‘Ripped off’: Popular ex-mayor quits ALP to challenge for one of its safest seats

A popular former mayor has abandoned Labor and is now targeting one of its federal seats in Melbourne’s north, seeking to capitalise on disenfranchisement with the major parties she says ignore those suburbs.

Hume city councillor Carly Moore – a Labor-aligned three-time mayor – quit the ALP to run as an independent in Calwell, one of Labor’s safest seats in Victoria.

Three-times City of Hume mayor Carly Moore has quit the ALP to run as an independent in Calwell.Credit: Justin McManus

She says Melbourne’s outer north has long been treated as an afterthought by the major parties.

In a political climate where more voters are rejecting the major parties, Moore – who received 82 per cent of votes in her local ward at November’s council elections – believes she can shake the status quo in a similar vein to Dai Le, the western Sydney councillor who snatched the once-safe Labor seat of Fowler in 2022.

“I know this community well, and for too long, the electorate of Calwell has been neglected because it is a safe Labor seat, and has lacked the leadership our community needs and deserves,” Moore said.

She cited as an example the Albanese government’s announcement last month of $3.3 million for an urban development strategy for Broadmeadows, on the same day it committed $1 billion to a road upgrade in western Sydney.

“I am tired of feeling like my community has been ripped off,” she said.

Centred on the outer northern suburb of Craigieburn, Calwell has been one of Labor’s safest seats since its founding in 1984. Retiring MP Maria Vamvakinou – who has held the seat since 2001 – won it with a 12.4 per cent margin at the last election, though the party copped a 9.6 per cent drop in its primary vote.

Labor has since preselected Palestinian-Australian communications specialist Basem Abdo – a staffer for Vamvakinou – as its candidate for Calwell.

Craigieburn is synonymous with mortgage stress. In November, analysts S&P Global named it the suburb with the highest proportion of home owners in mortgage arrears in Australia.

The seat is also heavily religious, with 47.3 per cent of residents identifying as Christian and 23.8 per cent as Muslim – one of the highest percentages of any electorate in the country. Fifty-nine per cent of residents voted no in the marriage equality plebiscite, the highest no vote in Victoria.

The Greens have attacked Labor over its stance on the war in Gaza and are targeting the neighbouring northern suburb of Wills. Their candidate for Calwell, Mohamed El-Masri, has accused the major parties of betraying Muslim voters over Gaza.

But Moore, who voted yes on marriage equality, said she did not believe the war would influence voters in Calwell significantly.

“If you were to ask the people of Calwell what are their top issues, I don’t think it is Gaza,” she said.

“They’re facing some real challenges with being able to live a happy, ordinary life, so I think their priorities lie much closer to home. It’s about being able to feed their families, pay their bills, have their children get a good education and the medical attention they need.”

Despite quitting the ALP this week, Moore says she has “core Labor values”.

“I’m from a working-class family,” she said. “I’ve been raised in a working-class area. I value social justice, people having access to good education, people having access to the healthcare that they need, and those are the Labor Party’s core values.

“But I think they’ve deviated away from that a little bit.”

Before Abdo’s preselection, there had been unhappiness among local branch members who feared Labor would parachute in a candidate and deprive them of a choice.

Kos Samaras, a pollster with Redbridge and former Labor Party strategist, said Abdo was “a great candidate”.

But he said an independent could be successful in Calwell given the volatile state of the electorate, at a time when a significant portion of the Labor base felt abandoned.

“An independent like Dai Le is a serious threat to Labor in diverse electorates,” Samaras said.

“It is unknown whether an independent candidate from a white background could pull off the same in an environment where the Labor candidate is not some well off blow-in, but someone who lives in the area, has a mortgage in the area, and could be the first Palestinian Australian in parliament.”