By Jessica Micallef
Labor’s Rob Mitchell has been re-elected in the seat of McEwen.
With 70.3 per cent of first preference votes counted, Mr Mitchell had secured 40.7 per cent of the votes as of 10am on Monday.
He had polled 30,887 votes, ahead of Liberal candidate Phillip Fusco (26,067) and The Greens’ Neil Barker (6112). The results showed a 1.5 per cent swing against Mr Mitchell.
Mr Mitchell told Star Weekly of his joy at being re-elected.
“It’s always a privilege and an honour when you get elected by the people,” he said. “It’s always been a case with our community that it’s about fairness [and] equality. They want to see people treated right, they want to see us doing things and, most importantly, they want to know someone’s there for them.”
He said the Macedon Ranges Regional Sports Precinct in New Gisborne was one of his main priorities.
“We’ll continue to push harder and harder as we did last time,” he said. “We secured some good funding announcements throughout our term despite being in opposition. I’ll just keep fighting and keep working to get things done.”
Bendigo remains a Labor seat after Lisa Chesters was re-elected.
With 77.2 per cent of first-preference votes counted as of 10am Monday, Ms Chesters polled 38,346, ahead of Liberal’s Sam Gayed (27,605), The Greens’ Robert Holian (9408) and United Australia Party’s Adam Veitch (3798). The results showed a 5.5 per cent swing to Ms Chesters.
She told Star Weekly it was an honour to be re-elected.
“I really enjoy the challenge of being the federal member for Bendigo,” she said. “It’s such a diverse electorate.”
Ms Chesters said she was looking forward to delivering on key election commitments for the Macedon Ranges.
“People in Woodend and Kyneton really do care about climate change and wanted to see a government in Canberra that took leadership on climate change,” she said.
“The great thing about the Macedon Ranges is that they’re already getting on with the task of transitioning to cleaner, greener energy and I’ll do what I can to be their national voice.
“Equally, people in the region wanted to see investment in their local community and it was only Labor that put on the table local infrastructure projects.
“I am not going to give up in getting these projects funded because we need them – they’re good projects.”
