Unions eye seven seats to swing poll

Unions will target seven Liberal-held seats in Victoria, declaring they could deliver victory for Bill Shorten.

Up to 100,000 protesters took part in the Change the Rules rally through Melbourne’s CBD yesterday. Picture: Mark Stewart

Unions are aggressively targeting seven Liberal-held seats in Victoria­, declaring that likely gains for Labor in the state could deliver victory for Bill Shorten at the federal election.

Buoyed by swings at last year’s state election to Premier Daniel Andrews, who joined up to 100,000 protesters at an anti-Coalitio­n rally in Melbourne yesterday­, unions said they believed they could help Labor win Dunkley, Corangamite, Deakin, La Trobe, Casey, Chisholm and Higgins.

Victorian Trades Hall Council secretary Luke Hilakari said the state election results and recent private polling indicated Labor had a chance of also winning Flinders, Kooyong, Goldstein and Menzies, despite the big swings needed to take them off the Liberal Party.

“This election could be won in Victoria,” he said. “Scott Mor­rison should be very frightened. When he’s out there criticising electric cars, he might be thinking it plays well in Queensland, but it doesn’t play well in Victoria.”

ACTU secretary Sally McManus at yesterday’s Perth rally. Picture: Colin Murty

Mr Hilakari said Victorian unions­ would commit $1 million to the federal campaign, on top of funds committed by the Labor Party and the ACTU.

Union activists will doorknock in 16 seats this weekend as they target 28 seats nationally in the build-up to next month’s election.

Speaking before the Melbourne rally that shut down parts of the CBD yesterday, Mr ­Andrews acknowledged some people might be critical of his ­attendance but declared he was proud to be part of one of 14 anti-Coalition rallies held around the country, including one in Perth attended by ACTU secretary Sally McManus

Echoing the union movement’s call to rewrite the federal workplace laws, he said the “rules need to change and we need a fair go”. “The only person who is going to deliver a fair go for working people across our nation is Bill Shorten,” he said.

“The sooner this federal election is called, the better, so we can have a living wage, we can have schools and hospitals funded properly and we can have a government that gets things done.”

Unionists marched from the Victorian Trades Hall Council in Carlton through the city to the steps of state parliament.

Construction Forestry Maritime Mining and Energy Union national secretary Michael O’Connor urged unionists to campaign hard against the ­Coalition. “We have got to make sure we build a tide that sweeps this government out,” he said.

ACTU president Michele O’Neil accused the Prime Minister of promoting fear and division. “(He’s) trying to turn us against each other, make us scared of a few hundred people on boats, or scared of each other because of the colour of our skin, the language­ we speak or where we live,” she told the rally.