Shannon Deery: Jacinta Allan, Jess Wilson both face real risk of losing their seats
Premier Jacinta Allan and Opposition Leader Jess Wilson face the very real possibility of losing their own seats in next year’s state election, in a shock result that would rewrite Victoria’s political history.
With Jess Wilson’s elevation to Opposition Leader, there’s been lots of talk about next year’s historic election – the first in Victoria with two women going head to head.
But the real historical potential could be this: both leaders of the two major political parties stand to lose their seats.
Now, it’s not the likeliest of scenarios. But it is a very real possibility, one being canvassed quite seriously by some senior figures in both the Labor and Liberal camps.
The very fragility of both Allan’s and Wilson’s positions is the much more profound story here.
Leaders can lose their seats, even powerful and popular ones. Australia’s eighth prime minister, Stanley Bruce. More recently John Howard lost his in 2007. NT chief minister Adam Giles was thrown out by his electorate in 2016.
In all cases, the leaders were part of governments who lost the election.
But in the Northern Territory, Country Liberal Party leader Goff Letts lost his seat in 1977 despite the CLP winning an easy majority.
Allan’s safe seat of Bendigo East, which she won from the Liberals in 1999 and has held since, might not be as safe as it seems.
She holds it with a healthy 12.1 per cent margin and won 48.3 per cent of first preferences at the last election. Not her best result, but hardly her worst in her six campaigns to date.
But cast your mind back to the Werribee by-election that sent shockwaves through Labor, despite the government narrowly holding onto the heartland seat.
Labor copped a massive 16.5 per cent swing against it – 10.2 per cent on a two-party preferred basis – which, if replicated in Bendigo East, would spell trouble for Allan.
Disgruntled voters could, like they did in Werribee, choose to send the Premier a personal message, frustrated with years of budget strain, cost blowouts and crime concerns.
She is carrying not just the burden of government but also the accumulated frustrations of a long Labor era.
If the Coalition decide to throw big money at the Bendigo East campaign, like the Nationals did at this year’s federal election, Allan would be up against it.
Bendigo publican Andrew Lethlean snared a swing of more than 8 per cent against Labor incumbent Lisa Chesters in the federal seat of Bendigo. It bucked a nationwide trend in support of the ALP.
Pollsters say if Allan gets the same result as Chesters, she will lose her seat 49 per cent to 51 per cent.
Lethlean is now being urged to throw his hat in the ring to tackle Allan, with a loss representing a wholesale rejection of her premiership.
If Allan’s risk is structural, Wilson’s is immediate.
She won her Kew seat with 53.98 per cent of the two-party preferred vote in 2022, despite an almost five per cent drop in the Liberal primary vote from the previous election.
She won just a few hundred votes more than the combined total of Labor’s Lucy Skelton and teal independent Sophie Torney.
If the teals mobilise, Wilson could find herself on the wrong side of the vote count next year.
The new profile that comes with being leader will help, as will the fact that despite being a first-term MP, Wilson has impressed with her nose-to-the-grindstone approach to electorate work.
She has had some local wins in her first three years in parliament, too, like successfully lobbying the government to have Andale School – one of Victoria’s smallest special schools – exempted from a new payroll tax hit on schools.
However, her boosted profile is a double-edged sword – every attack Labor launches statewide will land hardest in Kew.
A loss in Kew wouldn’t just be tragedy for Wilson, it would be a massive blow to the Liberals who have elevated her under the promise of generational renewal.
It is these once-blue ribbon seats the Liberals are now routinely struggling in, and opinion remains divided about whether they should focus their attention there or outer suburbs, as Brad Battin was doing.
Losing Kew would be a symbolic disaster and it would throw the Liberals back into the leadership chaos they insist they’ve left behind.
Allan’s danger is in the widespread dissatisfaction with Labor’s long rule. Wilson’s is in the untested Liberal rebuild.
If both survive, they will have earned their victories and their leaderships.
If either falls, Victoria’s political landscape will shift dramatically.
If both fall, it will rewrite the state’s political history.
Shannon Deery is state politics editor
Originally published as Shannon Deery: Jacinta Allan, Jess Wilson both face real risk of losing their seats
Opinion: Depressing decline of Melbourne’s iconic shopping strips
