Suburbs pave pathway to power but Libs will need more
Dominic Giannini |
If calculations prove correct, the pathway to power in an election dominated by the cost of living will be paved with the support of outer suburbia.
The overall equation is stark: the coalition needs to make up 20-plus seats to claim a majority and more if they fail to recoup others from party detractors who quit mid-term, while Labor must limit haemorrhaging to a handful of electorates to maintain government.
The common denominator, if the experts have it right, is clear: outer suburban and regional “arcs” around Sydney and Melbourne will be where the election is won.
“The general theory is if there’s a swing on, it’s likely to be strongest in outer suburban seats and perhaps some regional seats,” according to freelance analyst Ben Raue.
Yet for Accent Research principal Shaun Ratcliff there’s an obvious complication, with increasing fragmentation meaning fewer traditional two-horse races as voters look to third parties.
In this scenario, the Liberals will need to reclaim marginal metropolitan seats like Melbourne’s Chisholm and Higgins and Sydney’s Bennelong and Reid as well as win Parramatta and Werriwa in its west and southwest.
They will also need to flip some electorates lost to teal independents like the more attainable Kooyong and Goldstein in Melbourne.
But the party is also under serious pressure from Labor in Michael Sukkar’s ultra-marginal east Melbourne seat of Deakin, and from independent challenger Nicolette Boele in Bradfield, which takes in North Sydney and is held by outgoing MP Paul Fletcher.
Outside Sydney, the coalition is additionally targeting a spate of regional NSW seats including Paterson, Dobell, Hunter and Gilmore but is sandbagging Cowper against independent Caz Heise and pushing to reclaim Calare from defector Andrew Gee.
Mr Gee left the National Party over its opposition to the voice referendum, with the coalition branding his ousting a must.
Western Australia is also a battleground after the Liberals lost a swathe of seats in what was considered their heartland in 2022.
Labor picked up Swan, Pearce, Tagney and Hasluck with double-digit swings off the back of a popular state Labor government while independent Kate Chaney claimed Curtin.
The new seat of Bullwinkel in outer Perth is a three-way contest between the Nationals, Liberals and Labor but internal polling has it swinging to the coalition, say sources on both sides.
Both major parties lost a combined three seats to the Greens in inner Brisbane in 2022.
Labor reckons it can retake Ryan and the Liberals believe they’re in poll position for the division of Brisbane, while Griffith is a tight three-way contest with the Greens.
Regional coalition seats like Wannon in Victoria and Cowper in northern NSW face serious challenges from independents.
The dark horse is Bendigo for the Nationals, which remains on their target list despite Labor’s 11 per cent margin.
There are also two Top End seats: Solomon, taking in most of Darwin, and Lingiari, which makes up the rest of the territory.
The first will be hard going given the popularity of local member Luke Gosling, while track polling for the marginal Lingiari is all but impossible given the remoteness of communities.
Labor is under less threat from independents and minor parties but not entirely in the clear.
It’s aiming to retake the formerly safe Fowler in western Sydney off independent Dai Le and stop Wills and Macnamara in Melbourne going Green.
The party sees itself a chance of flipping Liberal-held Sturt in Adelaide, Leichhardt in Queensland, Menzies and Monash in Victoria, and Braddon in Tasmania.
The coalition was “almost entirely evicted from the inner and middle suburbs of Australia” three years ago, Dr Ratcliff says.
And based on everything he’s seeing, the trend is likely to continue.
In response, he says Opposition Leader Peter Dutton running an outer suburban and regional strategy evidenced by policy a focus on cheaper petrol and a pledge to bring down power prices.
It will mean having to win seats the coalition has never held before.
They include Sydney’s Werriwa, which has been held by Labor for all but nine years since 1906, and the largely blue-collar division of Hunter, west of Newcastle.
That’s on top of winning McEwen – ironically named for conservative former prime minister John “Black Jack” McEwen – on Melbourne’s northern fringes, for the first time since 2007.
The coalition made early inroads in the Hunter but took a significant hit after Mr Dutton misspoke the phrase “that town is done” while attempting to describe the need to transition jobs in the region from coal to nuclear.
Party sources acknowledge the gaffe, seized on by local Labor MP and former miner Dan Repacholi, significantly damaged their prospects but believe they have since clawed back some support.
The problem with shooting exclusively for outer suburbia and the regions is that it’s hard to make the electoral math add up, Dr Ratcliff says.
Even if the coalition sweeps the overwhelming majority of target seats outside major cities and in Adelaide and Perth, it still falls short, he concludes.
Mr Raue has similar doubts.
“They can’t just turn the ship around and win 10 seats in an area they’ve never won seats before,” he says.
Mr Ratcliff believes the opposition will need to retake at least some territory lost to independents in Melbourne and Sydney and the Greens in inner Brisbane.
While their pathway to power can be paved in outer suburbs, it will be nearly impossible for Peter Dutton to orchestrate it without sourcing some inner city cobblestones.
AAP
