Victorian state election 2018: Liberal Party withdraws from key inner-city seat
THE Liberal Party will not run a candidate in the seat of Richmond and are set to have open tickets in three other inner-city seats, paving the way for a Greens and Labor showdown.
Victoria State Election
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THE Liberal Party has abandoned the seat of Richmond at the November 24 election but will run candidates in three other inner-city seats that are effectively Labor-Green contests.
A decision signed off by Opposition Leader Matthew Guy will see Liberal candidates put forward in Brunswick, Melbourne and Northcote, but the party may not direct preferences to other parties in what is known as an “open ticket”.
The decision may boost the Greens vote in those seats, and particularly in Richmond where Andrews Government Planning Minister Richard Wynne is clinging to a narrow margin.
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Greens Richmond candidate Kathleen Maltzahn said the seat was now a true contest between the two parties.
“We have seen that before Labor has had to rely on Liberal preferences but now it will absolutely just be a contest between Labor and the Greens,” she said.
“It is going to be tremendously close, especially without the Liberal party propping up the ALP.”
Talks between the Liberals and the ALP had stalled over preference deals, which were central to whether the party fielded candidates.
Labor strategists had offered to preference the Coalition in the seats of Benambra, Ovens Valley and South-West Coast in return for preferences in Richmond, Northcote, Brunswick, Melbourne and Pascoe Vale.
The Liberals also sought preferences in Shepparton, where the Coalition is trying to win the regional seat back from independent Suzanna Sheed, but that was rejected.
Some Liberals had claimed that unless Labor changed its position there was a serious prospect the only party candidate in the inner-Melbourne seats would be in Pascoe Vale.
The four other seats in dispute are Labor-Greens contests, while Pascoe Vale is shaping as a battle between former ALP mayor-turned independent Oscar Yildiz and ALP MP Lizzie Blandthorn.
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One senior Labor source said “there has never been a circumstance where the Liberal Party has not run in every seat” and if it abandoned inner Melbourne it would help the Greens.
But one senior Liberal said Mr Guy was leading a law and order campaign and had little to fear from attacks about the Greens.
Liberal campaign director Nick Demiris released a statement on Wednesday outlining candidates for all other seats.
He said the choice was “a stable, majority Liberal Nationals Coalition government, or the chaos and dysfunction of a Labor-Greens alliance”.
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