Steve Bracks answer’s Labor’s call for help in Higgins

Labor issued a plea for help in one of the country’s most closely fought seats - and someone who turned up to help will need no introduction to voters.

The Labor Party has flooded the Melbourne seat of Higgins after polling showed the party was in reach of snatching a seat which has been the territory of Liberal royalty for more than 70 years.

Victoria’s popular former Labor premier Steve Bracks was one who answered the call to campaign in the electorate after Labor issued a call-out for volunteers last week to doorknock and hand out vote-to-vote cards at pre-poll booths in the inner-suburban seat.

Polling has shown Labor’s candidate Michelle Ananda-Rajah is a strong chance to knock off the Liberal incumbent, Katie Allen, who won the seat in 2019.

Former premier Steve Bracks.

Both are strong, high-achieving candidates, both are highly-qualified medical doctors, and both have big teams behind them, making the battle for the seat, which covers some of Melbourne’s wealthiest suburbs including Toorak and Prahran, one of the most interesting in the campaign.

The seat was targeted by the Greens in 2016 and by Labor in 2019, with the ALP clawing the margin back but failing to win at the last election when Kelly O’Dwyer resigned from politics.

Dr Allen won it on a margin of 3.7 per cent but her margin has since been cut in a boundary redistribution to a notional 2.6 per cent.

Former Australian prime minister Harold Holt. Source: National Archives of Australia

Higgins adjoins Kooyong, where Liberal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg is in the fight of his political life with Climate 200-backed “teal” independent Monique Ryan.

Labor is now pouring hundreds of thousands of dollars and dozens of volunteers into Higgins in the belief it is a strong chance to topple Dr Allen.

Higgins Labour Candidate Michelle Ananda-Rajah.

Federal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg and Member for Higgins Katie Allen.

Higgins was gazetted in 1949 and was held by Liberal Prime Minister Harold Holt from its inception until he disappeared in 1967 while swimming near the seaside resort town of Portsea.

A swimming centre, named apparently without irony in his honour, is still within the seat.

The next incumbent of Higgins was Sir John Gorton, who replaced Mr Holt as Prime Minister. Sir John held it, first as a Liberal, then as an independent, until 1975.

Australia’s longest-serving treasurer, Peter Costello, also held the seat for 19 years and seven elections, until he retired from politics in 2009, two years after the Liberals lost to Kevin Rudd under prime minister John Howard.

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Originally published as Steve Bracks answer’s Labor’s call for help in Higgins