Morwell – Victoria 2022

ALP 4.0%

Incumbent MP
Russell Northe (Independent), since 2006.

Geography
Latrobe Valley. Morwell covers most of the City of Latrobe, specifically the towns of Morwell, Moe and Traralgon. Morwell electoral district also covers the towns of Boolarra, Churchill, Newborough, Tyers and Yallourn North.

Redistribution
Morwell expanded to the west to take in the town of Moe, while losing its north-eastern corner. Moe is very strong for Labor, and this flipped the margin from 1.8% for the sitting independent MP to 1.1% for Labor, but on a two-party-preferred basis it is 4.0% for Labor.

History
Morwell has existed as an electoral district since 1955. It was first held by the Liberal Party until 1970, and by the Labor Party from 1970 until the 2006 election, when it was won by the Nationals.

Morwell was first won in 1955 by Liberal candidate Jim Balfour. He became a cabinet minister in 1964, and in 1967 moved to the new seat of Narracan. He held Narracan until his retirement in 1982, serving as a cabinet minister until 1977.

Balfour was succeeded in Morwell by fellow Liberal Archie Tanner. A former amateur boxing champion, Tanner held the seat for one term, losing Morwell in 1970 to the 27-year-old Derek Amos of the ALP.

Amos held the seat until his resignation in 1981, when he was succeeded at a by-election by the 31-year-old Valerie Callister, also of the ALP.

Callister retired in 1988, and was succeeded by Keith Hamilton, who served as Minister for Agriculture and Minister for Aboriginal Affairs.

Hamilton retired at the 2002 election, and was succeeded by Brendan Jenkins. He held the seat with a 4.9% margin. In 2002, the Liberal Party polled 19% of the primary vote, with the Nationals polling 12%. The Nationals had been the primary opposition to the ALP in Morwell as recently as 1996, but in 1999 the Liberals had become the main opposition, with the Nationals not contesting the seat.

In 2006, the Nationals polled almost 28% of the primary vote, with the Liberals on 14%. After preferences, the Nationals’ Russell Northe won the seat with a 2.2% margin. Northe was re-elected much more comfortably in 2010, with no Liberal opponent. He narrowly won a third term in 2014.

Northe resigned from the Nationals in 2017 to sit as an independent, and narrowly retained his seat as an independent in 2018.

Candidates
Sitting independent MP Russell Northe is not running for re-election.

Assessment
With the sitting independent MP retiring, this seat is in play. Labor won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in 2018, but the margin is not great.

2018 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Mark Richards Labor 13,725 34.2 -1.4 38.5
Russell Northe Independent 7,851 19.6 +19.6 16.5
Dale Harriman Liberal 4,955 12.3 +12.3 14.1
Sheridan Bond Nationals 4,283 10.7 -33.8 9.0
Ricky Muir Shooters, Fishers & Farmers 2,856 7.1 +7.1 5.9
Ray Burgess Independent 2,388 5.9 +6.0 5.2
Daniel Caffrey Greens 1,460 3.6 -1.1 3.8
Reece Diggins Aussie Battler Party 892 2.2 +2.2 2.0
Tracie Lund Independent 841 2.1 -8.8 1.8
Nathan Keen Democratic Labour 654 1.6 +1.6 1.5
Christine Sindt Independent 237 0.6 +0.6 0.6
Others 1.2
Informal 3,436 7.9 +2.5

2018 two-candidate-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Mark Richards Labor 19,334 48.2 -0.2 51.1
Russell Northe Independent 20,808 51.8 +51.8 48.9

2018 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Mark Richards Labor 21,037 52.4 +4.2 54.0
Sheridan Bond Nationals 19,105 47.6 -4.2 46.0

Booth breakdown

Booths have been divided into five areas: Moe, Traralgon, Morwell and the rural remainder split into north and south.

The vote for independents was much lower in Moe due to the redistribution bringing in areas from Narracan, but otherwise the independent vote ranged from 22.1% in the north to 29.3% in Morwell.

The Labor vote ranged from 33% in the north to 53% in Moe.

Voter group ALP prim % IND prim % Total votes % of votes
Moe 53.4 12.6 6,652 15.6
Traralgon 33.0 26.2 5,877 13.8
Morwell 40.6 32.6 4,100 9.6
South 37.3 26.7 2,669 6.3
North 32.3 24.0 1,447 3.4
Pre-poll 35.4 28.4 18,356 43.2
Other votes 36.7 22.7 3,423 8.0

Election results in Morwell at the 2018 Victorian state election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, independent candidate Russell Northe and the Liberal Party.

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93 COMMENTS

  1. @Mick I’m not exactly sure where she is based but I think the ALP have a better chance of winning here with her as well as their promise for SEC will help them.

  2. With all the la trobe Valley in the one seat Labor has an excellent chance with a good candidate. Watch the swing in Nacarran with the sitting lib mp retiring and an a history of strong voter attachment for all
    sitting .mps in past years

  3. Moe based councillor Sharon Gibson is running as an independent. If she can scoop up the Moe vote I wonder if she becomes the strongest independent chance.

  4. Sharon Gibson appeared with the lead Freedom Party upper house candidate at her campaign launch. She is obviously trying to scoop up the right wing outliers. Of note, Sharon Gibson ran a campaign to get the Morwell boundaries changed after the draft boundary release – and she was successful.

  5. @Redistributed

    The Freedom Party candidate is Greg Hansford, another well-known Moe local. He ran for Gippsland in the federal election as the One Nation candidate and polled 10pc which apparently made him the most successful ON candidate in Victoria at that election.

  7. This seat has a history of various independents running at each election, but many of whom don’t end up poll more than a few %. Their preferences however will likely have a big impact on who wins this seat.

    I suspect this will be an ALP v NAT contest with a very crowded minor party/ind vote

  8. Lisa Proctor, whose preferences famously elected the Nats in 2006 for the first time, is back running again and surprise surprise, is preferencing the Nats again. She has a much lower profile these days though so probably won’t get the 9% she did back then, although there are some who think the local women’s vote will gravitate towards these independents and the ALP rather than the very blokey footy player the Nats are running with.

  10. Makes sense and is clearly quite transactional – SFFP are directing their prefs to help Labor win Morwell, whilst Labor are preferencing Bourmann in Eastern Victoria.

  12. With a 4% boost in the alp.vote
    Due to boundary change a open
    Seat snd a good candidate alp
    Excellent chance

  13. Used to be very pro-Labor with big unionised state enterprise (an 80s equivalent of Bendigo & Ballarat) then swung violently against Labor on climate policy & has since swung back somewhat to where you would expect Labor to usually win it, especially if they win govt.

  14. End of 2017 I bumped into Ricky Muir and had a chat about SFF and Labor preferences.

    At that point, he reckoned he had a genuine shot at winning Morwell and maybe even holding balance of power if there was a minority Labor government. Either was being a bit optimistic or had crap intel (maybe both).

    But notably, if you ask him his political philosophy he’ll tell you he’s actually an old-fashioned Labor voter in a lot of ways. Or at least, the kind of person who would have been a solid industrial Labor voter 50 years ago.

  15. Nate are spending big here as its their marginal seat & Libs are not campaigning hard defining their role as supporting Nats. Their candidate is a footy star from Traralgon but that’s not where they need to pick up votes.

  16. Had interesting discussion with media about Tracie Lund the teal-ish independent who is defying stereotype by having following in the battler areas where she has big profile from her Neighbourhood House work, apparently some people who have never voted before are displaying her signs.

  17. I was wondering about Lund. From memory she is a former local councillor, and in 2018 there was some chatter that she should have done a lot better. Probably the crowded field didn’t help. Maybe she’ll surprise…

  18. Hard to see Lund doing better with a serious ALP campaign and 2 other female independents, Gibson and Proctor. This seat will be fun to watch on the night and probably for the 2 weeks of counting after.

  20. @Entrepreneur I would be surprised to see Lund do worse than Gibson or Proctor. Like Lund and Harriman (the Liberal candidate), Gibson is a current Latrobe City councilor and is notorious for her focus on ‘advocating’ for her home-town of Moe above all else and her somewhat “unorthodox” personality. I also noticed that the Freedom Party were handing out pre-poll HTVs recommending a “1” vote for “Sharon Gibson or Alex Maidana”, which struck me as a very odd endorsement from a party running their own candidate!

    I’d expect Gibson to poll well in the Moe booths specifically, but I think her reach beyond that will be very limited – about 1-3% total. Lund has a much larger community reach and is far less controversial than Gibson, so I’d expect her to get anywhere from 5% to 15% and up to 20% if she has a really good night. Lisa Proctor is barely worth mentioning and is a relic of the 90’s, so I’d be surprised if she polls higher than dead last.

  23. I think the Nats will pick this one up.

    Labor have preselected very well. Initiatives like the Commonwealth Games would give them a boost. There’s lots of political initiative behind not leaving the area behind in any transition away from coal. They’ve stitched up a good preference deal with the Shooters (in return for Eastern Vic GVTs). They did win in 2018 2PP, and there was a Morgan poll that had them gaining. So possibly a bold call.

    But I still get the sense that coal communities aren’t quite buying any of the just transition narrative. The Labor retained Hunter federally this year with a small swing to them, but looking at the booths it seems like it was Newcastle suburbs, not Muswellbrook and Singleton, that clinched it for Labor. Libs are making mixed environmental noises, but there’s less ambiguity with the Nats. Plus the area isn’t attracting millennials priced out of Melbourne the way e.g. Geelong is.

  24. I think that Morgan poll is just applying the 55-45 respondent 2PP to a uniform swing (2.3%). Which naturally means this seat is retained. see

    Personally I think it’s more likely than not that it’s a Nationals gain, and possibly against the trend occurring in metropolitan areas. I can easily see a gain in a seat like Glen Waverley happening while at the same time losing this seat.

  25. Uniform swings are arguably useless here. This seat swings entirely to its own beat, in 2002 it swung massively against Labor when the rest of the state was a landslide towards it. Similar instances occurred in 1992 and 2010 when the swings were vastly different to the rest of the state.

  26. @John

    I’d argue that Hunter (black coal for export) is actually pretty different demographically and economically to Morwell (brown coal for power stations). The number of people actually directly employed by the power stations is a fraction of what it was a few decades ago, and it’s not like Qld or NSW where you’ve got young men making a ton of money digging stuff up.

    When the SEC got privatised in the 90s, the Valley’s demographics changed significantly to where there’s an enormous social housing population in Morwell and Moe, a lot of refugees etc. You could almost more usefully compare it to a combination of a seat like Dandenong, dropped in the middle of regular Nats-voting Gippslanders.

  27. Any polling that looks at uniform swings is laughable in this election. What I think will happen is there are a lot of ALP seats on double digit margins that will swing very hard but seats like Bayswater and Bass which you’d expect Labor to lose on any uniform swing will hold with strong incumbents and less unfavorable voter demographics.

    That’s some well informed analysis though Expat. Labor winning back a coal area seat would be a big moral victory with federal implications. The SEC announcement seems targeted here.

    But looking at federal results, Darren Chester won all the Morwell booths. Broadbent still lost Moe but tiny swings compared to large swings in other parts of Monash.

    A seat to watch. The count will be messy but if VEC looks at Nats vs ALP we should know on the night who won.

  28. Morwell is 54% alp on new boundaries..alp candidate is strong.
    This area votes for Darren Chester because he has a personal vote.and is better than
    Your average nat.
    This will be an alp seat at the election

  29. The Resolve poll earlier this week indicated that Labor were in trouble in Eastern Victoria. If that is the case, then the ALP might just very well tank here. If the Labor primary is under 35% they are in deep trouble as they have few sources of preferences – the Greens do particularly badly here. That leaves them only the Shooters.
    Sharon Gibson is the recipient of a lot of preference flows. If her vote is anywhere above 15% she could definitely be in the final two. A wild card here is One Nation – they do poll well in the Valley and they are running the same candidate that they had in May. I would not be surprised if their vote is nudging 10% and their #2 is Sharon Gibson. I could see her building up from a low base and if she is final 2 against a Coalition candidate she is probably in. If she comes #3 – it will be a coalition win.
    The Libs and Nats are helped by being right at the top of a very long ballot paper. I agree with others, it will be a messy count.

  30. Expat – where do you get your hypothesis that there are significant refugee populations in the Valley? The 2021 census doesn’t bear it out and having been on the ground there many times – there seems to be no indication of anything but a small non Anglo population.

  31. @redistributed the One Nation candidate is Allen Hicken, who ran for Monash federally. It was Greg Hansford who ran in Gippsland, who is now the Freedom Party upper house candidate.

  32. @redistributed

    From my family members living and working with them in Morwell. Maybe not “a lot” of refugees compared to e.g. Dandenong South or other parts of the metro area, but they’re there.

  33. Nats should win this back. Labor is wasting time here and is better served trying to defend Melbourne marginals.

  34. Daniel t

    Disagree Labor has a margin of 4% a good candidate and a similar climate to 2018.. will
    Win… look at the bookies too
    Think shows alp.1.70.labor win

  35. Mick I hope you are right, but it certainly doesn’t look like it. The redistribution was favourable but this area is trending away from Labor. And with Labor looking at losing seats, they are solely focused on retaining their seats, perhaps only targeting 1-2 Liberal seats in Southern and Eastern Melbourne.

  36. Bookies should never be cited as a reason for a seat outcome (not to mention $1.7 is very much “tossup”). The seat hasn’t gotten attention from media networks so there’s been no liquidity in this seat market. It’s still at the default price set early on in the campaign (although that might change very soon when someone starts betting on the Coalition).

  37. I don’t think it’s true to say that Labor hasn’t bothered here, Andrews wearing a SEC jacket everywhere and coming up with the ‘bring back the SEC’ policy is clearly a play for Morwell.

    I also don’t see how you can say the climate is ‘the same’ as in 2018.

  38. @Daniel Moe still seems to lean Labor pretty comfortably, if their vote starts dropping there then they might struggle to hold this seat.

  39. @North East that being said, Broadbent managed to win Moe booths in 2019 so they are becoming more conservative, just more slowly than the rest of the Valley.

  40. @Entrepenuer Fair pooint, i hadn’t looked at or remember the 2019 Moe booths so had just seen the 2022 results where i believe Labor won all the Labor booths.

  41. Labor barely even won the Moe and Morwell booths this time around.

    Imagine telling someone 15-20 years ago that a seat consisting of nothing but Moe, Newborough, Morwell and Traralgon would be a comfortable Coalition win….

  42. Agree Mark Mulcair, this shift of voting patterns over 20 years has been phenomenal. I cant think of another area in Victoria where Voting patterns have shifted so dramatically in a single generation. To look closer in 2002 Labor got 82.1% of the TPP in the Newborough East while in 2022 they only 51.4%. Also Churchill, a town built by the SEC to house workers from the Power Plants now voted Just over 50% for the Nats. I am not sure if Labor will ever campaign here. Maybe in 8 years there will be no Red booths left. I would compare this shift to the area around Bathurst/Lithgow in the electorate of Calare.

  43. @Mark Mulcair I wonder if Labor will even bother with the SEC revival given the results in Morwell. That pledge was specifically targeted there.

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