When the Victorian Liberal party’s state executive met last Thursday, just days before preselections closed in seats held by four retiring MPs, they looked at the list of candidates before them, underwhelmed.
“The view was, ‘yeah, nah’,” said one Liberal source, who requested anonymity to discuss internal party matters.
Another Liberal was more blunt. Some of those who had put their names up, they said, were “party hacks” and people who, because they had been around for years, felt “entitled to a seat in parliament”.
Even though nominations weren’t due to close for another five days, the executive took the unusual step of leaving them open indefinitely to allow for more candidates to come forward.
Preselections – an internal process all parties undertake to determine who gets to represent them on the ballot at the November 2026 state election – are usually a formality in held seats. In the Liberal party, incumbents may occasionally face a challenge but the serious jostling is usually reserved for the upper house seats, which don’t open until the start of next year.
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The stakes are higher this time, though, because four sitting MPs have announced their plans to retire at the next election: Bill Tilley in Benambra, David Hodgett in Croydon, Michael O’Brien in Malvern and Kim Wells in Rowville.
Combined, the four MPs have held their seats for more than 90 years, building not only a wealth of experience but a significant personal vote.
In Benambra, a seat centred on the border town of Wodonga, Tiley has twice seen off challenges from a community independent. In 2026, the Liberal candidate will probably face another independent as well as a member from the Nationals, who will contest the seat for the first time in years as they don’t run against incumbents from their Coalition partner.
In Melbourne’s eastern suburbs, Croydon and Rowville are already in Labor’s sights. With margins of just 1.2% and 3.7%, both are considered “winnable” under Labor’s internal rules.
Labor is loath to make comparisons between federal and state elections, but Croydon largely overlaps with Deakin, which the party unexpectedly picked up in May. Rowville, meanwhile, covers much of Aston, which Labor held despite predictions of a loss.
One Liberal source said if the party were to put “compromise on mediocre candidates” in either Croydon or Rowville, the consequences could be “catastrophic”. They said the party could not afford to lose a single seat, given the Coalition needs an additional 16 to form government.
“We actually owe it to the public to find the best possible candidates,” they said.
Then there’s Malvern. The blue-ribbon seat, which takes in some of Melbourne’s most wealthy suburbs such as Armadale, Malvern, Kooyong and Toorak, has never been lost by the Liberals. In 2022, O’Brien – who has been treasurer, minister and opposition leader – bucked the statewide swing against the party and increased his margin.
Several have nominated, but there are many in the party who are hopeful Amelia Hamer will throw her hat into the ring. As the Liberal candidate in Kooyong at the 2025 federal election, Hamer won several booths that overlap with Malvern. She has name recognition and state political lineage – the former premier Rupert Hamer is her great-uncle.
So, what’s stopping Hamer and others?
The first and most obvious reason is that many within the Liberal party’s own ranks doubt their chances at the next election. For those mid-career, professional, “small l” Liberals the party are trying to convince to run, the prospect of another four years in opposition is not enticing. A few have even said they will “wait until 2030” before they nominate.
Then there are the well-documented internal divisions in the Victorian Liberal branch.
“For those that do want to run, and let’s say they win, what kind of toxic and dysfunctional team are they joining?” one Liberal member said.
Finally, many would be weighing up the cost, both to their careers – often in businesses and organisations that want their staff to remain apolitical – and to their hip pockets. Candidates need to take time off work in the lead-up to the election, and in some of the tighter seats or those where there’s a strong independent challenger, that could be for an entire year.
That’s more concerning than the party’s much talked-about $5,000 application fee for prospective candidates in Liberal held seats.
One source noted that “$5,000 in exchange for a possible, four-year guaranteed salary of nearly $1m is a pretty good return on investment”. Another said it was a good way to prevent “pointless” contests to sitting MPs.
Indeed, despite talk of a conservative challenge to the former leader John Pesutto in Hawthorn – one of the party’s most marginal seats – no one nominated before Tuesday’s deadline.
With his loan from the party secured and defamation costs paid to fellow Liberal Moira Deeming’s lawyers, Pesutto is apparently considering a return to the Coalition frontbench, where there will be vacancies due to O’Brien and Hodgett’s departures.
Such a return, though, would undoubtedly inflame the party’s internal tensions.
The decision to extend nominations is a small but noticeable shift for the Liberal party.
After years of underwhelming candidates or worse – those who have made headlines for all the wrong reasons – it’s clear the party knows it needs stronger, more credible contenders if it wants to be competitive at the 2026 election.
It’s a lesson Labor should also heed as it opens preselections for its held seats on Friday, after the resignation of its MPs in Bass, Baywater, Melton and Pakenham and amid renegotiations on its factional stability deal, which appears close to a resolution.
• Benita Kolovos is Guardian Australia’s Victorian state correspondent
