Big vote for socialists in Victorian council elections
The results are in from Victoria’s local council elections, which took place via postal ballot in October, and there’s some good news for socialists. Victorian Socialists (VS) ran a much bigger campaign than in the last elections in 2020, standing candidates in 78 council wards, mainly across Melbourne but in a number of regional areas too. The party’s candidates received a total of 67,296 first preference votes, up from 20,210 in 2020, with an average vote share of 10.8 percent.
Had VS achieved a result like this under the old, multi-member council ward system, it’s very likely a whole new crop of five or ten socialist councillors would have been elected. This time, though, thanks to changes initiated in 2020 by the then Labor Party minister for local government and subsequently disgraced branch stacker Adem Somyurek, the elections were held in single-member wards across Melbourne (with the exception of Melbourne City Council) and in many regional areas. This change was designed to make things harder for small parties like VS, and the results of this election show it worked as intended.
When two or three councillors were elected from a single (larger) ward, minor party candidates were in with a shot even when up against candidates from established parties like the Greens and Labor. In multi-member wards, two higher profile candidates could be elected, and there would still be space for a third candidate to get up. This is what happened in 2020 with VS’s Jorge Jorquera, who was elected in the Yarraville ward of Maribyrnong Council after receiving a first preference vote of just 8.8 percent.
In single-member wards, victory depends on both a high first preference vote and a decent flow of preferences from other candidates. In traditional strongholds of Labor and the Greens, this was always going to be a tough ask for socialists.
VS went into this election with Jorquera as its sole sitting councillor. To the extent there is bad news in the party’s result this time, it’s that it couldn’t build on that total. Jorquera, unfortunately, narrowly missed out on re-election. About two hours’ drive north from Melbourne, though, in the regional town of Bendigo, VS candidate Owen Cosgriff was elected as the representative for Whipstick ward in the City of Greater Bendigo Council.
In a three-candidate field, Cosgriff received a first preference vote of 40.7 percent, winning with 52.7 percent after the distribution of preferences. This was a significant breakthrough for socialist politics in an area not known, in recent times at least, for its radicalism.
Cosgriff told Red Flag that the result reflected the fact that “Victorian Socialists was the only progressive option on the ballot” (neither Labor nor the Greens ran a candidate against him). In addition, he said, “I was the only candidate who put forward a program of what I would attempt to do in office ... We promised concrete reforms like undoing the privatisation of aged care [and] lobbying for a commuter timetable for Bendigo trains, and we were rewarded for it”.
Another bright spot for socialists was the re-election of Socialist Alliance’s Sue Bolton to Merri-bek Council. Bolton was first elected in 2012 off a first preference vote of 9.5 percent (in a multi-member ward) and this year received a first preference vote of 46 percent in a field of four candidates in the (single-member) Bababi Djinanang ward of Merri-bek, which covers the suburb of Fawkner and parts of North Coburg. Bolton told Red Flag that a big factor in her win was the work she has done to promote Palestine solidarity at a council level. In the last census, conducted in 2021, just under 35 percent of Fawkner residents identified as Muslim.
It’s significant that, even with single-member wards stacking the odds against them, VS candidates came within striking distance of victory in several other places. In the Harvester ward of Brimbank Council (which covers the suburbs of Sunshine and Sunshine North in Melbourne’s west) Liz Walsh, who was the VS candidate for the Western Metro upper house region in the 2022 state election, received a first preference vote of 26.3 percent in a field of four, and ended second on 46.8 percent after the distribution of preferences. This result was particularly encouraging given that VS didn’t campaign in the area.
Other standout results include long-time marriage equality campaigner, local community activist and nurse Cat Rose getting a first preference vote of 32.4 percent in Darebin Council’s West ward (in the inner-northern suburbs covering Thornbury and parts of Preston and Northcote). In a field of three, Rose finished just 36 votes behind the Greens candidate, and less than 200 votes behind Labor. Had she finished ahead of the Greens, there’s a decent chance she would have moved above Labor on preferences and been elected. At the last council election in 2020, the VS candidate in this ward (Darebin had already moved to single-member wards) got a first preference vote of 7.7 percent.
In the Bulleke-bek ward of Merri-bek Council (which covers the area immediately to the west of Sydney Road in Brunswick), VS candidate Louisa Bassini, a community lawyer in the area of renters’ rights, came in second in a field of five candidates with 23 percent of first preference votes (behind the Greens candidate on 36.9 percent and ahead of Labor on 20 percent). Results in other wards in the area of the Victorian lower house seat of Brunswick were also well above the 8.1 percent that VS candidate Nahui Jimenez achieved there in the 2022 state election.
No doubt some of the 67,296 people who voted for a VS candidate didn’t pay much attention to party affiliation. Council elections in Victoria are carried out in a way designed to depoliticise things as much as possible and encourage engagement with candidates as individuals, rather than representatives of parties or political world views. Holding elections via postal ballot contributes to this, as it precludes the possibility of party volunteers talking to voters at polling booths. And party affiliation isn’t listed next to candidates’ names on ballot papers.
VS pushed against this as much as possible. Its aim isn’t merely to get socialists elected, but to build the profile of socialist politics and to convince more people to join the socialist movement. Unlike many Labor and Liberal-aligned candidates, who (probably sensibly from a purely electoral perspective) preferred to present as “local independents” rather than associating themselves with their party brands, VS candidates put their political affiliation front and centre. Leaflets delivered by VS volunteers to voters’ homes encouraged them to “vote socialist for a council that puts people before profit”.
The main pitch to voters on these leaflets highlighted how “an out-of-control capitalist system is eroding the economic, social and environmental foundations of our society”. “We need councillors”, it went on, “who will stand up to the destructive, profit-driven agenda that dominates politics. Socialist councillors will fight for our communities, for workers and for those in need”. VS seriously campaigned in only a fraction of the 78 wards in which it stood a candidate. In those wards, which were by and large also the wards in which the party got its highest vote, it would have been hard for people to miss the socialist affiliation.
The results of this election will help to further establish VS as a serious socialist electoral alternative in Victoria. Heading into 2025 and the next federal election, the party has a growing membership and a higher profile than ever. In addition to the council campaign, VS members have this year kept up a hectic schedule of activism and organising in the Palestine solidarity campaign, rank-and-file unionism and many other areas.
In recent weeks the Murdoch press has run several hit pieces targeting the party. Most recently, the Australian published an “exclusive” in which it revealed that the lead VS Senate candidate, renters’ rights advocate and well-known socialist radical Jordan van den Lamb (aka purplepingers), had—in a post on the social media platform X—shockingly labelled police as “pigs” and “Nazis”. Melbourne’s Herald Sun earlier called out VS council candidates for, among other things, speaking at rallies in solidarity with Palestine and “calling for revolution”. This kind of attention from Murdoch’s attack dogs can only bode well for the future.
James Plested is the Victorian Socialists communications manager.
