Liberals claim victory in Prahran as Greens concede defeat

The Liberal Party has broken its drought in Victoria, declaring victory in the Prahran byelection and pushing Opposition Leader Brad Battin one seat closer to government in next year’s state election.

Greens candidate Angelica Di Camillo conceded defeat on Sunday and congratulated Rachel Westaway for flipping the inner-Melbourne seat, which had been in Greens hands for more than a decade.

Rachel Westaway outside Prahran Market on Sunday.Credit: Penny Stephens

It is one less seat Battin would need to turn to get out of the political wilderness in hope of forming government in 2026. Battin, exuberant after pulling off double-digit swings in two-party preferred terms in Prahran and Werribee, is still short by 16 seats.

“Nothing is safe,” he said.

The opposition leader said the now 32 members of the parliamentary Liberal Party would be reminded every day they had a responsibility to their communities: “Go out and work hard. But I also say, we’ve got to pick the right candidates now. Pick the people that Victorians can trust, put the platform forward, and I actually think then people will come along and understand we are a genuine alternative.”

Westaway, a mother of three, was a senior member of the Commonwealth’s Administrative Appeals Tribunal until recently. She has lived in the area for two decades and has volunteered for the Prahran Junior Football Club and Toorak Prahran Cricket Club.

Opposition Leader Brad Battin addresses the crowd at a Liberal Party event in Werribee.Credit: Luis Enrique Ascui

When The Age caught up with her at a Toorak Road cafe during pre-polling, two passers-by separately stopped to chat: a parent from school as well as Westaway’s personal trainer.

Labor’s decision to sit the contest out, an anti-Greens campaign, low voter turnout, preference deals, crime, and the circumstances under which former Greens MP Sam Hibbins quit parliament have all been floated as possible reasons for Prahran changing hands.

“I think it was being a 20-year local,” Westaway, 55, said on Sunday at Prahran Market.

She also said residents wanted something new. Chapel Street vacancies and crime rates came up through the campaign.

“This is a vote against 10 years of waste with the Greens,” Westaway said.

The Greens’ primary vote held up after Hibbins quit the party and then parliament following an affair with a staff member. But the minor party should have picked up a lot of Labor’s vote, given it did not contest the race. Instead, the Greens vote was almost identical to 2022.

Westaway and Di Camillo each polled just over 36 per cent of first-preference votes, and the Greens’ 12 per cent margin in two-party preferred was completely eroded.

“The results are incredibly close, but unfortunately, it’s clear that the Greens will fall just short of winning the Prahran byelection,” state Greens leader Ellen Sandell said after conceding defeat.

Angelica Di Camillo, the Greens candidate for Prahran.Credit: Penny Stephens

Former Labor MP turned independent candidate Tony Lupton had almost 13 per cent of the vote in Saturday’s byelection and helped push Westaway to 51.6 per cent two-party preferred.

Sandell claimed Labor had “handed the seat to the Liberals” by sitting the contest out and by Lupton preferencing the Liberals. But she rejected that the Greens vote had suffered because of a concerted anti-Greens campaign backed by right-wing lobby group Advance, which accused the minor party of fomenting antisemitism.

“I don’t believe it made a dent because of the high primary vote,” Sandell said.

Advance spokeswoman Sandra Bourke said on Sunday that the lobby group would double down on its mission to reduce the Greens vote.

The Victorian Electoral Commission said it had counted all votes cast on Saturday, all early votes and all postal votes that had been received so far. Just 64.29 per cent of enrolled voters had their ballot counted, though further postal votes will be returned.

Turnout tends to be lower during a byelection, but it was especially weak in Prahran.

Sandell said the low turnout, with no absentee voting in byelections, had particularly hurt the Greens because those disenfranchised or disengaged tended to be younger and renting.

About 57 per cent of residents in the electorate rented at the time of the 2021 census, double the state average.

Labor had already decided not to run in Prahran when then-treasurer Tim Pallas announced his resignation as the MP for Werribee, but the party was relieved to focus its resources on the western suburbs byelection rather than being spread across two seats. That contest is still too close to call.

Labor’s vote collapsed in Werribee, but the Liberal Party was not picking up many of its supporters on first preferences. Both major parties were failing to reach 30 per cent on primaries, with Labor candidate John Lister narrowly ahead on a two-party preferred basis.

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