A loss in Dunkley would spell disaster for Albanese

Anthony Albanese with Labor candidate for the Dunkley by election, Jodie Belyea. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

Both Prime Minister Albanese and Opposition leader Peter Dutton have hit the campaign trail in earnest on the eve of the Dunkley vote, suggesting the result is a long way from a fait accompli.

For the first time in Australian political history, the nation’s political watchers shift their gaze to Frankston, known colloquially to the locals as ‘Franger’, evidence if it was needed, that Australians will abbreviate anything of more than one syllable and attach either an ‘a’ or a ‘y’ as a suffix.

A YouGov poll published earlier this week put the Liberal Party candidate, the Mayor of Franger, Nathan Conroy ahead 51-49. The sample size at just 500 denizens of Dunkley is too small to draw any conclusions. For what it’s worth, the few agencies offering a bet on the outcome have installed Labor at $1.29 as favourites to hold the seat, out from $1.19 a few days ago. We don’t know the size of the betting poll but I suspect it is quite small, and a $100 bet here or there can make significant changes to the odds.

It’s often the case that a by-election will provide a Melbourne Cup Field of candidates but when Peta Murphy was re-elected in the federal election she was vying against eight candidates. Murphy died of breast cancer on December 4 last year, triggering the by-election. She was 50-years of age and a much admired local candidate.

Jodie Belyea is up against just seven opponents. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

Now Labor’s Jodi Belyea will be up against just seven opponents. The United Australia Party has dropped out of Dunkley as have several other minor parties. The Greens won more than ten per cent of the vote in 2022 while the other candidates could only muster 16 per cent of the primary vote collectively. Those parties, most from the right, did not preference the Liberals in any significant way at the last federal election. Vote leakage from the Liberals did not come back via preferences. This is not peculiar to Dunkley but a national phenomenon, a nightmare scenario already underway for the Liberal Party where votes lost to minor parties on the right do not come back via preferences.

In the luck of the draw, Murphy was at the top of the ballot in 2022 while Belyea is the eighth candidate listed on the ballot paper this time around. Conroy has drawn the long straw this time around and will benefit from donkey votes.

Liberal candidate Nathan Conroy with his wife Steffie Conroy. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Crosling

Two state seats overlap the federal seat of Dunkley – Frankston and Mornington. In the Victorian state election in 2022, Labor held Frankston by more than ten per cent while the Liberal Party’s Chris Crewther held on to Mornington by a slender margin after an independent candidate vied with Labor for preferences. There was a swing against Crewther of eight per cent.

Those are the goat entrails sifted through. God only knows what the goat was eating but we are none the wiser.

Here’s the rub: in order to win Dunkley on Saturday, the Liberal Party needs to pick up almost 10,000 more votes than it won in the seat at the 2022 federal election. The incumbent, Peta Murphy held the seat with a modest swing towards her. Meanwhile, the Liberal Party primary vote was seven points down in Dunkley, more than a point above the national swing against it in the 2022 federal election. That vote would need to recover for Nathan Conroy to win the seat.

There is no sign that is happening beyond a few points shifting in national primary vote polling and let’s not forget we are talking about Victoria, Australia’s Massachusetts of the south.

All history, punting, polling and punditry points to a Labor win in Dunkley. Labor should win comfortably. Should.

Labor’s amendments to the Stage Three tax cuts with the heavy lifting done by Treasurer Jim Chalmers and Finance Minister Katy Gallagher have allowed Albanese to press reset on a forgettable and regrettable 2023. The Prime Minister smoked a lot of political capital on the Voice last year for no benefit. The tax cuts, which won’t drop until July 1, remain ethereal for Dunkley’s voters and while inflation has eased, cost of living pressures, including a renewed spike in petrol prices for a commuter belt seat in Melbourne’s eastern bayside suburbs remains the red button issue in the electorate.

A loss to Labor and Albanese where a win is expected would come at a cost to the PM. It would not be terminal for Albanese’s leadership, far from it, but it would mean acute embarrassment, eyebrows raised among caucus colleagues and more navel gazing over yet another reset, another rethink, and a reshuffling of priorities amid greater scrutiny of the PM’s leadership style.

Perhaps hosing down expectations Peter Dutton has said a three per cent swing against Labor would be as good as a loss for Anthony Albanese. That is the most likely scenario in Dunkley. It will be claimed as a win on both sides, a mutually asserted triumph that only serves to slop the wallpaper paste around to cover up the cracks of a flagging two-party system.