Dunkley byelection called for Saturday March 2

Voters will decide a crucial federal byelection on March 2 after officials named the date for the contest in the Melbourne electorate of Dunkley, setting up a test of Labor’s support in the community when it has lost ground in the opinion polls.

The Speaker of the House of Representatives, Milton Dick, set the byelection date in a statement on Friday morning that also said local constituents would have until February 5 to enrol to vote.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaking at the memorial for Peta Murphy. Credit: Eddie Jim

The byelection in Melbourne’s outer bayside community, forced by the death of Labor MP Peta Murphy in December, will shape the political agenda this year when Labor is preparing new policies on the cost of living for the federal budget in May.

Labor has selected teacher and businesswoman Jodie Belyea as its candidate, while the Liberals have chosen Frankston Mayor Nathan Conroy.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has made healthcare a key issue at the start of the Dunkley campaign by joining Belyea on Thursday at a new Urgent Care Clinic in Frankston, funded under Labor’s $250 million election promise to set up clinics that relieve pressure on hospital emergency wards.

Labor is also emphasising the $1.1 billion upgrade of the Frankston Hospital as well as federal policies to give GPs a bigger financial incentive to treat patients under the Medicare bulk-billing system without adding additional fees.

“You are going to see me campaigning on the cost of living, health and Medicare and affordable housing,” Belyea said on January 11.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton has suggested that sympathy for Labor over Murphy’s death would give the government an advantage.

“We’ve got a tough few weeks ahead of us. I believe that we can get there, but this is a tough byelection because of the circumstances – the tragic circumstances – that give rise to it,” he said last Sunday.

The Liberals are counting on a protest vote to improve their chances after they lost ground in Dunkley at the federal election.

“This is an opportunity for people in Dunkley, for Victorians, to send a very clear message to the prime minister that he’s not doing the right thing when it comes to their family budgets,” Dutton said.

“I think the people of Dunkley will be sending a clear message to Anthony Albanese that $450 million on the Voice – which distracted him from making the decisions to help people with their cost of living pressures – is not going to be rewarded.”

The political test will be decided just days before Albanese welcomes regional leaders to Melbourne for a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations from March 4 to 6, an event that could have overshadowed the Dunkley campaign if the byelection were held later in the month.

Labor defied history last year to win a byelection in the Melbourne electorate of Aston, a moment when a sitting government won a seat from an opposition at a byelection for the first time in a century.

Electorate of Dunkley

• The bayside seat covers 153 sq km in Melbourne’s south-east.
• A byelection triggered by the death of Labor MP Peta Murphy in December will be held on March 2. 
• The seat – which centres around Frankston but includes Mount Eliza to the south and Seaford and Carrum Downs to the north – was created in 1984. It was named after Louisa Dunkley, a feminist and union leader who campaigned for equal pay for women before dying in 1927. 
• The seat’s suburbs of Frankston, Langwarrin and Carrum Downs are heavily mortgaged areas where families have more cars than the national average, are less culturally diverse than most marginal electorates and have a lower-than-average proportion of households on $3000+ weekly incomes.
• The federal Liberals have held the seat in nine out of the past 14 elections. But the retirement of long-serving Liberal MP Bruce Billson and the subsequent redrawing of electoral boundaries allowed Labor to gain ground.
• Murphy won the seat in 2019 and retained it at the last federal election with an increased majority.
• Labor holds the seat by a 6.3 per cent margin. However, party officials expect a swing against them following mortgage rises and a dip in the prime minister’s popularity.

Labor candidate Mary Doyle gained a swing of 6.4 per cent in two-party terms to win Aston with 53.6 per cent of the vote.

Labor holds Dunkley with 56.3 per cent of the vote in two-party terms but the Liberals held the electorate from 1996 to 2019.

ABC election analyst Antony Green estimated on Tuesday that the average anti-government swing in all byelections since Federation was “a little under 4 per cent” but there were bigger swings over the past four decades.

“The average swing against government in government-held seats was 5.4 per cent,” he said of the period since 1983, in a blog post. In Labor seats during Labor governments, he added, the average swing was 8.2 per cent against the government.

But this masthead reported last week that Labor officials privately believe the Coalition has the edge in Dunkley because the government is halfway through the election cycle and voters are not yet thinking about the next election.

“So conditions are there for a protest vote,” one Labor source said.

Conroy has taken leave from his position as Frankston mayor to contest the byelection and has a high profile in the area, as well as a strong endorsement from Liberal members.

He won the preselection to become the candidate with 89 votes, compared to 40 and 25 votes for other candidates. Born in Ireland, he has been in Australia for 12 years, has Australian citizenship and has renounced other citizenship.

Belyea is a former TAFE student who became a teacher and worked in small business, as well as setting up a volunteer-led group known as the Women’s Spirit Project, which offers health and wellbeing programs for vulnerable women in the area.

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