Labor seizes Chisholm as marginal Melbourne seat swings against government

Labor’s Carina Garland has convincingly won the ultra-marginal seat of Chisholm, which had been held by the Liberal Party’s Gladys Liu since 2019 on a razor-thin margin.

With two-thirds of the vote in the seat counted by 11pm on Saturday, Garland was in an unassailable position, with a swing towards Labor of more than 7 per cent.

Newly elected Labor MP for the seat of Chisholm, Carina Garland on Election Night 2022. Credit: Scott McNaughton

Garland arrived at the Bennettswood Bowling Club in Burwood just before 9pm to chants of “Carina! Carina! Carina!” from the assembled crowd of more than 100 jubilant Labor members, volunteers and family. She waited until 10.30pm before claiming victory.

She thanked her supporters who together she said had knocked on 60,000 doors, phoned 72,000 people and had more than 25,000 conversations with voters in the seat.

She thanked a former Labor MP in the seat, Anna Burke, who was at the bowls club. Garland called Burke - who was very popular in the seat, which she held for 18 years – “Chisholm’s favourite MP, who showed me what it means to be a really hard-working, active local member of parliament.”

Garland said faith in politics was at a low ebb, and that she hoped to help restore the trust people had in government. “I hope to restore that trust. I hope to start with being part of a government that makes an integrity commission a reality. I hope,” she said, “to show people that when we say we’re going to do something, it means we’re going to do something - we’re actually going to deliver for the community.”

Garland and Liu were campaigning right up until the last minute in the ultra-marginal seat.Credit: Simon Schluter

Asked by The Age before her speech what had won her the seat, Garland said: “A lot of hard work.”

The seat of Chisholm has see-sawed between the major parties over the years, with Labor’s Anna Burke holding it until 2016, followed by the LNP’s Julia Banks, then Liu from 2019.

Garland had earlier thanked her supporters for helping her win the crucial seat for Labor. “We’re in a room full of volunteers who’ve worked really, really hard, having conversations with voters in our community about the issues that matter to them: getting that integrity commission, taking action on climate, fixing the aged care crisis, and doing more for people struggling with the cost of living.”

Among the crowd was Garland’s 87-year-old grandmother Luciana Cussigh, who was born in northern Italy and came to Melbourne in 1956.

Liu won Chisholm on an ultra-tight margin in 2019.Credit: Simon Schluter

Cussigh said it was hard to express how proud of her granddaughter she was. “I feel like bursting, I am so happy and proud. I am so grateful to her because she brings honour to our family.”

One of Garland’s campaign volunteers, cleaner and Labor life member Sofia Floros, said she had spoken to many Chisholm residents who told her they were struggling with low wages.

“Low income – a lot of people, they struggle with not enough money and high workload,” Floros said.

A more subdued mood had settled over Liu’s gathering, which was also held at a bowls club in the electorate that covers Melbourne’s east, including Box Hill, Glen Waverley, Wheelers Hill, Blackburn and Mount Waverley.

Liu won the seat for the Liberal Party in 2019, prising it from Labor with a margin of just 0.57 per cent, making it one of the most marginal seats in the country.

Kim Jong-Un impersonator appeared at a Box Hill voting centre on Saturday afternoon.Credit: Eddie Jim

This year’s campaign has been an arduous battle between Garland and Liu. Both spent many days handing out how-to-vote cards at pre-polling booths across the electorate and campaigned until the very last minute. Twelve candidates ran in the seat, more than any electorate in Australia.

Garland was handing out how-to-vote cards in Glen Waverley on Saturday afternoon, while Liu was in Mount Waverley.

Also out and about was a Kim Jong-Un impersonator, linked to Drew Pavlou, an anti-Chinese Communist Party Senate candidate for Queensland who has hounded Liu at several key moments in the final days of the campaign, including attempting to crash a media conference she did with Prime Minister Scott Morrison.

There are 109,000 eligible voters in the seat and an additional 19,000 adults living in the electorate who are ineligible to vote.

Around one in five voters in Chisholm have Chinese heritage.

After the 2019 election, Liu faced down a Federal Court challenge of her win over her use of signs at polling booths that had the same purple colour scheme as official Australian Electoral Commission banners. The signs said the “correct” way to vote was to put a “1″ next to the Liberal box.

No such scandal emerged from the seat at this election.