GRN 6.9 vs ALP
Incumbent MP
Adam Bandt, since 2010.
Geography
Central Melbourne. Melbourne covers the Melbourne CBD, as well as the inner city suburbs of North Melbourne, Parkville, Carlton, Docklands, Abbotsford, Fitzroy, Ascot Vale, Richmond and East Melbourne. The seat covers a majority of the City of Melbourne and City of Yarra and a small part of the City of Stonnington.
Redistribution
Melbourne shifted south, picking up South Yarra and part of Prahran south of the Yarra from Higgins and Macnamara, and losing Clifton Hill to Cooper, and Carlton North, Fitzroy North and Princes Hill to Wills. These changes cut the Greens margin from 10.2% to 6.9%.
History
Melbourne is an original Federation seat, and was held by the ALP for over one hundred years before it was won by the Greens in 2010.
The seat was first won by Malcolm McEacharn, the former Mayor of Melbourne, who joined the Protectionist Party. Although McEacharn had defeated his Labor opponent William Maloney with over 60% of the vote in 1901, the 1903 election saw McEacharn only defeat Maloney by 77 votes, and the result was declared void after allegations that the result was tainted.
Maloney defeated McEacharn at the following by-election in 1904, and the ALP held Melbourne for the next century. Maloney polled over 60% at the 1906 election, and never polled less than 60% as he held the seat right through to 1940. Indeed, Maloney was elected unopposed at two elections. Maloney retired in 1940 but died before the 1940 election. He never held a frontbench role, and holds the record for the longest term of service without serving as a frontbencher.
The seat was won in 1940 by Arthur Calwell. Calwell held the seat for thirty-two years. He served as Minister for Immigration in Ben Chifley’s government from 1945 to 1949. He served as HV Evatt’s Deputy Leader from 1951 until 1960, when he became Leader of the Opposition.
Calwell led the ALP into three federal elections. The ALP was defeated by a slim margin at the 1961 election, but suffered a larger defeat in 1963 and a solid Liberal landslide in 1966. Calwell was replaced as Leader by Gough Whitlam in 1967 and Calwell retired in 1972. At no time did the seat of Melbourne come under any serious danger of being lost.
The seat was won in 1972 by Ted Innes, who held the seat until 1983.
He was succeeded by Gerry Hand, who served as a federal minister from 1987 until his retirement at the 1993 election.
The seat was won in 1993 by Lindsay Tanner. Tanner became a frontbencher following the defeat of the Labor government in 1996, and served on the Labor frontbench right until the election of the Rudd government, and served as Finance Minister in the first term of the Labor government.
The seat of Melbourne had been considered a safe Labor seat for over a century, but at the 2007 election the Greens overtook the Liberals on preferences and came second, and the two-candidate-preferred vote saw the ALP’s margin cut to 4.7%.
In 2010, Tanner retired, and his seat was won by the Greens’ Adam Bandt, who had first run for the seat in 2007.
Bandt was elected with the benefit of preferences from the Liberal Party, but in 2013 managed to win a second term despite the Liberal Party preferencing Labor. Despite losing these preferences, Bandt’s margin was only cut by 0.6%, and his primary vote jumped 7%. Bandt has since been re-elected in 2016, 2019 and 2022.
Bandt was elected leader of the Australian Greens in early 2020.
Assessment
The margin in Melbourne was significantly cut by the redistribution, but the Greens vote south of the Yarra was produced without the strong position of Adam Bandt personally – I expect he would pick up more support in that area, and retain his seat easily.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Adam Bandt | Greens | 47,883 | 49.6 | +1.6 | 44.7 |
| Keir Paterson | Labor | 24,155 | 25.0 | +3.9 | 25.7 |
| James Damches | Liberal | 14,660 | 15.2 | -6.0 | 19.5 |
| Colleen Bolger | Victorian Socialists | 3,156 | 3.3 | +3.0 | 2.6 |
| Richard Peppard | Liberal Democrats | 1,596 | 1.7 | +1.7 | 1.9 |
| Justin Borg | United Australia | 1,709 | 1.8 | +0.6 | 1.9 |
| Bruce Poon | Animal Justice | 1,316 | 1.4 | -0.7 | 1.4 |
| Scott Robson | Independent | 1,094 | 1.1 | +1.1 | 0.9 |
| Walter Stragan | One Nation | 937 | 1.0 | +1.0 | 0.8 |
| Others | 0.4 | ||||
| Informal | 2,993 | 3.0 | 0.0 |
2022 two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Adam Bandt | Greens | 58,050 | 60.2 | 56.9 | |
| Keir Paterson | Labor | 38,456 | 39.8 | 43.1 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Keir Paterson | Labor | 75,191 | 77.9 | +10.1 | 73.1 |
| James Damches | Liberal | 21,315 | 22.1 | -10.1 | 26.9 |
Booths have been divided into four areas. Fitzroy, Carlton and Abbotsford are grouped as North-East. East Melbourne and Richmond are grouped as East. Booths close to the Melbourne CBD are grouped as West. Those south of the Yarra are grouped as South-East.
The Greens topped the primary vote in all four areas, with a vote ranging from 34% in the south-east to 57.2% in the north-east.
The ALP came second, with a primary ranging from 23.2% in the north-east to 27.9% in the south-east. The Liberal Party came third, with a primary ranging from 9% in the north-east to 29.6% in the south-east.
| Voter group | GRN prim | ALP prim | LIB prim | Total votes | % of votes |
| East | 44.7 | 24.5 | 20.9 | 10,324 | 10.9 |
| North-East | 57.2 | 23.2 | 9.0 | 10,033 | 10.6 |
| West | 51.5 | 24.2 | 12.2 | 9,984 | 10.5 |
| South-East | 34.0 | 27.9 | 29.6 | 6,258 | 6.6 |
| Pre-poll | 44.0 | 26.4 | 19.8 | 35,904 | 37.8 |
| Other votes | 40.3 | 26.2 | 23.6 | 22,470 | 23.7 |
Election results in Melbourne at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Greens vs Labor and Labor vs Liberal), two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Greens, Labor and the Liberal Party.
If the state Libs can learn anything from this disaster, with their current polling they can definitely keep Prahran and maybe gain Albert park. The tide has turned against state Labor and it will only get worse
The redistribution is what killed bandt ultimately he would have survived otherwise. Same with Wolahan in Menzies.
The redistribution didn’t help but if Bandt didn’t have a swing against him he wouldn’t have lost his seat. He can’t blame the redistribution.
Like a lot of you, I’m also surprised by the loss of this seat thinking that Bandt was forever entrenched. He must’ve thought that too and my guess is that there was little attempt to sandbag.
People have some valid points about redistributions. Deep Green suburbs like Fitzroy North and Carlton North were removed. South Yarra is a more upper-class, teal-ish voter base. I noticed that there were big swings, even double-digit swings in Richmond and Cremorne. What happened there?
I mentioned earlier that since 2022, there might’ve been a boom in white-collar professionals and high-end renters due to the return to office (RTO). Such voters are less likely to be Marxist Green or less interested in issues like Palestine even though they might be socially progressive themselves. I’ve heard that a combination of over-focus on Palestine and parliamentary obstruction of Labor’s agenda turned off the Greens’ voter base.
There’s also a “suburbanisation” of the Greens vote to the middle-ring and outer suburbs. In Fraser, Greens candidate Huong Truong scored a huge swing. I hear that she’s a very strong campaigner. In suburbs like St Albans and Sunshine, she scored double-digit primary swings. Greens also scored solid swings in Western Sydney e.g. Parramatta, Greenway, Chifley. Unfortunately for the Greens, a diffused primary vote in generally safe-ish Labor seats won’t help.
@ Votante
Parts of Richmond especially close to the River like Cremorne/Burnely has young professionals who generally work in the Private sector many of whom went to private schools it is a weaker area for the Greens. Cremorne has a lot of tech companies based there so very Different to Fitzroy.
@Votante Richmond, Burnley and Cremorne has become more middle/upper professional class in terms of the demographics living there rather than the hippies that used to reside there. House prices in the CBD would be through the roof in a way that’s pricing out young people and only those earning 6 figures could afford to reside in places like Richmond, South Yarra, Burnley, Cremorne and East Melbourne, all of which saw swings to Labor itself. They’re progressive for sure but they’re not extreme left like the ones you find in Brunswick or Northcote.
I’d say Labor’s ability to pivot towards appealing to the professional workers and middle/upper class Australians from their previous base has worked well to increase their appeal in the electorate which coincided with the demographic transition. These are usually people who’d usually vote Liberals of Turnbull, Nelson, Hewson etc but would be out of reach for leaders like Abbott, Dutton or Morrison. Greens were also viewed with contempt by this group as there were primary swings against the Greens in pretty much all booths and Labor saw swings to them in most booths on primaries with Liberals being stationary.
@Votante, what you say here about Hong Truong in Fraser echoes what Tommo9, Nimalan and JT196 have said on the Cooper thread in the past fortnight. Namely, that the Green vote is spreading out.
Long-term, that might be good for them, but in the short term it dilutes their voter numbers in inner city seats. It will be interesting to see if the Green vote spreads as our cities become denser.
@adam true but Wolahan can. In fact Wolahan may have got a swing towards him and may still do.
@NP, didn’t Victorian Socialists get big swings pretty much everywhere including tripling their senate vote?
And in Wills the biggest primary vote swing wasn’t to the Greens but to Socialist Alliance (which boosted Ratnam’s 2CP more than her primary vote did).
@Dragons & NP, it’s not impossible for the Libs to win Prahran but extremely unlikely.
Again, with Labor on the ballot, they would not only have to outperform their byelection primary vote but *significantly* outperform it.
Considering they already got a +5% primary vote swing at the byelection – which specific byelection factors helped contribute to – even matching that primary vote (nowhere near enough to win) let alone significantly improving on it seems pretty unlikely.
I agree with Tommo9 that Labor are the real threat to the Greens in Prahran next time, but what the Greens’ have going for them is the unpopularity of state Labor to keep them ahead. Even with a much more popular federal Labor government, despite the swings against them the Greens still won the primary vote in almost every booth that overlaps Prahran.
I do think the Greens will probably cop a 6-7% swing against them compared to 2022 and the byelection.
But with a regular Labor preference flow in place the Liberals aren’t winning unless their primary vote is in the 40s, and if they couldn’t do that in February when the Lib polling in VIC was at its highest, turnout favoured them, it was a byelection and Labor weren’t even running, why would they significantly outperform it next year? Can’t see that occurring.
First time ive ever been so happy to see labor win a seat
@Tommo9 Northcote isn’t ‘extreme left’ like Brunswick. Look at the booth results in Cooper and compare them to Wills. Politically Northcote is more like Richmond than Brunswick.
Just on the comment about Albert Park too: there were huge LIB to ALzo swings in Albert Park and Port Melbourne in Macnamara.
While the state government is less popular so that will be a different race, and I very much doubt those swings will occur (in fact I do expect a swing against Nina Taylor), While fed & state are different, I don’t see those +6 Labor swings turning into -11 Labor swings (which would be required for Labor to lose Albert Park), especially in the inner city where even state Labor are less “on the nose”.
@Adam yeah sorry I should trust a local on this matter I just assumed that given Northcote (and Thornbury) for that matter were the only booths that voted Green over Labor I just assumed they were similar to Brunswick given that’s the real Green stronghold in Melbourne and both suburbs are parallel to each other separated by Merri-Bek Creek.
Interestingly, the Liberals got a swing on primary votes to them. The difference makers were a swing on primary votes to Labor and swing away from the Greens and also the stronger preference flow to Labor. Almost 75% of preferences went to Labor whereas it was 58% in 2022. The flow might be because of the absence of AJP and Vic Socialists.
@Nimalan, Tommo9. You’ve made fair points about Richmond and Cremorne. The area is popular with upper, middle-class professionals given its tech sector. There were double-digit swings away from the Greens in Docklands. The price of real estate has surely pushed out a lot of students and part-time and casual workers.
Labor ran a strong health and education campaign. I note that a lot of core Greens policies such as dental in Medicare or abolishing HECS debt or free university might’ve looked too good to be true or even too left-wing compared to Labor’s urgent care clinics or hotline or Labor’s 20% off HECS debt.
I have a really hot take about The Greens – The Greens may have been doing us (people who are centrist or right-wing) a favour for the past decade by drawing support from voters who are more radical than they are. Let’s be honest – there is plenty of space to the left of the policy platform The Greens have run on, and there is a small but significant minority of voters (particularly in inner-city areas) who inhabit that space. Yet The Greens have been successful at appealing to them.
If The Greens moderate or implode after this election, these voters may consolidate around parties such as the Victorian Socialists and the Socialist Alliance, and begin to normalise views that The Greens have never dared express in their rhetoric.
I will confess I am only speculating here – but perhaps in the future we will look back at Bandt losing Melbourne as the beginning of a turning point in Australian left-wing politics that is not so worthy of celebration.
The Greens aren’t dead for now. They likely have one HoR seat so it’s back to pre-2022 levels. They also have elected one senator per state this time. The issue is they need to get a leader.
Longer term, it’s even harder now to regain HoR seats because their vote is diffused and suburbanised especially in long-standing Labor seats. There’s also competition for the upper-middle class voter such as Labor, Liberal, teals (if you’re in Sydney at least).
They manages to make the 2cp in several seats and almost grabbed wills. Which they will probabltly win in 2028. Albo and plibersek are lilely the only things holding them off in grayndler and sydney.
I mean, I agree that a Green resurgence in 2028 and eventual competitiveness in Grayndler and Sydney is a possibility too – in which case 2025 will be seen as a mere temporary setback.
2031 will probably be there time again. I cant see them winning too many seats in 2028 except maybe wills possiblt richmond
The Greens best chance of winning lower house seats has always been by bumping Labor down to third place and winning GRN v LIB contests off Labor preferences.
That’s how they won Brisbane, Ryan, Griffith, Prahran and Maiwar.
Greens vs Labor contests have always been much harder for them to win – as Wills and Cooper have persistently shown – and when they have won them, a lot of the time they have been assisted by the Liberals directing preferences to them such as Melbourne 2010, Balmain 2011, Richmond (VIC) 2022 and South Brisbane 2020.
The combination of big swings to Labor and the Liberals putting the Greens last (heavily promoted by Advance’s “Put the Greens last” campaign) basically killed that particular path to victory.
Sorry correction, Balmain 2011 should be among the seats the Greens won by Labor dropping to third, not the ones where Liberals directed preferences to them.
When Albo and Plibasek retires the Greens will have their best chance. However, the question should be whether it is a GRN V LAB or GRN V LIB if it is the latter the Greens will win it but not the former. The next Labor candidate in Grayndler will have to be more left wing than Albo to win the seat.
@ Trent, there examples where the Greens won seat from Labor even without Liberal preferences. However, the LIB vote was so low for example Melbourne 2014 (state) or Brunswick 2018. If NSW had CPV and the Libs preferenced Labor, the Greens will still win Newtown since the Lib vote is so low.
@Nimalan, yeah there are GRN v ALP contests the Greens have won without the Libs directing preferences but they are definitely the minority and generally take an ultra-left seat like Brunswick with a very small Liberal vote.
Wills came very close this time but still fell short, I think highlighting just how hard it is the Greens to win a GRN v ALP contest when Liberal preferences flow to Labor.
The next Labor member for Grayndler sits in the Inner West Council. either Darcy Byrne or Phillipa Scott
The Question is does Bandt try to recontest the seat next election or will he contest the open senate seat & let someone like Ellen Sandell run?
A great article to read. It is true that south of the river like South Yarra, Melbourne 3004 are Tealish than Green Left.
https://www.afr.com/politics/federal/how-melbourne-s-green-red-line-undid-adam-bandt-20250508-p5lxi6
I don’t disagree at all that south of the river is a more tealish ‘green’ compared to north of the river, but that article is implying that the areas added south of the river are what swung against the Greens due to them being “extreme” which is actually false.
I looked at all the booths south of the river that were added in the redistribution, and the collective swing against the Greens there (compared to 2022 in Higgins & Macnamara) was only -0.5%, well below the -5.7% swing across the seat as a whole. So it’s actually north of the river that swung harder.
Bandt has conceded defeat but I honestly thought his concession was a bit ungracious. He practically said that Labor, Liberal, One Nation all ganged up on him and the Greens which was why he lost instead of looking at his party’s increasingly polarising grandstanding on a daily basis.
The fact of the matter is even with the redistribution, if he didn’t see his primary vote drop by 4% and Labor increased by 5% then he would’ve won. He had to contend with One Nation, Liberals and Labor every election since 2016 and he was always able to safely win, so if his primary vote went down at a time the electorate’s turning left then that probably says a lot about his position rather than the other parties.
To be fair he probably didn’t think he needed to sandbag his seat given that South Yarra and Prahran are generally fairly Green friendly but no one would’ve been able to predict the size of the swings in Richmond, Burnley, Cremorne or East Melbourne that contributed to his undoing. Still it would’ve been better to talk about the achievements and aspirations he has done in 15 years instead of blaming the other parties.
@Tommo9 the Greens have never been great at concession speeches it seems.
@ Trent
Apologies, i was just referring to the demographic nature of South of the river. I did not mean to say i endorse AFR allegation that the Greens are extreme. I will note that many right wing commentators are saying that if you look at the video from News Corp they are saying the Greens lost because they are extreme but i agree News Corp is biased to the right wing of politics.
Oh I know I wasn’t referring to your comment Nimalan. I agree with what you were saying about the south of the river parts being more ‘teal’ Green than red/green.
Also clearly the redistribution hurt as well, because even though the newly added parts didn’t swing against the Greens, it still added an area where the Liberal vote is close to double and therefore helps Labor’s 2CP significantly.
I was more just pointing out that the premise of the AFR article – that South Yarra & Prahran “swung against” the Greens for becoming too “extreme” – was actually completely incorrect when you look at the data because South Yarra & Prahran are the two suburbs where the Greens’ vote held up best and they really had no swing against them!
@Nimalan, I don’t think News.com.au itself is biased to the right, it’s more of a tabloid so the headlines and focus is more sensationalised.
I think the video does make some good points though. Being too woke and unconstructive cost them votes. Voters rejected the extremely progressive and ecosocialist student politics ideology figures like Adam Bandt and Abbie Chatfield hold.
as a green supporter. I am disappointed about the way we have moved under bandt and mcm, i hope we go back to our roots. and become more pragmatic while keeping (most) of our policies. Then we can fight labor!. We should still continue fighting for ecological, social and economic injustices. But be more mainstream about it.
I would suggest the newly added areas “lack of swing” is entirely a result of those areas previously having been in Macnamara/Higgins and not having a personal vote for the Greens leader (in the Macnamara portion, it would’ve been Josh Burns instead). Therefore, they appear to have “not swung against” the Greens since the new personal vote that Bandt has counteracts the general swing against the Greens that took place. Similar to how places like Clifton Hill, Fitzroy North and Carlton North swung >20 points to Labor after previously being in Melbourne and now in Cooper/Wills.
@ Trent,
All good, i now wonder what would have happened if Higgins still existed on the 2022 boundaries, would Michelle Ananda -Rajah be relected or Katie Allen take back the seat. I suspect unlike in Macnamara, Liberals would have gone hard on Israel and tied MAR to Penny Wong and the UN votes in full page advertising in the AJN etc. At the same time now that Labor has won more Middle Australia seats like Deakin and especially Aston maybe they dont care and Labor will treat the seat as a once off as means to government rather than an end. Now for the first time since November 2018 no part of Glenferrie Road has a Labor member at either levels of governemet but Westfield Knox has a Labor member at both levels for the first time since 1990 (general election not by-election).
@ Nether Portal
Interesting, what do you think of the video where Zac asks Bandt to repeat that he has demonized the Jewish Community. I note that has gone viral and Phil Daldakis and others are promoting it.