Labor could hardly be considered a metaphorical David in most federal election contests. But in the progressive seat of Melbourne, where the now-beaten Greens leader Adam Bandt had reigned for 15 years, there are similarities to the oft-told biblical story.
On 28 March, when Anthony Albanese called an election date for May, Melbourne appeared on no one’s list as a battle to watch.
Just five months before the campaign began, Labor’s candidate against Bandt, Sarah Witty, had unsuccessfully run for a seat on Yarra city council. She came third behind independent and Greens candidates.
By February, less than two months from polling day, Witty was Labor’s choice to run in Melbourne against the long-serving Greens MP.
From the outset, the seat wasn’t on federal Labor’s radar. “I don’t think we even had it in the winnable column,” a Victorian Labor source said.
A Greens insider said there had been no indication Melbourne was in trouble, noting the party didn’t have the resources for single-seat polling in the way the major parties do.
Both the Greens and Labor will reflect on the unexpected result in the coming weeks to figure out what happened.
For the Greens, it will be a sobering look at how Bandt, regarded as a unifying leader within the party, lost the seat he had held for so long.
Labor campaign ‘run on the smell of an oily rag’
Local Labor volunteers from the Melbourne and Richmond branches were out on the hustings daily. Even Witty’s social media was run by a volunteer, who updated the page in their free time.
How-to-vote cards were supplied by the national campaign but rank-and-file members had to fundraise through raffles and auctions to pay for campaign shirts and corflutes.
A senior Victorian Labor source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, described Witty’s campaign as “run on the smell of an oily rag”, with donations from the active Melbourne and Richmond branches.
Another Labor source, who helped the campaign, said: “It was a very, very sparsely funded campaign, all raised from locals. It wasn’t like there were massive amounts of money coming from a national office.”
The idea of Labor as David in a battle against the Greens Goliath doesn’t sit well with the Greens camp. They argue that Labor’s federal megaphone gives even the most under-resourced campaigns a big chance.
While the “people-powered” campaign is credited by Labor sources as the reason Witty ousted Bandt, a “perfect storm” had also hit.
The Greens leader’s chance of winning a sixth term in office was dampened by three key factors, the electoral analyst Kevin Bonham said.
The electoral boundaries for the seat shifted before the election, lowering Bandt’s primary vote from 49.6% in 2022 to 44.7%. On a two-candidate preferred basis, it had dropped from 60.2% to 56.5%.
After days of tense post-election vote counting, Bandt on Thursday conceded to Witty, saying a Greens win in Melbourne was like “climbing Everest”.
“We needed to overcome Liberal, Labor and One Nation combined, and it’s an Everest that we’ve climbed a few times now, but this time we fell just short,” he said.
Bonham said preference flows had not favoured the Greens this time around.
More Liberal and One Nation votes went to Labor than previously.
The rightwing activist group Advance ran a campaign against the Greens to reduce its vote in both houses, claiming Bandt’s defeat as a win.
Social media advertising analysis showed the group had spent no money on targeted ads in the seat during the campaign.
Advance disputes the data that no money was spent on geo-targeted advertising in Melbourne, adding they spent a similar amount there as other Greens-held seats.
A source inside Bandt’s camp said a post-election review would look at third-party campaigns against the party to understand their impact on the inner-city seat.
Bonham said another factor against Bandt couldn’t be written off as easily: the Greens leader’s primary vote dipped just enough, even after the boundary redistribution, to set the wheels in motion for his loss.
“It’s a perfect storm,” he said. “He had a lower baseline, he had a swing against him on the primary vote, and he had a swing against him on preferences.
“Those three things combined have got rid of him.”
Swings against Bandt in progressive booths, including Fitzroy and Collingwood, will require further analysis to determine how the Greens came undone in the lower house.
A Victorian Labor source from the left faction hoped the Greens “looked critically” at their failings.
“I really do see the value of having strong leftwing crossbenchers in the parliament,” they said. “I think it’s good for democracy, and I think it’s really good for the Labor party when we do have a viable leftwing minor party.
“So I really hope that they take some time to critically look at their failings.”
