At this rate, Victorian opposition leader John Pesutto will know his way around Watton Street better than Spring Street.
It was down Werribee’s main drag on Thursday, April 11 that the Liberal party leader walked and talked shop with shoppers and shop owners, while a phalanx of advisers and colleagues hovered nearby.
Earlier in the day, the alternative premier visited a number of local sporting clubs and businesses where he addressed functions, posed for photos and provided a sympathetic ear to their concerns while accusing the state Labor government of taking them for granted.
Just four days later he was back again, but this time with the whole shadow cabinet in tow for a meeting at the Wyndham Park Community Centre on Monday, April 15.
The meeting featured presentations from local business, community and council figures, before a meet and greet session over lunch and a press conference where Mr Pesutto once again bagged the government for their neglect of Wyndham and the west, a message he said he’d heard during his ‘many’ visits to Wyndham in recent months.
Many visits?
A reminder: Wyndham and the broader north-west of Melbourne is an area where the Liberals hold precisely zero lower house seats, either state or federal.
The last Liberal to represent the state seat of Werribee left office when Dick Hamer was premier and in any case, the next state election is still the best part of three years away.
So why then are the Liberals regularly beating a path over the West Gate Bridge, through roadworks and traffic jams, to a place that has for decades been an electoral desert?
“I would argue that the most important reason to be out is to hear from locals about their priorities,” said Mr Pesutto when asked this question by the Star Weekly following Monday’s shadow cabinet meeting.
“We understand fully that areas like Werribee are being neglected and we don’t think that’s fair or right,” he said, highlighting public transport, particularly the multi-billion suburban rail loop being built in Melbourne’s east, but which isn’t due to reach Wyndham for decades, if ever, as a prime example.
“Our concern with projects like that and blowouts on other projects is that it’s starving areas of like Werribee vital funds that they need to cater for growth. There’s enormous growth in areas like Werribee, far outstripping the growth that you’re getting in the inner suburbs. So it’s about doing what’s right and about how do we develop our state fairly.”
‘Fairness’, ‘neglect,’ ‘being taken for granted’ – Mr Pesutto uttered these words and phrases almost as often as ‘and’ and ‘the’ during our conversation.
It was no accident.
The sense that voters in Melbourne’s rapidly growing outer north-west feel taken for granted by a Labor government who accept their votes but ignore their needs, is palpable and the opposition have clearly sniffed an opportunity.
A cynic might argue that they also have no other choice.
Out of office for all but four years of the 21st century and seeing their own heartland in the eastern and bayside suburbs eaten away by Labor, the Greens and the teal independents federally, the Liberal Party has to make inroads into the outer north-west in order to survive, with even Mr Pesutto conceding that it hasn’t just been the ALP who have neglected the area.
“It’s because our party structure in terms of our membership hasn’t traditionally been strong out here,” he explained of why his party had performed so poorly in the area.
It’s a point backed up by Wyndham GP and former independent candidate for the state seats of Werribee and Point Cook, Dr Joe Garra.
“They (the Liberal Party) have their little branches and they just put up a candidate and you go ‘who’s this person?’ no one knows the candidate usually and then the candidate disappears once the election is over,” said Dr Garra of the Liberal’s lacklustre recent campaigns.
“I think it’s pleasing that they’re making a concerted effort to be seen locally and listen to people.”
Dr Garra was one of the people the Liberals listened to on Monday when he addressed shadow cabinet about issues affecting the health system in Wyndham such as the GP payroll tax.
But while the Liberals are making more of an effort to listen to the concerns of people such as Dr Garra, there’s still scepticism as to whether voters in Wyndham and neighbouring areas will listen to them.
Among them is pollster and former Labor strategist, Kos Samaras.
Mr Samaras said while the frustration among outer suburban voters with Labor was real, that didn’t mean the Liberals would necessarily benefit.
“There’s no real strong evidence to suggest that voter is being converted to the coalition,” he said, adding this was part of a national trend of outer-suburban voters moving away from the two major parties.
“This is largely driven by what we define as millennials and Gen Z, who come from diverse backgrounds. This is a complete move away from the major party system and hence, the Liberal Party is not going to capitalise on these defections.”
Rather, Mr Samaras predicts the biggest threat to Labor in the north-west, both at a state and federal level, will come in the form of well known and well funded independents.
“I suspect these communities are looking for an alternative. Sometimes that alternative manifests itself as a well known independent like we saw in the Sydney seat of Fowler (ex Liberal turned Independent, Dai Le won the seat from Labor at the 2022 federal election) and sometimes like what we saw in the state seat of Werribee in 2018.”
The independent candidate on that occasion was none other than Dr Garra, who gave long-time incumbent and state treasurer, Tim Pallas, a fright by securing almost 20 per cent of the vote and pushing the Liberals down to third.
But after contesting the neighbouring seat of Point Cook in 2022, something he now concedes was a mistake, Dr Garra saw his vote go backwards, as did other independents such as Melton candidate Dr Ian Birchnall.
“A lot of people seem to go back to minor parties rather than independents,” reflected Dr Garra on the difficulties facing independent candidates at a state level.
What all sides agree on is that there is an anti-Labor vote to be had, it’s just a matter of whether the Liberals can secure it . Afterall, the party has taken other outer suburban seats off the ALP, particularly in Melbourne’s south-east and Sydney’s west, so why not Melbourne’s north west too?
Mr Samaras said there are some key differences, particularly among migrant communities, that work against the Liberal Party in places like Wyndham, Melton and Craigieburn.
“If you think about the Indian Australian community, for example, those Indian Australians living in Sydney are more likely to have supported the Liberal Party in the past versus those living in Melbourne,” Mr Samaras said, something he attributes to house and land packages in these areas, being significantly cheaper than equivalent places in Sydney’s west such as Camden.
“We got migrants who couldn’t afford the $1 million homes and hence were more likely to vote for Labor.”
Another hurdle for the Coalition is that for all the frustration and voter fatigue with Labor, the party still has deep roots and a formidable campaign infrastructure in Melbourne’s north-west. It won’t be surrendering it to anyone without a fight.
“The only time the Liberals pay attention to Melbourne’s western suburbs is when they’re cutting funding, closing schools and hospitals and going to war with workers,” was the typically combative response from Mr Pallas to the opposition stepping on his turf.
The government provided Star Weekly with blizzard of figures to counter the argument they are neglecting the west, including $1.5 billion for the new Footscray Hospital: $650 million to upgrade the Melton train line; nearly $700 million for upgraded roads and intersections across the west, $32 million for West Gate Bridge maintenance works; 50 new early learning centres; scores of new and upgraded schools and dozens of level crossings from Melton to Newport being removed.
Expect those and other figures to be repeated ad-nauseam between now and next state election in November 2026, when Labor will seek to win a fourth term in office while maintaining its hegemony on the north-west.
There’s no guarantee that Mr Pesutto will even make it to that election as Liberal leader, but when asked if the party will run a stronger campaign in places like Wyndham, with better candidates, more volunteers and more corflutes, he was unequivocal.
“You bet.”
