Speaker 1: From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Kristin Amiot.
Speaker 1: It's Monday, February tenth. The Federal government has committed to
Speaker 1: keeping twenty thousand public servants on the payroll, but a
Speaker 1: new analysis by the Parliamentary Budget Office suggests that will
Speaker 1: leave an eleven billion dollar sized hole in the budget.
Speaker 1: Now the opposition wants Labor to show its working. That
Speaker 1: exclusive story is live right now at the Australian dot
Speaker 1: com dot au. The estranged husband of missing Lennox Head
Speaker 1: mother Bronwyn Winfield, is trying to sell his home and
Speaker 1: it's got her brother worried he's about to skip the country.
Speaker 1: Andy Reid raised his concerns in a letter to the
Speaker 1: New South Wales State Coroner, Teresa O'Sullivan in December. John
Speaker 1: Winfield denies any wrongdoing. Rising crime and the crippling cost
Speaker 1: of living have dealt Victorian labor a potentially devastating blow.
Speaker 1: It's a situation the federal government and the opposition are
Speaker 1: watching closely as an election looms. That's today's episode. When
Speaker 1: The Australian's Victorian editor, Damon Johnston called up the state's
Speaker 1: Electoral Commission to inquire about the status of the vote
Speaker 1: count in the Werribe by election on Sunday. He was
Speaker 1: told counting will resume at nine am on Monday morning.
Speaker 1: For Victorian Labor, it was a prolonging of the agony.
Speaker 2: It's been a bloodbath for the Victorian Labor Party in
Speaker 2: their once heartland seat of Werriby.
Speaker 3: It was a very dirty Saturday night.
Speaker 2: Now that doesn't mean they're going to lose the seat,
Speaker 2: but what it does mean is that they've suffered a
Speaker 2: double digit swing, probably between ten an eleven percent on
Speaker 2: a two party preferred basis, and that has taken a
Speaker 2: seat that they've held since nineteen seventy nine.
Speaker 3: They've never lost it to the brink of defeat.
Speaker 1: Residents of Werribe, in Melbourne's outer western suburbs, cast their
Speaker 1: votes on Saturday in a by election triggered by the
Speaker 1: resignation of long standing Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallace in December.
Speaker 1: It's one of the fastest growing local government areas in
Speaker 1: the country and voters didn't miss their opportunity to send
Speaker 1: it the Victorian Labor government, headed up by Premier just
Speaker 1: Into Allen, a message.
Speaker 2: This has happened because the voters in Weerribee, Labor voters
Speaker 2: in the main have felt neglected and it taps into
Speaker 2: that broader sense of discontent in Labour's heartland electorate for
Speaker 2: the government. They feel the crimes out of control, the
Speaker 2: cost of living, local roads or a problem, and they
Speaker 2: brought the baseball bats out on Saturday night and gave
Speaker 2: the Labor government a real whack.
Speaker 1: When counting paused on Saturday night, the Werribee race was
Speaker 1: on a knife's edge as the parties more than ten
Speaker 1: percent lead deteriorated just center. Allen told party faithfuls it
Speaker 1: was too close to call. The state opposition isn't getting
Speaker 1: ahead of itself either.
Speaker 3: Now. The Liberals still believe that the seat is not theirs.
Speaker 2: They are concerned that they might fall just short as
Speaker 2: at Sunday lunchtime. There is no counting Sunday afternoon, but
Speaker 2: they believe they may fall a couple of hundred votes short.
Speaker 2: Now it's important to note that the voters didn't necessarily
Speaker 2: jump to the Liberals in Werribee. While the Liberal vote
Speaker 2: did increase by a few percentage points, most of the
Speaker 2: disaffected Labor voters went to independence, and those preferences are
Speaker 2: now flowing to the Liberals in part hence the line
Speaker 2: ball down to the wire position the electorate is in.
Speaker 1: Damon. Jacinta Allen has taken up the Victorian premiership not
Speaker 1: only after Dan Andrews's long tenure, but after more than
Speaker 1: two decades of Labor leadership. There's a state election coming
Speaker 1: up in twenty twenty six. What does this swing against
Speaker 1: labor in Werribee mean for her as premier end for
Speaker 1: her government?
Speaker 2: Do you think inevitably the backlash against labor has to
Speaker 2: be interpreted as a backlash against Jacinta Allen.
Speaker 3: She's the leader. She conceded today that she has to
Speaker 3: take responsibility for the result. She's also conceded that her
Speaker 3: government needs to.
Speaker 2: Listen more and do more on issues like crime and
Speaker 2: cost of living.
Speaker 4: By elections are an opportunity for communities to send a
Speaker 4: MESSI and to make sure their voice is being heard.
Speaker 4: And what comes with the privilege of being in a
Speaker 4: labor government is the opportunity to support what you're being
Speaker 4: told by working people and families.
Speaker 2: She's now been in office as leader for over a
Speaker 2: year and this is the first time voters have had
Speaker 2: a chance to really pass judgment on her and it
Speaker 2: was damning. In my view, this will inevitably spark some
Speaker 2: internal reflections within the alp And caucus about whether she
Speaker 2: is the right person to lead the party into the
Speaker 2: twenty twenty six election. I don't think there will be
Speaker 2: any immediate move on Allen. However, if there was another
Speaker 2: by election in the next six months that also went
Speaker 2: as badly as this one in a key Labor seat,
Speaker 2: then I think some tensions might come to the surface.
Speaker 1: Victorian Labor has been protected for decades by US so
Speaker 1: called red wall in the outer western suburbs. Their seats
Speaker 1: like Werribee that until Saturday have been safely held by
Speaker 1: Victorian Labor through election cycle after election cycle. But as
Speaker 1: the tide turns against Labor governments around the country, that
Speaker 1: era could be coming to a close.
Speaker 2: Labour's Red Wall at both the state and federal level,
Speaker 2: has been under siege now for some years. However, this
Speaker 2: is the first time it's been really penetrated. It's fair
Speaker 2: to say that Labour's wall is crumbling as we speak.
Speaker 2: Labor strategist and polster Cosimaris has described it as more
Speaker 2: of a barbed wire red fence and says that the
Speaker 2: mood is on for Labor voters to vote against the ALP.
Speaker 2: What's happened in Werribee is quite historic. Even if they
Speaker 2: hold the seat, they have made their intentions known and
Speaker 2: I think any Labor in P who holds a once
Speaker 2: safe seat at either a state or federal level should
Speaker 2: now consider their electorates to be marginal.
Speaker 3: In the West of Melbourne, at the.
Speaker 1: Same time Werriby locals were casting their votes, a by
Speaker 1: election was also happening in the inner city suburb of Pran.
Speaker 1: That vote was triggered by the resignation of MP Sam
Speaker 1: Hibbins from the Victorian Greens in twenty twenty four.
Speaker 5: The Victorian Greens have been rocked by a sex scandal
Speaker 5: that's forced a married MP to step down. Deputy leader
Speaker 5: Sam Hibbins breached party room rules by having an affair
Speaker 5: with one of his staffers.
Speaker 1: By lunchtime on Sunday, Victorian Green's leader Ellen Sandel conceded
Speaker 1: her party couldn't win this one. I think in the
Speaker 1: federal election and the state election next year, we're going
Speaker 1: to see really positive results and we're going to win
Speaker 1: this seat back based on the numbers that are simply
Speaker 1: in front of us New opposition leader Brad Batton, who
Speaker 1: was installed following a rocky couple of months for the
Speaker 1: Victorian Libs, said the election of Rachel west Away was
Speaker 1: a boon for the party.
Speaker 2: But here in Peran, we are very proud to declare
Speaker 2: that we can claim victory in a seat that many
Speaker 2: didn't think was possible just three or four weeks ago.
Speaker 1: Labour didn't contest the prime by election, but Damon reckons
Speaker 1: the result there could be a sign of things to
Speaker 1: come at the federal level.
Speaker 3: Clearly the Liberals are back in town.
Speaker 2: Peter Dutton has pegged the outer suburban voters to be
Speaker 2: his target audience.
Speaker 3: For the next federal election.
Speaker 2: He'll be looking at this and thinking, on one level
Speaker 2: it's positive, clearly there's dissatisfaction with Labor. But if he's
Speaker 2: honest with himself, he'll be thinking the Liberal Party have
Speaker 2: still got a lot of work to do to ensure
Speaker 2: that those angry Labor voters actually support the Liberal.
Speaker 1: Party coming up. What a turning of the tide in
Speaker 1: Werriby means the federal government. Greg Brown is one of
Speaker 1: the Australian senior federal politics specialists. He ring around Parliament
Speaker 1: to find out how members of both the major parties
Speaker 1: are feeling about Werriby on Sunday.
Speaker 6: Well, it's to be expected. It's been played down by
Speaker 6: labor circles and being played up in liberal circles. That's politics.
Speaker 6: What has been interesting is there are concerns within labor
Speaker 6: MPs about how the labor brand is faring in Victoria.
Speaker 6: And what they're concerned is that people in these kind
Speaker 6: of working class areas, the outer suburbs, are feeling abandoned,
Speaker 6: particularly by the state government. But what they're worried about
Speaker 6: is while a lot of the damage has been done
Speaker 6: by the state government, their view is that people just
Speaker 6: want to blame labor of all persuasions, and they're worried
Speaker 6: this could hurt them at a federal level. One thing
Speaker 6: that an MP said that is really concerning is while
Speaker 6: constituents know that crime is fundamentally a state issue, they're
Speaker 6: just so angry with labor that they're raising it with
Speaker 6: federal MPs quite a lot.
Speaker 1: Yeah, something that we saw in Weerribee was that this
Speaker 1: wasn't an and hasn't been yet, an out and out
Speaker 1: victory for the Liberals, and in fact, the votes that
Speaker 1: were lost by Labor appear to have at least in
Speaker 1: part gone to independence. So do you think we could
Speaker 1: see a similar trend at the federal election.
Speaker 6: That would be worried for the Liberal Party if that
Speaker 6: took place, they'd really be wanting those votes themselves. And
Speaker 6: that's something that Labor and PAS have raised as when
Speaker 6: they say that people that are on the side of
Speaker 6: nothing to see here the votes and go to the Liberals.
Speaker 6: And the other thing they're saying is that this was
Speaker 6: really a referendum on the state government without another choice really,
Speaker 6: whereas they're saying that the federal election is different because
Speaker 6: you're not just sending a message to Anthony Albanesi, you're
Speaker 6: making a decision between Anthony Albanesi and Peter Dutton. It's
Speaker 6: also been pointed out that by elections can be an
Speaker 6: unreliable predictor. Before the twenty nineteen election, Bill Shorten had
Speaker 6: some very significant by election wins in the seats of
Speaker 6: Longman and Bradden, and then he went on to lose
Speaker 6: both of those seats in the next federal election and
Speaker 6: he obviously lost the election. So there are people within
Speaker 6: labor circles saying that there shouldn't be too much to
Speaker 6: be read into this, but in the liberal camp and
Speaker 6: some in the labor camp as well, they believe that
Speaker 6: it shows that the labor brand is on the nose
Speaker 6: and that crime. While it's usually a state issue, I
Speaker 6: think the Lips are really going to try and turn
Speaker 6: this into a federal issue as much as possible.
Speaker 1: Greg Brown is a federal political specialist with The Australian
Speaker 1: and Damon Johnston is our Victorian editor. You can read
Speaker 1: all their reporting and analysis of the fallout from the
Speaker 1: Werriby and Prime by elections right now at the Australian
Speaker 1: dot com dot au