From mid-July to the 1st of August, the residents of North West Ward in Darebin and Lalor Ward in Whittlesea voted in concurrent by-elections to fill two vacancies in their respective local government areas. In Darebin, the by-election was called after the untimely death of long-time independent local councillor Gaetano Greco, while in Whittlesea, an election was called after the results of last year’s council election was voided due to suspected electoral fraud. The two by-elections, held in the working class northern suburbs of Melbourne, were both contested by Victorian Socialists, in the first test of its strength at the ballot box after the federal election in May.
In Darebin, Cat Rose from VS contested the election against Daniel Scoullar of Labor and Melanie Thewlis of the Greens, as well as four independent candidates, including the eventual winner, progressive independent Angela Villella. In primary votes, VS came third behind Labor and Villella, winning 14.47% of the vote, an improvement of 4.69% over the Socialist result in 2024. Due to strong preference flows from independents and the Greens however, VS overtook Labor after the 4th exclusion to win a place in the two-candidate preferred count against Villella, in the end losing with a very respectable 42.39% of the vote on the final count.
Villella, who led substantially on first preferences with over a quarter of the primary vote, held an ultimately insurmountable lead throughout the count. However, a significant hypothetical to consider is whether VS might have beaten Labor in the final count had it been a Labor vs VS 2CP. Given that VS gained strongly from the preferences of other independent candidates, and those other independent candidates were, like Villella, of the same progressive and localist mould as the late Gaetano Greco, it is certainly not implausible to think that VS might have been in a position to win in a final count against Labor.
In Whittlesea meanwhile, the count was much more complicated. Eleven candidates contested the by-election, only two of whom had any open partisan affiliation; Labor’s Steven Kovmezki, and VS’ Omar Hassan. Initially, in the crowded field, Labor led the pack, with VS in second on primary votes with 15.47%. However, after the 6th exclusion, Michael Labrador, the eventual winner, overtook the Socialist candidate, who was eliminated in the 9th and final exclusion. In the two-candidate preferred count, Labrador beat Labor in an upset, going from 5th place in the primary vote to winning with 52.43% on final preferences.
6 News has speculated that this “Bradbury” victory from behind can be attributed to donkey votes, as Labrador was 3rd placed on the ballot. It appears that this was quite possibly the case, as in the 6th exclusion, over half of the votes of Rex Nicholson (placed 1st on the ballot), who in his how-to-vote card listed Labrador dead last, went to Labrador, indicating a substantial donkey vote. This donkey vote likely saved Labrador being excluded next, as prior to Nicholson’s exclusion he was only 10 votes ahead of Ellen McNaught, the next lowest placed candidate, who would be excluded in the next round. Had Nicholson’s voters voted the way their candidate intended, it is likely McNaught would have made up this gap, and Labrador would have been excluded.
Additionally, according to the Northern Star Weekly, there were questions regarding the integrity of three of the independent candidates contesting the election. Nicholson, Victoria Edge, and Mary Krassos all released how-to-vote cards bearing the same authorisation address used by the official Labor candidate, as well as four other Labor candidates during last year’s council elections. This, along with the unresponsiveness of the three candidates to inquiries (Edge did not even provide contact details to the Victorian Electoral Commission) has led some, including VS candidate Omar Hassan, to accuse Labor of running fake independent candidates for their own advantage.
Though VS went into both by-elections hoping to win in an upset, neither result is disheartening. In Darebin, there was substantial improvement compared to the already strong 2024 council election result, while in Whittlesea VS managed a first time result of over 15%. Both results bode well for the state election, where an improvement of just a few thousand votes over the result in 2022 would make VS well placed to enter state parliament. However, both of the eventual winners of the by-elections offer important political lessons for VS, particularly with regards to the challenges it will face from “independent” candidates.
In Darebin, Angela Villella’s victory is clearly attributable to her association with the late Gaetano Greco and his politics. Greco, who described his views as being in line with the social democratic politics of the Labor Party of Gough Whitlam’s day, was a natural fit for the progressive northern suburbs. It should therefore not come as a shock that his protege was the winner of the race to succeed him, nor that other independent candidates, such as George Kanjere, also ran on similar platforms. Such candidates, even while often presenting themselves as oppositional to “modern” Labor, do not fundamentally break from laborism however. On the contrary, even as they exist outside of official laborism, they appeal to an imagined past of “good” or “true” laborism. Their politics are bourgeois rather than socialist, and they refuse to pose any sort of question of class power.
Insofar as VS is itself in opposition to laborism (something that is worth interrogating in its own right given the party’s reformist platform), it should be careful to assume discontent with Labor itself, or an upswing of worker militancy more generally, will result in a boost for socialism rather than laborism. Left laborism, both inside and outside the Labor Party, should not be counted out as a political force. In this respect, a candidate such as Villella is representative of a tendency that could well grow in strength should the Socialist Party assume that laborism and the Labor Party are inseparable, and that the decline of the Labor Party means the defeat of laborism.
While the accidental nature of Labrador’s victory in Whittlesea means there are fewer substantial lessons to draw on, he too represents a splinter of laborism. Once a “proud member of the Australian Labor Party”, he campaigned as a “Christian, a father, a husband, and a healthcare professional”, bemoaning the loss of “Christian values” in Australia (6 News) and the politicisation of local politics by “self-interested politicians with alternative agendas” (Northern Star Weekly), doubtless a veiled attack on “activist” efforts to fly Palestinian flags at council buildings, or end the celebration of the 26th of January, or other similar initiatives. According to 6 News, while Labrador presented himself as an independent during the campaign, he has since joined the Liberal Party.
Labrador’s politics are clearly a conservative break from laborism, one which taps into the existing socially conservative politics of many workers and must be combatted. Perhaps more significantly however, they represent a tendency that socialists and VS will have to fight at every level of government in the years to come, and on the local level most of all. The depoliticisation of local government is, as seen in its representatives, a deeply reactionary tendency that makes an ideology out of the notion of the state as a managing committee of the affairs of the bourgeoisie. Nevertheless, it is one which carries a deal of appeal when residents seek nothing more from local government than competent provision of services.
Though it is obvious that socialists must fight this inclination, the danger comes when they try to have it both ways. To run on the basis of “good government” is to concede to the principle that local elections are about management of the bourgeois state, rather than any questions of politics. If VS is to challenge the depoliticisation of elections, it cannot run on the basis of “good government” or even pressuring Labor to institute “good policy”. It cannot run to improve the bourgeois state, or manage it better in the interests of the workers. It must fundamentally challenge bourgeois politics as a whole, demand nothing less than the world, and openly repudiate the notion that it should be a productive party of parliamentary politics. While such positions may be inconvenient to take in an electorate dominated by laborism, which still seeks the best from the state, rather than its overthrow, it is only on a fully agitational basis that any gains by VS in parliament will be for socialism, rather than the leftmost wing of laborism.
All in all, VS can be justified in celebrating its results in the recent by-elections. They bode well for the state election 13 months from now, and indicate continued and growing vitality on the local level. It remains important however that VS draws the right lessons from these by-elections, both for the campaigns next year and in the years to come, as well as for if (or, as it seems more likely than not, when) VS finally enters parliament.
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