Labor has won the Werribee by-election in Melbourne’s outer west by a whisker, with a massive swing against the party in what was formerly a rock-solid ALP state seat.
The result sends a warning not just to Jacinta Allan’s state Labor government but to Anthony Albanese, with a federal election due no later than 17 May.
It confirms the massive wave of anger building among working class voters after years of cost-of-living pain.
Labor scraped home in two-party preferred terms, 50.82 per cent to the Liberals’ 49.18 per cent.
Labor’s primary vote plunged to 28.89 per cent, a catastrophic collapse from the 2022 state election when the ALP won 45.36 per cent. Back in 2014, Labor won with 56.6 per cent.
Opinion pollster Kos Samaras tweeted that it was Labor’s lowest primary vote in a seat it held at any Victorian by-election since at least the Second World War.
The Liberals picked up just 4 per cent of the former Labor votes, with the rest spread among a variety of independent and minor party candidates, both left and right.
Meanwhile in another state by-election the same day, the Liberals took Prahran from the Greens after Labor refused to stand a candidate. A former Labor member who berated the Greens as “antisemites” stood as an independent to direct preferences to the Liberals.
Doing it tough
Werribee is one of many outer suburban working class areas which have already seen swings against Labor.
It overlaps with the federal seat of Lalor (once held by Julia Gillard), where Labor MP Joanne Ryan’s primary vote plunged more than 7 per cent in 2022.
Workers in Werribee are doing it tough.
In the 2021 census, the median household weekly income in Werribee was $100 less than the Australian average.
Tellingly, the number of workers working from home during the lockdown that year was 5 per cent lower than the Victorian average—indicating that Werribee workers were more likely to be in blue-collar jobs and at greater risk from COVID.
COVID hit Werribee and the surrounding suburbs hard, with the area topping the list of cases in 2020.
Werribee GP Joe Garra told The Age, “The general mood is terrible in Werribee … I think people are at the end of their tether really, mentally.”
In many ways, not much has changed since.
Werribee falls within the City of Wyndham, one of the fastest growing areas in Melbourne. Government spending on transport, education and health has not kept pace. Trains are packed and drivers are stuck in traffic jams at peak times.
Disposable income
In terms of wages, things have got worse.
As of March 2024, workers in Werribee, like all those across the country, have suffered a 4.8 per cent fall in real (allowing for inflation) hourly wages since 2019.
And Australia is the only advanced industrial country in the OECD group of nations to record a fall in disposable income.
Labor has presided over this disaster, putting the interests of big business before those of workers.
In doing so, they are paving the way for a Dutton government that would slash public sector jobs, step up support for Israel and launch a Trump-like war on the oppressed.
The swing against the ALP in the Werribee by-election is confirmation that many workers have had enough.
The challenge now is to turn that anger into action, for real wage rises, the right to strike and stronger public services.
By David Glanz
