There will be a by-election for the Victorian state seat of Prahran coming up soon, likely at the start of 2025.
Sam Hibbins won the seat for the Greens in 2014, and again in 2018 and 2022. He quit the party earlier this month after revelations of an affair with a staff member.
The seat is an unusual one – when Hibbins first won in 2014, the race between Greens and Labor for second place was extremely close, and it was also very close between the Greens and Liberals for the two-candidate-preferred count. Indeed it was so close that the Liberal Party would have won a race against Labor if they had made it to the final count.
The Greens-Labor race remained very close in 2018, but the Liberal Party fell behind. Hibbins won comfortably on both axes in 2022. But in his absence, this race could be interesting on either measure.
Prior to 2023, there had never been a sitting Greens MP elected to a single-member seat at a state or federal election (not counting by-elections) who had retired or been defeated. Jamie Parker retired in 2023, and the Greens retained his seat of Balmain despite a large swing. And then Amy MacMahon lost her seat of South Brisbane. But this is the first time a Greens MP has resigned mid-term to create a by-election.
Read my guide to Prahran here.
Greens have preselected Angelica Di camillo who was the candidate for Higgins before it was abolished
She was also the candidate at the Aston By-Election.
And before that the Greens candidate for Rowville at the 2022 state election.
She will be the new member for the seat.
Sounds like she has experience in campaigns then, albeit in low priority unwinnable seats. But she’s not new to the game.
I wonder why, before Higgins was abolished, they had moved Sonya Semmens from Higgins to Macnamara. Obviously Macnamara is the more winnable seat and the priority, so it could be about putting the stronger candidate there, but if Angelica lives in St Kilda East that’s actually Macnamara, not Higgins.
Running in Prahran should almost be a slam dunk for any Greens candidate, it would take something pretty significant to blow a 12% margin in a seat that basically contains all the Greens’ best area south of the Yarra.