Elsie Lange
The Sunbury and Macedon electorates will be retained by Labor at the November state election, a Monash University political expert has predicted.
Senior politics lecturer, Dr Zareh Ghazarian, said Sunbury, unlike its one-to-watch neighbour Melton, was a more established electorate with different priorities.
“I would expect Labor to hold that seat and hold it comfortably,” Dr Ghazarian said.
“There is a lot of margin, so even if Labor does lose some support, the current margin it has, I’d expect Labor to retain that seat.”
According to Australian Broadcasting Corporation election analyst Antony Green, Sunbury is a very safe Labor seat with a margin of 14.5 per cent.
Dr Ghazarian said Subury’s neighbour, Macedon, was a similarly very safe seat, with a margin of 13.4 per cent, and would be a difficult one for Labor to lose.
Leading up to the election it was thought the impact of pandemic lockdowns could effect on the way voters would choose their representatives on November 26.
However, Dr Ghazarian said it was interesting the Liberals and Nationals weren’t using the pandemic as a talking point.
“That’s the great unknown in this election,” he said.
“The extent to which people will be thinking about rewarding or punishing candidates based on their views of the pandemic management, and the handling of the pandemic.”
Dr Ghazarian said after looking at the results of the federal election, where voters moved away from the major parties and towards minor parties and independent candidates, there could be a challenge to both the coalition’s and Labor’s primary votes.
“The major party vote in the Victorian election has consistently been over 70 per cent at the last three elections,” he said.
“It could be that that vote comes down at this election, and there are new parties emerging, parties that have very specific policy agendas they want to pursue and they may be able to chip support away from the major parties.”
He said the issues he believed voters cared about across the north were broadly those held in growth areas across the state.
“I think this has been an area where there’s been a lot of growth in new housing, growth in populations,” he said.
“Whenever we see this type of growth there’s a growing demand for government services to keep up and to provide the services, the facilities and the infrastructure that’s needed in growing areas.”
