Ben, thanks for speaking with me. If you had to pick one seat that could act as a litmus test for either party, which way would you choose.
Well, there's going to be a lot of seats that matter, but one that I am really paying attention to is Benelong.
It's Christmas time for Ben Rowie. He's an election analyst who spends his days thinking about the historical trends in places like the seat of Benelong in Sydney.
It's a seat that was a traditional safe Liberal seat before John Howard famously lost it in two thousand and seven. Labour now holds it, but it was actually redrawn in the redistribution such that it's now on paper a Liberal Party seat. Earlier in this campaign, everyone thought it was a goner for Labor that they were going to lose that seat, But as they've been recovering in the polls, seats like Benelong are now looking a lot more competitive.
As we head to the polls this weekend, Ben's been calculated the path to victory for the major parties. The Coalition needs to pick up eighteen seats to win, while if Labour loses four seats they lose their majority. But as the electric shifts in all kinds of surprising ways. The path to victory for the major parties is more complicated than ever. From Schwartz Media, I'm Daniel James. This is seven am today. Analyst at the tally Room, Ben Rowy on the seats that were beside the election and
why Victoria matters more than ever. It's Monday, April twenty eight. I want to talk to you about Peter Dutton's past to victory. We know he's spent his leadership focused on outer suburbs and regional seats. So which seats does he look like winning that the Coalition doesn't already have.
Yes, So in twenty twenty two, the Coalition lost a bunch of seats in the inner cities. That was a big part of their losses. They lost seats to Teal Independence, they lost seats to Labor and a few to the Greens. A lot of those seats were in the inner city. There was a couple of others that were kind of mid suburban seats that have large Chinese populations. And then they also lost a number of seats in Western Australia.
And so a lot of the seats that are in their path to victory are those electorates, but the Coalition has also been looking for new seats, seats that they've never won before, where they can try and focus their efforts, seemingly as a way to kind of counterbalance an expectation that it might be hard to win back those inner city seats they lost last election.
Tell me more about those seats, particularly the ones that they've never won before.
Yeah, so I've been really fascinated by the way Peter Dutton has focused on petrol prices talking about fuel excise. There's a number of seats in the outer suburbs, mostly of Sydney and Melbourne. I'm thinking of Wherrerower in the
southwest of Sydney that covers parts of Liverpool area. That seat was held by Golf Whitlam was held by Mark Latham was a very safe labor seat, but with each wave of politics going this way and that back and forth, it has been getting less and less safe for labor and it's probably a little bit beyond the stretch of the coalition. But those are the kinds of seats that the Coalition is hoping to bring into their orbit so that they can make up for those Teal losses. So
where was one of them. There's Hawk in the outer suburbs of Melbourne. You've got Holton Bruce in the southeast of Melbourne, and then you also have Shortland, which is on the southern outskirts of Newcastle in New South Wales.
You mentioned it before, but a lot has been made of the Teal seats taken from the Liberals the last election. Any of them at risk of going back to the Liberals set this election or changing hands to other candidates.
Most of the Teal seats are not particularly safe for the Independence who hold them. They are all first term MPs, though, and there is historically a lot of evidence that usually independent MPs when they go up for election for the first time after they first win their seat, get a big swing towards them and solidify their hold on their seat. That happened with Zalie Stegle in twenty twenty two because
she was elected in twenty nineteen. So the others they may get that swing towards them, but it may be a little bit different because so many of them were all elected at the same time. The dynamics might play out a little bit differently. We're going to have to wait and see there's definitely a few. I would mention Curtain in Perth Mckella in Northern Sydney. They are both very marginal teal seats and I think if any of them are going to fall, they're the ones that are
probably the most vulnerable. But you've got to remember before twenty to twenty two, Before twenty nineteen, the Liberal Party had a lock on these seats. These were traditional safe seats where party leaders came from. You know, most of the party's leaders over recent decades represented seats that are now held by tel nps IT seats like Warringa and
Wentworth and Couyong. So you know, even if they can win some of these seats back as marginal seats, they're going to play a very different role in that Liberal base.
Let's look at a couple of those tal seats in Melbourne where the battle to win those seats seems to be like at its fear. Talk to me about Monic Ryan's chances in Kujong and Zoe Daniel's chances in Goldstein.
So both those seats have been traditional safe Liberal seats before they were lost at the last election, and the Liberal Party clearly would like to win them back. And are putting a big effort into those seats. Both those MPs have strong bases of volunteer support, and there's also evidence from other elections, council elections and state elections that
there is a lot of support there for independence. We've been seeing this trend nationally for quite a while now that progressive parties have been doing better in urban areas. They've been doing better amongst voters who have higher education levels, higher income levels, and some of these electorates like Kujong and Goldstein fit that quite well. So it didn't come out of the blue in twenty twenty two when these
MPs lost their seats. You know, the Greens did quite well in Kujong in twenty nineteen, didn't win, but they were quite competitive. So I think there is a lot changing about these electorates that is going to make things
easier for these independents. We're also seeing more development in these areas, a lot of new residents moving into the area that maybe are a bit different to the kind of old money base that has traditionally dominated these kind of eastern Southeastern electorates in Melbourne, and that's having an impact and I think a lot of those voters are going to favor the independent over the Liberal So I would probably say those independents have a good chance of
being re elected, but the Liberal Party hasn't given up on those seats. They really don't want to let those independents lock themselves in.
Coming up after the break, can Labor improve its chances in Queensland?
Hi, Ruby Jones. Here, seven Am tell stories that need to be told. Our journalism is founded on trust and independence, and now we're increasing our coverage. Every Saturday until the election, will bring you an extra episode to break down the biggest political moments of the week. If you enjoy seven Am, the best way you can support us is by making a contribution at seven am podcast dot com dot are you forward slash support. Thanks for listening and supporting our work.
We know Peter Dutton there has seen huge opportunity in Victoria. He launched his campaign there. What are the factors on a state level that are contributing to the Liberals' rise and fortunes there?
Yeah, So when the coalition was at its highest point in the polls in February, they were gaining ground everywhere, but they were gaining by far the most ground in Victoria, while they're only gaining a little bit of support elsewhere right now, though, these state polling averages show that Labour's actually gaining a swing in every other mainland state, but in Victoria there's still a swing of over two percent to the Coalition. I think part of the story here
is the state Labor government. Labor has been in power for all but four years over the last twenty six years. And and you know, Jacinta Allen is the second premier in the current government. She's not as popular as a predecessor of the government, just doesn't quite have the popularity that it once did. And so I think that is bleeding into federal politics and that is having an effect. You know, Victoria has been a pretty solid state for Labor at a federal level for quite a while now.
It's been one of their better states. And if the results play out the way the Poles are saying right now, they're going to lose that advantage in Victoria. Victoria is going to go right back to being basically in line with national polls.
Looking beyond Victoria, Western Australia was crucial in twenty twenty two for the Labor Party. How are they fearing this time around.
Yeah. So Western Australia historically has been one of the most conservative states in Australia, but the twenty twenty two election totally changed things. In Wa, Labor had already had this enormous landslide victory in twenty twenty one at the state election. COVID had really had an impact on state politics, and they did really well in the federal election. They were on a number of seats. They even won a third Senator in Wa, which they'd never done before, which
was essential to them getting a Progressive Senate majority. And we were all expecting that after that election, Wa would kind of go a bit back towards normality, you know, that Labour would lose some support there. Labour's clearly put a lot of effort into maintaining its position in Western Australia over the last three years. Right now though they're
not losing any ground in Western Australia. It was the best result last election, and if the polls were right, it would be their best result this election too.
And in Queensland we had the so called Green slide at the last election with three Greens MPs being elected. How are those seats looking.
Yeah, so those three inner city Green seats. They're all really complicated because they're not clean two horse races. They're three candidate contests where, particularly in Brisbane and Griffith, the Greens both need to stay ahead of Labor in the preference count and then get enough preferences to beat the Liberal National Party.
Right way it's.
Looking is they're looking pretty good in Griffith where they are clearly the more popular Progressive party, and then they are clearly beating the l and P. They're looking Okaine Ryan, where Labour is a lot weaker and it's more of
a straight Greens versus Liberal contest. Brisbane's a bit trickier because Labour's support is a bit resurgent in Brisbane, and there's a chance that in Brisbane, even if the Greens vote stays the same, if there's a swing from the Liberals to Labor, Labour might overtake the Greens and the Greens might get knocked out. Queensland more generally, was a state where Labor really didn't get any luck at the last election. They didn't contribute at all towards Labour winning government.
Labor did get a swing towards them across the state, but they didn't gain a single seat. Indeed, they lost one in the seat of Griffith. Right now, the polls do say that Labour might pick up a little bit of extra support in Queensland. So there are a bunch
of Coalish and marginals in Queensland that you know. Last time Labour one government in two thousand and seven, a lot of these seats flipped to Labor, but Labour didn't win any of them into two and I reckon they have a chance of winning a couple.
Labor has been persistently polling better than the Coalition throughout the campaign. Is there now a real chance that the government could be returned with a majority in the Parliament.
Yeah, we've been seeing over the last few weeks Labour's polls have really been improving quite quickly, and we're now at a point where I think we have to consider the possibility that even though it's looked like we're going to get a hung parliament, and even though the large size of the crossbench increases those chances, it is possible Labor, like they did in twenty twenty two, could still scrape across the line and get a majority in their own right.
So it's a good reminder that even though a lot of people now don't vote for Labor and the Coalition, they vote for minor parties and independents in the vast majority of seats. In the end, it's still a Labor versus coalition contest, and most seats in Parliament are still Labor or Coalition. But I think minority governments and hung parliaments are going to become more common and the major parties are going to have to work out how they
deal with that. Clearly, they're not comfortable with it. They'd rather it didn't happen that way, and they would be much more comfortable getting a majority in their own right, but they're going to have to find ways to negotiate. You know, Labor clearly isn't very comfortable with its relationship with the Greens, but an increasingly large proportion of those people who give Labor a preference are not actually Labor voters.
You know, Labor got about fifty two percent of the two party preferred vote the last election, but their primary vote was less than thirty three percent, So almost one in five people in the country now preference Labor but didn't vote for Labor as their number one vote, and so I think that's an increasingly large share of Labour's base that are going to expect that the party can do something other than just take its bat and ball and go home if they find themselves in the Home Parliament.
Ben, thank you so much for your time. Thanks for having me. Also in the news. An estimated two hundred thousand people have attendants of Peter Square in the Vaikan for the funeral mass of Pope Francis. US President Donald Trump and Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelenski were both president at the funeral, the first time the two men have been in the same place since they're now infamous, meeting in
the Oval Office in March. Trump and Zelenski used the funeral as an opportunity to take part in private discussions about a potential deal between Russia and Ukraine that could lead to a ceasefire and a Dutton leg government would make electric vehicle drivers pay more for using roads, according to the coalition's transport spokesperson, Bridget Mackenzie. Senator Mackenzie said it was an issue of equity, given other motorists pay
for road maintenance through the fuel excise. In an interview on Insiders, Senator Mackenzie floated the idea, but would not say how ev drivers would be made to pay, only insisting it would not be a tax. I'm Daniel James. This is seven am. See you tomorrow.