Federal election 2025: McEwen swings back into the limelight

Both Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton have visited McEwen several times this election campaign. So why is the seat back in the sights of the leaders?

Anthony Albanese met a couple who worked from home in McEwen a fortnight ago, extolling the benefits of avoiding the Melbourne commute.

Peter Dutton has been seen several times in McEwen with petrol pump in hand, promoting the Coaliton’s 25c a litre fuel excise discount.

Both leaders know McEwen’s voters, living along Melbourne’s ever expanding northern boundary with regional Victoria, loathe hitting the Hume Freeway and the often choked byways intersecting new housing estates.

The marginal electorate, held by Labor MP Rob Mitchell, is set to be one of Victoria’s closest contests on Saturday night, with the incumbent locked in a tight race with Liberal candidate Jason McClintock.

Accent Research principal Shaun Ratcliff has studied electorates like McEwen and said it was one of several peri-urban electorates facing growing pains.

“As a result of long-term trends and deliberate strategic decisions, the Labor versus Coalition battlegrounds are disproportionately in arcs around regional areas, just outside Sydney and Melbourne,” he said.

Mr Ratcliff said McEwen and similar electorates were the political faultlines between the Labor-leaning suburbs and the Coalition-leaning regional centres.

“Over the last two decades, (the regional-urban) divide has actually increased. If we go back to 2004 (election), the Coalition did 8 per cent better in regional electorates. By 2022, this has grown to almost 11 per cent.”

McEwen has often delivered a close result on election night, with its boundary constantly shifting to accommodate Melbourne’s suburban growth.

Then PM John Howard with children from Tallarook Primary School in rural seat of McEwen with local MP Fran Bailey during 1998 federal election campaign.

Most notably, Mr Mitchell as the then Labor candidate was seen as beating incumbent Liberal MP Fran Bailey at the 2007 election by only a handful of votes, but later Ms Bailey was declared the winner after a drawn-out recount and court deliberation.

The National Growth Areas Alliance says several of the election campaign’s biggest announcements such as $6.5bn for the Melbourne Airport Rail Link, $250m for the Mickleham Road duplication and $192m for the Donnybrook Road upgrades were all targeted at new suburbs in target seats.

NGAA chief executive Bronwen Clark said because thousands of new voters had moved to McEwen and similar seats such as Hawke and Corangamite, it was harder for the major parties to determine voting intention patterns.