Victorian Election Newsletter – Issue 5

1 December 2014:

The Hon. Daniel Andrews MP will become the 48th Premier of Victoria later this week after the Victorian Australian Labor Party (ALP) successfully won a majority in the Victorian Parliament’s Legislative Assembly at Saturday’s state election.  Current projections suggest Labor will hold 48 seats in the 88-seat lower house for the next term, making the Baillieu/Napthine government the first one-term administration since 1955.  The Victorian Governor, His Excellency the Honourable Alex Chernov AC QC, will swear in Premier-elect Dan Andrews, and his expected Deputy, James Merlino MP, later this week as Victoria’s new Premier and Deputy Premier.

At this stage of the count, Labor is confirmed as winning one seat from the Coalition, with the ALP’s new member Tim Richardson gaining a swing of 4.4 per cent to defeat the Liberals’ Lorraine Wreford in the seat of Mordialloc.  Labor has also been successful in holding all of its seats with incumbent MPs that had been redistributed to notional Liberal electorates, including Yan Yean, Bellarine, Monbulk and Wendouree.

Furthermore, Labor is projected to win the seats of Carrum and is in front in the count for the electorates of Bentleigh and Frankston which are still ‘too-close-to call’.

Projections of the (current) state-wide 2.5 per cent swing to the ALP has the newly-elected Government with a majority of 48 lower house seats to the Coalition’s predicted 39 seats.  In other major developments, it is a close race for the inner-city seat of Melbourne, with the Greens’ Ellen Sandell hoping to be the first Greens member in the Victorian lower house.  Elsewhere, the National Party is having to cope with the loss of the safe National seat of Shepparton to Independent Suzanna Sheed.

Saturday’s state election has produced an unexpected outcome for the major parties in the Victorian Legislative Council (upper house).  With around 60 per cent of votes counted, projections suggest that the Greens and micro-parties have been very successful in taking up to 8 seats off the Labor, Liberal and National parties.  It is expected that the balance of power will be held jointly by the Greens, two members of the Shooters and Fishers Party, a member of the Sex Party, as well as a member from each of the Australian Country Alliance and the Democratic Labor Party.  If this arrangement does bare out in the final results, these 6 cross-benchers will have significant power in the passage of all Government legislation through the parliament.

The outgoing premier and Leader of the Liberal Party Denis Napthine and Deputy Leader Louise Asher have both resigned from their leadership positions but will remain in the Parliament.  The Liberal Party will now move quickly to elect a Leader of the Opposition with former Treasurer Michael O’Brien and Planning Minister Matthew Guy both expected to be interested in contesting the position.

In other post-election position announcements, Premier-elect Daniel Andrews has accepted the resignation of the Secretary of the Department of Premier and Cabinet, Andrew Tongue, and announced Chris Eccles as his replacement.

 

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