Counting for the 2022 state election continues, with the final results for the Legislative Assembly Council (Upper House ) due on December 13. We will also likely know the shape of the Cabinet and Shadow Cabinet early next week.
Before the election, the Lower House makeup was Labor 55, Liberal Nationals 27 and Greens/Independents 6. With most of the seats decided, little has changed, with the most notable move being the Nationals gaining three ‘traditional’ seats back from independents. Thirty years ago, the Liberals defeated Labor in a ‘landslide’ with a primary vote of 44% to Labor’s 38%. In 2022, the Liberals’ vote sits at 30%, and Labor has defeated them with a greater seat tally than the Liberals achieved in 1992, with a primary vote of just 37%. At this election, more Victorians than ever before, more than one in three voters, voted for parties other than the ‘big two’.
The Government lost ground, but typically in safe seats. The ‘green wave’ turned out to be a ripple.
Whilst the overall results will be pleasing for the Government, they did lose significant ground, albeit mostly in formerly ‘safe’ seats that are now looking considerably more marginal. The seat of Bass, extending from the South Eastern suburban growth corridor out to rural South Gippsland, is on a knife edge, with the Labor incumbent losing 7% on primary votes since the last election. It is a similar story in the Northern suburbs, with the seat of Yan Yean going from being ‘very safe’ to ‘marginal’, with a swing of close to 14% against the Government. It’s a story that repeats in Broadmeadows, Greenvale, Kororoit, Mill Park, St Albans, Sunbury, Sydenham and Thomastown as voters living on the outside of the ‘Goat’s cheese curtain’ sent a loud message to the Government.
It is natural that much of the commentary and attention in the lead-up to the election focussed on the apparently imminent ‘Green wave’ and ‘Teal spring’ in the inner suburbs. The inner suburbs are where the media elite and the political apparatchiks live and work, it is their world, and that skews the attention and perspective away from the places where most of the community (including most of the shooters and hunters) live and work.
It is likely that the Greens have gained just one seat, Richmond, with a microscopic swing of less than 1% to them. The deciding factor in Richmond was the decision of the Liberal Party to direct preferences to the Greens. In the seat of Melbourne, the Greens had a swing of around 2% against them and may have only held on courtesy of preferences from Liberals voters. The Greens also failed to regain Northcote and, in fact, went backwards, losing over 10% of their vote there.
The so-called ‘teal’ candidates also fizzled, taking votes mostly from Labor and the Greens instead of their Liberal targets. Campaign finance laws, a lack of ‘celebrity’ candidates and of an incumbent ideological foe in Victoria meant that the ‘teal’ result was a mere shadow of that movement’s success earlier in the year at the Federal election.
Whilst the big picture result of this election appears to be that nothing has changed, a closer look indicates that the battleground in 2026 will well and truly be in the outer suburbs. Whether the ‘insiders’ accept this fact remains to be seen.
The Nationals ran good candidates and were rewarded
The clear success story of the election was the Nationals. The junior coalition party selected strong community-based candidates and campaigned on local issues in Shepparton, Morwell and Mildura, reclaiming those seats from independents and strengthening their position in the coalition opposition. The Nationals will also double their representation in the Upper House, with a strong coalition showing in Northern Victoria regaining the seat in that region that was lost in 2018.
Whilst shooting and hunting enjoys a good level of support from within the Liberal Party, the Nationals have been instrumental in ensuring that the Coalition has consistently had firm commitments and positions for our interests over the past couple of decades.
Preference deals in the Upper House were laid bare
Preferencing shenanigans in the Upper House dominated much of the commentary around the election, laying bare the extent to which arrangements do not ultimately reflect the voters will or ideology. Perhaps the most perverse example of this from a shooting and hunting perspective is the Group Voting Ticket lodged by the Liberal Democrats in Northern Victoria, which looks set to hand crucial votes to the Animal Justice Party.
The number of voters rejecting group voting tickets and choosing their preferences by voting below the line is expected to be at a record rate this year.
There is now a high chance that the incoming Parliament will look to reform the Upper House.
Where do the pro-shooting minor parties stand?
Of the overtly pro-shooting minor parties, the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party MP Jeff Bourman appears to be the only candidate with a realistic chance of being re-elected.
There are several factors in this change; shooting is probably only a peripheral one. Using the Northern Victorian region as an example, there was a 20% increase in parties contesting the Upper House compared to 2018. Most of that increase was what could be broadly characterised as ‘pro freedom’ and ‘right wing’. This proliferation of candidates diluted the votes of the more established players, such as the Liberal Democrats and the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers. In Northern Victoria, the Liberal Democrats vote decreased by around 48% and the Shooters, Fishers and Famers vote by about 33%.
What about the Animal Justice Party?
The Animal Justice Party are the most active voice campaigning politically against the interests of shooting and hunting in Victoria. It looks highly likely that incumbent MP Andy Meddick will lose his seat in Western Victoria and that his former staffer, Georgie Purcell, will pick up a seat in Northern Victoria. Purcell is the significant beneficiary of Animal Justice Party Chief Ben Schultz’s double cross of the Glenn Druery preferencing alliance. An examination of the Group Voting Tickets might conclude that Druery was not the only one double-crossed by Schultz and Purcell, with the preference dealing leaving Andy Meddick out in the cold in favour of his staffer.
What this all means for shooting and hunting
Over the next four years, shooting and hunting in Victoria will face numerous challenges and opportunities.
On the hunting front, we have the Game regulations set to be remade next year, along with new animal welfare legislation and a review of the Wildlife Act. In 2024 the State Game Reserve regulations come up for review. Duck hunting is facing significant change, with a transition to an Adaptive Harvest Model and the implementation of a Waterfowl Wounding Reduction Action Plan. Pending VEAC recommendations also look set to change access for deer hunting.
For shooting more generally, the successful Shooting Sports Facilities Program has exhausted its allocated funding, and strong lobbying is now required to get it back into the state budget. The Firearms Consultative Committee, which assures that the broad range of shooting interests are considered in the making of legislation and regulation before it gets to the floor of the Parliament, looks set to continue, subject to the confirmation of the Police Minister once the new Cabinet has been sworn in.
It is likely, but uncertain that the Upper House crossbench will be poised similarly to how it has been over the past four years regarding shooting and hunting issues. This means that the Government will have a workable block of MPs who are unfriendly to shooting and hunting that they can rely on to pass legislation. Our challenge is to ensure that such legislation never gets to a vote, to begin with. This is why SSAA Victoria invests heavily in ensuring that our advocacy is the best it can be and why the Association works so hard to build trusted relationships across the political spectrum.
