On the ground in the one Victorian region still in state election mode

On farmland beside the Princes Highway near Warragul, a Liberal Party billboard still greets motorists driving towards Melbourne more than a month after the state election was run and won.

In the expansive 4500-square kilometre seat of Narracan, 52,000 voters are yet to cast their ballots following the sudden death of Nationals candidate Shaun Gilchrist nine days before he was due to face the County Court on three charges of sexual assault and one count of rape.

Wayne Farnham is the Liberal candidate for Narracan, where a supplementary election will be held this month.Credit: Paul Jeffers

Gilchrist’s death days before the November 26 election forced the Victorian Electoral Commission into the rare step of declaring the vote in Narracan “failed”. In the aftermath, Labor and the Nationals bowed out of a supplementary election set for this month, clearing the path for Liberal candidate Wayne Farnham.

Early voting will open on January 16 for the supplementary election on January 28.

Narracan was the Liberals’ safest seat leading into the election, with a notional 10 per cent margin following a boundary redistribution. Assuming they hold it, Narracan will take the opposition to 28 lower house seats — a one-seat improvement on their disastrous 2018 result.

Farnham, who replaced the retiring MP Gary Blackwood as the Liberal candidate, hasn’t stopped campaigning even though he’s virtually assured of victory, which he is cautious of claiming.

“You know what it feels like? It actually feels like you’ve been picked for the grand final, but you’re not allowed to play,” Farnham, 52, a builder with his own construction company, told The Age in Warragul on Friday.

Although both major parties committed to the key local issue of delivering a new West Gippsland hospital, Farnham said far-flung communities he’s visited in a months-long campaign needed much more. In Walhalla, with a population of 20, there is no sewerage. In Thorpdale, Gippsland Water drives trucks of water into the potato farming town daily to ensure residents have a constant supply.

Farnham’s main challenger is independent former Baw Baw Shire councillor Tony Wolfe, who decided to run in the final days of the original campaign.

“It was going to be a short, sharp, intensive campaign, but now it’s going on for months,” Wolfe said. When he tells people he’s running for state parliament, “Everyone looks at me, like, ‘What do you mean? Haven’t we already done that?’”

Independent Tony Wolfe is Wayne Farnham’s main challenger in the seat of Narracan.Credit: Paul Jeffers

Though he’s worked as an operator in a coal-fired power station for more than 40 years, Wolfe’s passion is climate change, and he believes the region has an opportunity to build a renewable energy industry and should be training the future workforce.

Wolfe said gender equality, integrity in government, housing affordability and the need for local infrastructure to meet the demands of new housing developments were among his other priorities. Farnham also said infrastructure had not kept up with growth, which has spilled out from Melbourne to Drouin and Warragul, a 75-minute commute.

Independents performed poorly at the state election and Wolfe’s chances are low, but he hopes to cut the Liberal margin and argues an independent has greater chance of pressuring a Labor government for funding.

He founded the Voices for Monash group at the federal election but is not connected to the Climate 200-backed “teal” movement and funded his own campaign.

The Nationals’ late candidate for Narracan, Shaun Gilchrist.

Labor’s former candidate Justin Seddon, a captain of the Nar Nar Goon Country Fire Authority, was disappointed the party decided against contesting the supplementary election. Labor pulled 35.5 per cent of Narracan’s primary votes in 2018.

“I was halfway through a marathon, and I’ll never see the end of it,” Seddon told The Age.

Nine candidates – including those from Labor, the Nationals, the Freedom Party, One Nation, Family First and Animal Justice – originally nominated for Narracan, and nominations for the supplementary election are still open. Alyssa Weaver from the Greens confirmed she would still contest.

Weaver paused her campaign after the November 26 poll to give volunteers a rest, but said she felt it was important to contest the supplementary election to give voters a choice.

Warragul town centre, in the heart of the seat of Narracan.Credit: Paul Jeffers

Speaking to The Age at the Warragul Country Club, where he was formerly club captain, Farnham cried recalling a woman who waited more than a year to be fitted with a prosthetic leg after delays caused by COVID-19.

After Blackwood and shadow health minister Georgie Crozier took up the woman’s case, she got the care she needed, and Farnham saw how dramatically a local representative could change a person’s life.

“To see the look on their face afterwards … that was cool, that’s when you really know what the job’s about,” he said.

The son of Italian migrants who has lived in West Gippsland almost all his life, Farnham said he had no time for “virtue signalling” and wants to make housing more affordable, as he worries his two children – aged in their 20s – will never be able to buy.

Following the Liberals’ horror election, the party conceded it needed to relate to younger voters who have abandoned it, and new Opposition Leader John Pesutto has put homeownership for the demographic “front and centre” of its agenda.

Labor’s decision not to contest Narracan was in line with previous byelections in the safe Liberal seats of Gippsland South, South-West Coast and Polwarth after the 2014 election.

Farnham and Wolfe were both preparing to ramp up their campaigns again this week, after removing most of their signage to give residents a break over the festive season.

Pesutto has already visited the seat and is expected to return in coming days. “I’m the sole focus at the moment, so thankfully I get a lot of the leader’s time,” Farnham said.

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