CANBERRA (ABC NEWS ) By Dr. Majid Khan -Labor candidate Mary Doyle has won a by-election for Aston federal headquarters in Melbourne’s eastern suburbs.
Liberal candidate Rochena Campbell called her Ms Doyle on Saturday night to concede her defeat, and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called Ms Doyle to congratulate her.
Voting numbers are still in progress, but ABC expects Labor support to rise by about 6%.
The result is seen as a devastating blow for the Liberal Commonwealth Party, which now has just three seats outside of Melbourne.
Former Liberal strategist Tony Barry called the result “disastrously bad” for the Liberals. He said the Liberals currently hold only three of Melbourne’s 26 federal parliamentary seats, and Casey counts among the suburbs.
Mr Barry added that the by-election came at a time when the Labor prime minister was at his most popular, but the unpopularity of the Liberal Victoria Party hurt the federal prime minister.
Former Labor strategist Kos Samaras said the Aston Chinese community had abandoned the Liberal Party because the coalition had made many of them feel unwelcome in recent years.
Aston has long been a safe neighborhood for liberals. Labor last won a seat in 1990. The by-election was sparked by the resignation of former liberal front-runner Alan Tadge.
He has held his seat since 2010, but in last year’s federal election he suffered a 7.6% swing, a seat he held 2.8%.
Two hours after she started counting, ABC’s chief elections analyst Anthony Green said Labor’s Mary Doyle appeared to have a clear lead over Liberal candidate Roshena Campbell.
“It’s a devastating swing,” said Green.
Labour Applauds, Liberals Approve
Deputy Prime Minister Richard Marles told Labor’s post-election party that the election result “speaks to Mary Doyle’s values, decency and hard work”. Doyle then took the stage to thunderous applause and described herself as a suburban mother who has lived in the Far East for 35 years.
“We were underdogs, but she showed that she hit hard,” she said.
“This is a special endorsement of the forward-looking plans of the Albanian government.”
Her by-election was her second attempt to win Labor over Aston after contesting the seat in last year’s general election.
Opposition leader Peter Dutton visited the Liberal Party’s campaign headquarters on Saturday night to thank Roshena Campbell for her efforts.
He told reporters that Victoria was a very “tough market” for the Liberal Party and that the party needed to listen to voters with respect. “By 2025, we will build this party into an election-winning machine,” he said.
ABC political journalist Patricia Carvelas said both major political parties were surprised by the results of the by-election.
The three of her standing in front of the polling place and talking. One has a leaflet with instructions on how to vote.
Aston has a higher percentage of families with children and a higher percentage of mortgage holders than other seats.
The seat also has a large ethnic Chinese population of 14%, compared to the national figure of 5.5%, and an internal survey of the Liberal Party’s post-election performance showed that the government had a large number of seats relative to the number of Chinese. I found myself suffering from sharp fluctuations in numbers. voters. The by-election was being billed as the first opportunity for voters to make judgments about the performance of the Albanian government, particularly the situation in Australia’s cost of living crisis.
It was also seen as a referendum on the leadership of Peter Dutton in the Liberal Party.
