When The Age arrived at John Pesutto’s election night event at the Glenferrie Hotel, it looked like the former Liberal MP was on his way to his second defeat in the marginal inner-eastern seat of Hawthorn.
His deflation was clear in the picture our photographer quickly snapped about 9.30pm, when Pesutto politely declined to be interviewed, saying the race was still too close to call.
John Pesutto at 9.30pm on election night.Credit:Scott McNaughton
Pesutto turned out to be right: about an hour later, a Victorian Electoral Commission update took him from 6 per cent behind to trailing narrowly. A littler later that night, he pulled ahead a little.
I’d been following Pesutto around, along with the other main candidates in the seat, for four weeks as part of The Age’s on-the-ground coverage of three key seats: Hawthorn, Melton and Richmond, all very different in their own way, and all with very different results.
In Richmond, after years of trying to unseat long-time Labor MP Richard Wynne, the Greens finally took the seat after his retirement. In Melton, Labor held the seat despite speculation it would fall to either the Liberal Party or an independent.
In Hawthorn, which fell unexpectedly to Labor in 2018, on election night it appeared teal independent Melissa Lowe was closing in on a win, following in the footsteps of Monique Ryan who had done it in May in the federal seat of Kooyong.
A much happier John Pesutto six days after election day.Credit:Luis Enrique Ascui
But not long after Pesutto’s moment of dejection, the VEC started counting postal and absentee ballots which surged to the Liberal Party – exactly as Xavier Boffa from Pesutto’s campaign team had predicted they would.
Pesutto is now almost certain to win Hawthorn when the result is finally declared this week and has flagged he will stand for the party’s leadership.
What does it mean for Hawthorn, though? Will it ever return to the safe Liberal electorate won by Ted Baillieu in 2010 by 17 per cent? It seems unlikely.
Over the weeks leading up to election day as part of coverage of this electorate, The Age attended a candidate environmental forum and an ABC radio debate. We went on tours with a local cycling group and heritage activists. We spoke to international students, one of the few disadvantaged groups in this wealthy electorate.
Independent for Hawthorn Melissa Lowe on election night, being interviewed by TV stations when she looked headed for a win.Credit:Scott McNaughton
We spent days covering a decision by the VEC to ban Lowe’s how-to-vote cards because not all the boxes were numbered on the card (the state administrative tribunal ruled the VEC got it wrong). And in the final week we visited pre-polling stations over and over again.
The seat no longer felt like a safe Liberal electorate. The demographics of the area mean it has likely changed for good; the biggest age bracket here is 25 to 29-year-olds, and one-third of residents rent; many are students at the electorate’s biggest employer, Swinburne University.
In 2011, apartments accounted for one-third of dwellings, but the construction boom has seen that rise to 42 per cent.
Anna Kiely and son Alex at Auburn Primary School after voting.Credit:Clay Lucas
Typical of those who The Age spoke with ahead of election day was Camberwell resident Malcolm Cameron, who midway through the election campaign revelled in the choice of what he called the “progressive candidates” he could choose from at this election in his electorate (he could not be reached for this story, sadly, to find out which way he ultimately voted). “The electors in Hawthorn are socially progressive,” Cameron said. “[They] oppose wasteful expenditure, are horrified by corruption, very rarely work in unionised jobs except teachers and health, and are strongly motivated for climate change action.”
Or there was Anna Kiely, who The Age interviewed as she headed into the voting booth at Auburn Primary School. She said she still had not made up her mind.
She said she came from a “traditionally Liberal voting family” but over the last decade had lost faith in the major political parties. “This election I’m really undecided.”
Lowe’s campaign manager Brent Hodgson has now fought two campaigns in this area — Monique Ryan’s and Lowe’s — and believes there is no going back to the Hawthorn of old.
He thinks Lowe lost many votes to the idea that electing Pesutto would help reform a Liberal Party that has lurched to the right in recent years.
Pesutto is now running for opposition leader, in a vote to be decided on Thursday morning. Win or lose, if he fails to bring the party back to the middle — he has already backed down on Matthew Guy’s decision to ban new upper house MP Renee Heath from voting in the party room — it won’t be lost on this increasingly progressive electorate.
“Pesutto is perhaps the best option left to transform the Liberal Party back into one that represents widespread Hawthorn values,” says Hodgson. “But it won’t be an easy task representing both his party room and his electorate.”
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