Labor vows to keep cost-of-living focus after swing to Liberals in Dunkley

Labor held the federal seat of Dunkley on Saturday evening, as voters delivered a warning to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on the cost of living and a rebuff to Opposition Leader Peter Dutton and the Coalition’s goal of winning the suburban electorates needed to retake government.

At almost 60 per cent of the vote counted by 9pm on Saturday, there was a 3.8 per cent two-party preferred swing away from Labor in the outer suburban Melbourne electorate – well short of the more than 6.3 per cent the Liberal Party needed to snatch the seat.

Labor candidate Jodie Belyea has retained the seat of Dunkley for the government.Credit: Eamon Gallagher

Early into the count, a big swing of 10 per cent to the Liberal Party in Mount Eliza, a more affluent part of the electorate, frayed nerves in the government, but it proved an outlier as Labor’s vote stabilised as more booths were counted.

Cost-of-living issues dominated the byelection campaign, which was billed as a crucial temperature check on the government’s standing with suburban voters hard-hit by rising mortgages, power bills and household costs after revamping the stage 3 tax cuts and with just over a year, at most, until the next federal election.

But for the Liberals, a swing of 4 per cent in their favour, at a time of when many voters are experiencing acute financial pressures, will trigger some reflection in the partyroom about their policy settings and ability to win other similar seats across the country at the federal poll.

As Labor candidate Jodie Belyea claimed, Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles said the win was a victory for the prime minister and delivered a message to the broader Australian public that cost of living would remain the government’s core focus.

“I can assure you that with Labor’s tax cuts and with all the other measures, from more affordable childcare to cheaper medicines, we go to bed every night and will do so from here on in thinking about how we can improve Australians’ lives, how can we make the family budget better, how we can fight for working Australians,” Marles said.

Triggered by the death of Labor MP Peta Murphy from cancer in December, the byelection pitted Belyea, a community worker, against the Liberal Party’s Nathan Conroy, the mayor of Frankston Council.

Belyea paid tribute to Murphy as she addressed Labor volunteers at the party’s celebratory function in Frankston, saying she was humbled by the opportunity to “build on her remarkable legacy”.

“I said I would be a strong, passionate local voice for Dunkley and that is exactly what I will do, because I am Frankston tough,” Belyea said.

Labor supporters at the Labor Party function in Frankston.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

Labor’s primary vote of 40 per cent remained steady. The Liberal Party’s primary grew to around 39 per cent, up more than 6 per cent, while the Greens vote was down more than 3.5 per cent.

Addressing the party faithful at the Liberal Party’s byelection night function, deputy leader Sussan Ley talked up the result as one that would put the Coalition within striking distance at the next federal election.

“A swing of 3 to 4 per cent would net us 11 seats. That is enough in the next parliament for us to form government,” she said.

Ley said the voters of Dunkley had sent the prime minister a strong message to do “something about the cost-of-living crisis” as she listed the seats the party would target in the federal campaign.

“We are coming after you in Aston. In Higgins. In McEwen. In my home state of NSW … we are coming after you in Parramatta, in Gilmore, in Bennelong. We’re coming after you in Lyons in Tasmania and Boothby in South Australia,” Ley said.

In a final pitch to Dunkley voters on Saturday morning, Albanese said the decision to revamp the stage 3 tax cuts – a policy shift that required Labor to break an election promise – demonstrated his government was listening to “middle Australia”.

“We know that this community, particularly low and middle-income earners, have been doing it tough with cost-of-living pressures. So, we’ve responded to that. The tax cuts that have passed the Senate this week will ensure that every single taxpayer in Dunkley gets a tax cut, not just some,” Albanese said from Derinya Primary School in Frankston on Saturday morning.

He said Dunkley voters deserved “a strong advocate”, and urged them to honour Murphy’s legacy to make sure they got a local representative who was not just “another bloke with all the other blokes”.

The prime minister, who was celebrating his 61st birthday, hit the hustings with his fiancee Jodie Haydon and mingled with voters at the booth before returning to Sydney to spend the evening with family.

Dutton did not make a public appearance on the campaign trail on Saturday, despite attending an event in Frankston with Conroy on Friday, where he urged voters to “send a message to Mr Albanese”. “The policies that he’s implemented have actually hurt people: gas has gone up, electricity’s gone up, insurance premiums have gone up, groceries have gone up,” Dutton said.

Addressing the media from a polling booth in Langwarrin at lunchtime, Conroy and Liberal senator Jane Hume were drowned out by Labor and pro-Palestinian protesters, as they attempted to highlight the cost-of-living crisis being felt by voters.

Conroy attempted to defend the absence – against the shouts of protesters – saying he was “extremely proud” of Dutton’s leadership and said the opposition leader had visited the seat five times during the campaign.

Liberal candidate Nathan Conroy concedes defeat on Saturday night.Credit: Nine News

“We have run a strong, positive campaign,” Conroy said. Both candidates positioned themselves as the best person to stand up for Dunkley voters in Canberra on cost-of-living concerns.

Belyea billed herself as a “mum with a mortgage” who would “deliver and bat for the battlers and represent them if I’m elected tonight”. Conroy said the community needed more jobs, more businesses and more homes, adding that “crime is on the rise and that is because of the housing crisis and the cost-of-living crisis that is happening right now”.

Dunkley is representative of “middle Australia”, with census data showing a median weekly income of $1718 – broadly in line with the national median – but with slightly higher monthly mortgage repayments, fewer university graduates, and more tradies than the national average.

It is also less ethnically diverse than other suburban electorates, with almost 74 per cent of residents Australian-born compared with 67 per cent nationally, and most identifying as having an Anglo heritage.

Resolve director Jim Reed, who conducts political polling for this masthead, said byelection results should be read carefully because they were “inherently local in nature, have no greater national change in mind, and voters can use them to send a message or simply endorse the best candidate”.

“It’s not only the result that will be pored over, but also the size of swing and the effectiveness of tactics. This may drive the mood in the party rooms and result in changes of strategic tack, because if it is close there are a lot of Labor seats held at this margin or below – but if there’s no movement it’s the Liberals that will need to rethink their approach,” Reed said.

Saturday’s byelection is the second federal byelection in Victoria since the Albanese government came to power in 2022. In April last year, the Liberals suffered a historic defeat to Labor in the Melbourne seat of Aston – the first time in a century a government has won a seat from the opposition in a federal byelection.

Since then, the government’s honeymoon has dissipated and it has suffered setbacks, including the overwhelming defeat of the Voice referendum, which was rejected by almost 56 per cent of Dunkley voters, and its flatfooted response to a High Court decision last year freeing immigration detainees from indefinite detention.

The opposition has also seized on the arrival of 39 asylum seekers in Western Australia to try to paint the government as soft on border security, and also sought to drum up concern among Dunkley voters over the Labor’s new fuel efficiency standards, which it has billed as “new family car and ute tax”.

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