Labor on edge of victory in Werribee

The Labor Party is on the verge of claiming victory in the tumultuous Werribee byelection after further counting of postal votes increased the lead of local school teacher John Lister.

Liberal candidate Steve Murphy is yet to concede, but it appears his party’s campaign to wrest control of the seat for the first time in 46 years will fall short.

As of 5pm Thursday, 2230 additional postal votes had been counted by the Victorian Electoral Commission.

Labor Party candidate for Werribee John Lister and Premier Jacinta Allan at the Labor Party gathering in Werribee on Saturday evening.Credit: Luis Enrique Aacui

After the preferences were distributed, 1191 were added to Lister’s column and 1039 to the election night tally of Murphy. This gave Lister a total lead of 593 votes, with 1594 issued postal votes still unreturned.

In the unlikely event that all postal votes issued for the byelection are mailed back, preferences would need to run at nearly two-to-one in the Liberal Party’s favour for Murphy to win from here.

ABC election analyst Antony Green called the seat for Labor after the updated count figures were published by the VEC.

On the latest figures, the Labor Party suffered a 16.5 per cent swing against its primary vote – the largest recorded a byelection under the life of the current Victorian government – and a 10.2 per cent on a two party preferred measure.

The size of the voter backlash against Labor in a heartland, western suburbs seat stunned both the state government and the Victorian Labor Party. Premier Jacinta Allan has promised to “do more” to relieve cost of living pressures on working families and address growing community concerns about crime.

She is also resisting pressure to dump the Suburban Rail Loop, a massive infrastructure project which, even if completed, would not benefit the western suburbs for decades.

Perceptions among voters that a 10-year-old Labor administration has neglected their need for greater investment in both local road and rail projects fuelled the anti-government swing.

A surge in burglaries and break and entries and general crime in the City of Wyndham, the local government area which covers the Werribee electorate, also contributed to the anti-Labor sentiment, which has left Lister with less than 30 per cent of the primary vote.

However, not enough voters who abandoned Labor were prepared to switch to the Liberal Party, which last held Werribee in 1979.

The last counting has Labor increasingly confident it will hold the seat vacated by the retirement of long-serving Treasurer Tim Pallas but the result leaves the ALP confronting a dramatically altered landscape in Melbourne’s western suburbs.

When Pallas held Werribee at the 2022 state election it was by a margin of more than 8000 votes.

The VEC will count any further postal votes that are returned by 6pm Friday.

The VEC had originally planned to count all returned postal votes on Friday but brought forward counting by a day.

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