Liberal latecomer could tip Coalition into power for Victoria

Less than two months after being chosen for Bentleigh, Elizabeth Miller is set to become the woman who delivered government to the Liberals.

Bentleigh count

Less than two months after being chosen for Bentleigh, Elizabeth Miller is set to become the woman who delivered government to the Liberals.

The former nurse holds a 423-vote lead in the southeast Melbourne seat, although neither side is yet willing to claim or concede the outcome until postal and absentee votes are counted today.

But sitting member Rob Hudson had all but given up hope last night, with 96 per cent of the vote counted. "The results still have to be verified, but the situation is certainly not promising," he told The Australian.

With the Victorian Election Commission counting 3225 pre-poll votes yesterday afternoon, Ms Miller's narrow 210-vote election-night lead doubled, but Mr Hudson said the VEC had been unable to tell him how many postal and absentee votes still remained to be counted.

Before the VEC decided to count Bentleigh's pre-poll votes yesterday, Ms Miller told The Australian she was thrilled with the unexpectedly strong result, having wiped out a 6.2 per cent margin.

"I thought it was a tall order, and many thought I couldn't do it, but I knew if I worked hard I could," she said. "It's fantastic."

Ms Miller said she hit the streets as soon as she was preselected in October, door-knocking thousands of people, meeting and greeting at railway stations in the electorate and attending community functions.

"In the last month, that's when I noticed a real difference in people on the street, because they started to recognise me and know who I was," she said.

She said the community had grown tired of the Brumby government on issues such as health, law and order and transport.

While Labor leader John Brumby was still putting the pivotal seat "most likely" in Labor's win column yesterday to tie the election 44-all, Mr Hudson, looking increasingly like the last man standing between Ted Baillieu and a famous election victory, was far less confident. "We're still in there with a chance, but it's going to be tough. I'd rather be in front than behind," Mr Hudson said.

Whatever the outcome, he said, the fight would not end there. "I would imagine there will be a recount, because there's been a whole lot of issues we've raised with the VEC in the count that we'd like to see dealt with by the senior electoral commissioner."

Asked whether he was alleging irregularities in the count, he said he wanted some of the rulings made by electoral officers on the night to be reviewed. "We believe there are a number of votes . . . that need to be reconsidered as formal votes (for Labor)," he said.

Mr Hudson, 54, a former adviser to former premier Steve Bracks and once director of the Victorian Council of Social Service, was swept into the seat in 2002 in the Bracks-slide election. He said that Bentleigh had a tradition of swinging with the change of government, and blamed general fatigue with the 11-year-old Labor administration and a range of seat-specific issues for the swing that had wiped out his 6.2 per cent margin.

"This is a big commuting suburb, and while transport has improved in recent months it has has been the source of frustration for commuters. It's been a major headache," he said. "Allied to that was the issue of perceptions of safety on trains . . . a flashpoint for people's anxiety."

Small business owner Elaine Longhurst, whose bakery in the middle of the Bentleigh electorate has been a family-owned business since 1852, said she was excited by the possibility of a change in government after 11 years.

Ms Longhurst, 63, said Mr Baillieu, who had spent much of one Saturday late in the campaign in Bentleigh talking to local traders, would bring some "much-needed stability" to parliament.

"They try to paint him as Ted the Toff, but he certainly doesn't come across that way in my view," she said. "When you've got a mother-in-law who votes against you, it shows you are really committed to your beliefs, and full credit to him for that."