From The Australian. Here's what's on the front. I'm Kristin Amiot. It's Monday, February tenth. The Federal government has committed to keeping twenty thousand public servants on the payroll, but a new analysis by the Parliamentary Budget Office suggests that will leave an eleven billion dollar sized hole in the budget. Now the opposition wants Labor to show its working. That exclusive story is live right now at the Australian dot
com dot au. The estranged husband of missing Lennox Head mother Bronwyn Winfield, is trying to sell his home and it's got her brother worried he's about to skip the country. Andy Reid raised his concerns in a letter to the New South Wales State Coroner, Teresa O'Sullivan in December. John Winfield denies any wrongdoing. Rising crime and the crippling cost of living have dealt Victorian labor a potentially devastating blow. It's a situation the federal government and the opposition are
watching closely as an election looms. That's today's episode. When The Australian's Victorian editor, Damon Johnston called up the state's Electoral Commission to inquire about the status of the vote count in the Werribe by election on Sunday. He was told counting will resume at nine am on Monday morning. For Victorian Labor, it was a prolonging of the agony.
Oh, it's been a bloodbath for the Victorian Labor Party in their once heartland seat of Werriby. It was a very dirty Saturday night. Now that doesn't mean they're going to lose the seat, but what it does mean is that they've suffered a double digit swing, probably between ten an eleven percent on a two party preferred basis, and that has taken a seat that they've held since nineteen seventy nine. They've never lost it to the brink of defeat.
Residents of Werribe, in Melbourne's outer western suburbs, cast their votes on Saturday in a by election triggered by the resignation of long standing Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallace in December. It's one of the fastest growing local government areas in the country and voters didn't miss their opportunity to send it the Victorian Labor government, headed up by Premier just Into Allen, a message.
This has happened because the voters in Weerribee, Labor voters in the main have felt neglected and it taps into that broader sense of discontent in Labour's heartland electorate for the government. They feel the crimes out of control, the cost of living, local roads or a problem, and they brought the baseball bats out on Saturday night and gave the Labor government a real whack.
When counting paused on Saturday night, the Werribee race was on a knife's edge as the parties more than ten percent lead deteriorated just center. Allen told party faithfuls it was too close to call. The state opposition isn't getting ahead of itself either.
Now. The Liberals still believe that the seat is not theirs. They are concerned that they might fall just short as at Sunday lunchtime. There is no counting Sunday afternoon, but they believe they may fall a couple of hundred votes short. Now it's important to note that the voters didn't necessarily
jump to the Liberals in Werribee. While the Liberal vote did increase by a few percentage points, most of the disaffected Labor voters went to independence, and those preferences are now flowing to the Liberals in part hence the line ball down to the wire position the electorate is in.
Damon. Jacinta Allen has taken up the Victorian premiership not only after Dan Andrews's long tenure, but after more than two decades of Labor leadership. There's a state election coming up in twenty twenty six. What does this swing against labor in Werribee mean for her as premier end for her government?
Do you think inevitably the backlash against labor has to be interpreted as a backlash against Jacinta Allen. She's the leader. She conceded today that she has to take responsibility for the result. She's also conceded that her government needs to listen more and do more on issues like crime and cost of living.
By elections are an opportunity for communities to send a MESSI and to make sure their voice is being heard. And what comes with the privilege of being in a labor government is the opportunity to support what you're being told by working people and families.
She's now been in office as leader for over a year and this is the first time voters have had a chance to really pass judgment on her and it was damning. In my view, this will inevitably spark some internal reflections within the alp And caucus about whether she is the right person to lead the party into the twenty twenty six election. I don't think there will be
any immediate move on Allen. However, if there was another by election in the next six months that also went as badly as this one in a key Labor seat, then I think some tensions might come to the surface.
Victorian Labor has been protected for decades by US so called red wall in the outer western suburbs. Their seats like Werribee that until Saturday have been safely held by Victorian Labor through election cycle after election cycle. But as the tide turns against labor governments around the country, that era could be coming to a close.
Labour's Red Wall at both the state and federal level, has been under siege now for some years. However, this is the first time it's been really penetrated. It's fair to say that Labour's wall is crumbling as we speak. Labor strategist and polster Cosimaris has described it as more of a barbed wire red fence and says that the mood is on for Labor voters to vote against the ALP.
What's happened in Werribee is quite historic. Even if they hold the seat, they have made their intentions known and I think any Labor in P who holds a once safe seat at either a state or federal level should now consider their electorates to be marginal. In the West of Melbourne, at the.
Same time Werriby locals were casting their votes, a by election was also happening in the inner city suburb of Pran. That vote was triggered by the resignation of MP Sam Hibbins from the Victorian Greens in twenty twenty four.
The Victorian Greens have been rocked by a sex scandal that's forced a married MP to step down. Deputy leader Sam Hibbins breached party room rules by having an affair with one of his staffers.
By lunchtime on Sunday, Victorian Green's leader Ellen Sandel conceded her party couldn't win this one. I think in the federal election and the state election next year, we're going to see really positive results and we're going to win this seat back based on the numbers that are simply in front of us New opposition leader Brad Batton, who was installed following a rocky couple of months for the Victorian Libs, said the election of Rachel west Away was a boon for the party.
But here in Peran, we are very proud to declare that we can claim victory in a seat that many didn't think was possible just three or four weeks ago.
Labour didn't contest the prime by election, but Damon reckons the result there could be a sign of things to come at the federal level.
Clearly the Liberals are back in town. Peter Dutton has pegged the outer suburban voters to be his target audience for the next federal election. He'll be looking at this and thinking, on one level it's positive, clearly there's dissatisfaction with Labor. But if he's honest with himself, he'll be thinking the Liberal Party have still got a lot of work to do to ensure that those angry Labor voters actually support the Liberal.
Party coming up. What a turning of the tide in Werriby means the federal government. Greg Brown is one of the Australian senior federal politics specialists. He ring around Parliament to find out how members of both the major parties are feeling about Werriby on Sunday.
Well, it's to be expected. It's been played down by labor circles and being played up in liberal circles. That's politics. What has been interesting is there are concerns within labor MPs about how the labor brand is faring in Victoria. And what they're concerned is that people in these kind of working class areas, the outer suburbs, are feeling abandoned,
particularly by the state government. But what they're worried about is while a lot of the damage has been done by the state government, their view is that people just want to blame labor of all persuasions, and they're worried this could hurt them at a federal level. One thing that an MP said that is really concerning is while constituents know that crime is fundamentally a state issue, they're just so angry with labor that they're raising it with federal MPs quite a lot.
Yeah, something that we saw in Weerribee was that this wasn't an and hasn't been yet, an out and out victory for the Liberals, and in fact, the votes that were lost by Labor appear to have at least in part, gone to independence. So do you think we could see a similar trend at the federal election.
That would be worried for the Liberal Party if that took place, they'd really be wanting those votes themselves. And that's something that Labor and Peace have raised as when they say that people that are on the side of nothing to see here the votes and go to the Liberals.
And the other thing they're saying is that this was really a referendum on the state government without another choice really, whereas they're saying that the federal election is different because you're not just sending a message to Anthony Albanesi, you're making a decision between Anthony Albanesi and Peter Dutton. It's also been pointed out that by elections can be an
unreliable predictor. Before the twenty nineteen election, Bill Shorten had some very significant by election wins in the seats of Longman and Bradden, and then he went on to lose both of those seats in the next federal election and he obviously lost the election. So there are people within labor circles saying that there shouldn't be too much to be read into this, but in the liberal camp and some in the labor camp as well, they believe that it shows that the labor brand is on the nose
and that crime. While it's usually a state issue, I think the Lips are really going to try and turn this into a federal issue as much as possible.
Greg Brown is a federal political specialist with The Australian and Damon Johnston is our Victorian editor. You can read all their reporting and analysis of the fallout from the Werriby and Prime by elections right now at the Australian dot com dot au