the Liberals, Peter Dutton is well on his way to the Lodge.

Don’t mention the war

At the time of the 2021 Census, there were 46,645 people living in Victoria who identified as Jewish. Of these, 16,868 lived in the federal electorate of Macnamara, making it Melbourne’s most Jewish seat.

Wills MP Peter Khalil, who has held the seat since 2016, is defending his seat against the Greens. Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

If the social forces unleashed in Australia by the war in Gaza are felt in this federal election, one of the Victorian seats to watch is Macnamara, where Labor’s Josh Burns is in an unpredictable, three-way contest with the Greens and the Liberal Party. The other is Wills, where the Greens, the Socialist Alliance and other left-wing activists are seeking to channel anti-Israel sentiment against Labor MP Peter Khalil.

There is a twist to both these stories.

The Albanese government has disappointed much of Jewish Australia since the October 7 attacks, but Burns, one of three Jewish Labor MPs, has been a staunch advocate for Jewish communities.

Khalil is an Arabic-speaking former geopolitical analyst with a deep understanding of the Middle East conflict. Two generations of his family fought in wars against Israel. He is being targeted less for his personal views than the uber-progressive electorate he holds.

Teals rediscover roots

If the Teal movement has its origins in the successful Voices of Indi campaigns run by Cathy McGowan, it is going back to the future in Victoria, where Climate 200-backed candidates are having a crack at Wannon in the western district, Flinders on the Mornington Peninsula and Monash further along the Bass coast.

Liberal member for Wannon Dan Tehan (left) and independent candidate Alex Dyson.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen, Supplied

The Liberals are talking up their chances of clawing back Kooyong and Goldstein, the seats lost to teal MPs Monique Ryan and Zoe Daniel in 2022, but the sleeper is Wannon, where second-generation Liberal MP Dan Tehan is spending big to defend his seat against a similarly cashed-up challenger, triple J radio personality Alex Dyson. Like his household namesake, Dyson has sucked up a lot of advertising and media space and is considered a serious contender.

In Monash, a six-way contest between another second generation Liberal in Mary Aldred, ex-Liberal incumbent Russell Broadbent, Labor, the Greens, the Nationals and teal candidate Deb Leonard makes it anyone’s guess – and that’s before you factor in the political fallout from Dutton’s planned nuclear reactor at the nearby Loy Yang power station.

The only sure bet is that Blinky will make an appearance.

Follow our live coverage of the 2025 federal election here.