How a Labor power play turned Calwell into Australia’s most unpredictable seat

A messy Labor preselection in Calwell is behind a tight four-cornered election contest that has made the previously safe ALP seat impossible to predict, as two independents remain in the race despite having primary votes of just 12 per cent.

The Australian Electoral Commission says counting for the seat, in Melbourne’s outer north-west, might drag on until June, calling it “one of the most complex distributions of preferences we’ve ever done”.

Labor’s Basem Abdo is facing a nervous wait in Calwell in Melbourne’s outer north-west.

Labor’s Calwell candidate, Basem Abdo, is facing a nervous wait because his three closest challengers, two independents and a Liberal, have all preferenced each other above the ALP and put the party’s hold on the electorate at risk.

Abdo received 30.6 per cent of the primary vote, a 14.2 swing against the ALP compared with 2022.

A massive splintering of votes in Calwell has led to an unusual situation in which independents Carly Moore and Joseph Youhana are both in the running to take the seat despite relatively low first-preference votes. Both candidates ran seeking to capitalise on frustrations with the intervention of Labor’s national executive to preselect Abdo.

The fragmented result has forced the AEC to embark on a recount of preferences across the seat, where 40 per cent of the primary vote went to candidates other than Labor, Liberal, One Nation or the Greens.

Staff are relying on pens, papers and calculators to work through the complicated flow of votes, and counting may continue into next week.

Tally Room election analyst Ben Raue said he had never experienced a count like that in Calwell.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen a race like this, where the third and the fourth candidates look like they could win. And I don’t know which of them it is,” he said.

This masthead spoke to six sources, speaking anonymously to detail internal discussions, who said the unusual situation was created by a 9.6 per cent swing against Labor in 2022 and backlash about the party’s preselection process late last year.

A group of party members wrote to ALP national secretary Paul Erickson last year threatening to quit unless they were involved in selecting the Calwell candidate, after hearing departing MP Maria Vamvakinou had already picked Abdo, one of her staff, as her replacement.

These ructions were heightened in November when Prime Minister Anthony Albanese asked the ALP’s national executive to intervene and manage preselections for Labor-held seats in Victoria, rather than allowing local branches and the party’s office selection committee to vote for candidates.

The move sparked complaints because the federal election was the first opportunity for local members to exercise their power to select candidates since the party had been taken out of a long-running administration. The ALP national executive has intervened in state and federal preselections in Victoria since 2018.

Moore, a Labor-aligned three-time mayor whose sister had been seeking party preselection in Calwell, quit the ALP to run as an independent after Abdo’s candidacy was confirmed, and attracted 12.1 per cent of the primary vote.

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

Two sources said her campaign had been supported by disaffected members of the ALP’s Craigieburn branch.

“This has been a safe Labor seat for over 40 years and to see such major swings away from the major parties shows the frustration in the electorate after decades of neglect by Labor – with over one in two people in Calwell voting for a candidate not from the major parties,” Moore said.

The four-cornered nature of the contest was also partly made possible because of the seat’s ethnic and religious diversity.

Abdo, who like 24 per cent of the electorate in the 2021 census is Muslim, could become the first Palestinian-Australian elected to federal parliament.

But coverage of his preselection prompted a rebuke from Australia’s Assyrian, Chaldean and Syriac Organisations, who said Iraq was one of the top countries of birth for migrants in the electorate and the second-highest country of birth for parents of residents, after Australia.

In a joint statement released in June 2024, the three groups said more than 36,500 residents, nearly 20 per cent of Calwell’s population, speak Arabic, Assyrian, Chaldean or Syriac at home.

“While political parties are free to select their own candidates, doing so without considering the views and aspirations of large and important parts of the community demonstrates a lack of respect and understanding,” they said at the time.

Independent Joseph Youhana told The Age he joined the race to represent this community as well as in frustration over Labor’s preselection process. He gained 11.7 per cent of the primary vote.

“Whether we get it there or not, it will never be a safe seat any more,” he said.

Outgoing Labor MP for Calwell Maria Vamvakinou.Credit: Alex Ellinghausen

“Now we have the people behind us, Labor in any elections will need to be carefully selecting their members who will be standing for [them].”

Youhana and Moore ran third and fourth on primary votes but, because they have encouraged voters to preference each other highly on how-to-vote cards, one of them is now likely to move to second above the Liberals and have a chance of beating Labor.

Whoever comes fourth is expected to see most of their votes flow towards the other independent, vaulting them into second spot, where Liberal preferences would then be distributed.

Liberal candidate Usman Ghani preferenced both independents above Labor.

Liberal candidate for Calwell Usman Ghani last month with Peter Dutton and Senator Bridget McKenzie.Credit: James Brickwood

Three sources, one Liberal and two outside the party, confirmed that Liberal MP Evan Mulholland, from Victoria’s state upper house, was involved in negotiating several independent candidates’ preferences towards each other, which has kept them in the race.

“Because the independents and Liberals have shut out Labor, Abdo is facing a challenge to get the extra 20 per cent of the vote he needs to win,” one source said.

In an example of the backlash Labor has faced in Calwell, even the Greens – which typically preference Labor in most elections – placed Youhana higher than Abdo on their how-to-vote cards.

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