Aston By-election 2023 Results

Aston covers 113 square kilometres taking in all the City of Knox in Melbourne's outer east. It includes the suburbs to the east of Eastlink between Police Road and Dandenong Creek, including Wantirna, Bayswater, The Basin, Boronia, Knoxfield, Ferntree Gully, Rowville and Lysterfield.

Aston was created on the expansion of the parliament in 1984. It is named after Tilly Aston, a blind writer and teacher who helped found the Library of the Victorian Association of Braille Writers.

Aston was won by the Labor Party's John Saunderson at its first contest in 1984, and he represented the seat until the 1990 election. Saunderson was one of the many Victorian Labor MPs defeated that year by the backlash against the Victorian Labor government over the collapse of the State Bank. The massive swing against Labor in Victoria came close to defeating the Hawke government. The Liberal Party has not lost Aston since.

Aston was won at the 1990 election by Liberal Peter Nugent, an MP respected and well-liked on both sides of politics. He served as the Liberal representative on the Council for Aboriginal Reconciliation 1991-97, and was Shadow Minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Affairs, 1993-94. He died suddenly in 2001, causing a by-election ahead of that year's election.

Held in July 2001, after the budget but before the Tampa incident, the Aston by-election saw the Liberal Party's Chris Pearce win the seat after a swing against the government of only 3.7%. Labor was not helped by poor candidate selection, and the small swing against the government was interpreted as a sign that the Howard government's standing had improved since defeat at the Ryan by-election earlier in the year.

The Liberal vote in Aston improved at the 2001 general election, and the Liberal margin doubled at the 2004 election. Aston came out of the 2004 election safer for the Liberal Party than traditional bastions such as Higgins and Kooyong. There have been swings back and forth since in line with the state swing, but the underlying trend of Aston becoming safer for the Liberal Party has generally continued. Chris Pearce retired in 2010 to be succeeded by Alan Tudge.

At state and Federal level in the 1980s, Labor was highly competitive in Melbourne's outer east, but that all changed with the high interest rates and economic downturn of the early 1990s. As the graph below shows, the gap between Labor's two-party preferred vote in Aston and for Victoria as a whole has widened over the last three decades. Demographic change has seen Aston move from being a key mortgage belt seat full of young families buying new homes in the 1980s, to a more settled districts where the kids are growing up and leaving home.

New housing estates are now further out, and Aston's housing stock is re-cycling to a new generation of owners. But that doesn't mean Aston voters aren't currently feeling the same cost of living pressures as the rest of the country.

Results 1983-2019

The gap between the Liberal result in Aston and for Victoria closed dramatically at the 2022 elections. Aston swung against the Morrison government much more strongly than Victoria as a whole. That sometimes happens when a safe seat sees a less intensive campiagn than a more marginal seat.

The swing against the Liberal Party in Aston should correct at a by-election. Labor's poll ratings have improved since the Albanese government took office, but the result in Aston last May looks like a high point for Labor. A return to the normal Liberal margin in Aston would be interpreted as a swing against the new government, but pasts trends suggest it is just a reversion to a normal margin.

If there were a swing to Labor, it would be very bad news for Opposition Leader Peter Dutton. The last time a government won a seat from the Opposition was the Kalgoorlie by-election in 1920. It is an example that Anthony Albanese will remember, it having been regularly quoted when he faced his own first electoral test at the Eden-Monaro by-election in 2020.

(Victories by a party of government are indicated by thick coloured underlining.)

Liberal majorities were recorded in 19 of the 32 polling places used at the 2022 election. The Liberal two-party preferred vote rose from 34.8% at Upper Ferntree Gully Primary to 61.6% at Lysterfield Primary. These were the same best and worst booths as at the 2019 election.

Labor's vote is strongest at the northern end of Aston, a pattern also reflected in the three giant pre-poll centres. The Liberal two-party preferred result was 50.3% in the north at the Boronia pre-poll centre compared to 59.3% at Rowville and 56.1% at Scoresby in the south.

There was a similar north-south divide of results at polling places within Aston at the Victorian state election last November.

(Click on polling place for results)

The Liberal Party recorded a small majority with 50.2% of the two-party preferred vote on polling day. With more votes cast before polling day or as postal votes, the Liberal majority was boosted substantially with 55.0% of the Pre-poll vote and 55.3% with postal votes.

Overall Labor received 60% of preferences including 85.4% of Green preferences. The Liberal Party received around two-thirds of preferences from the United Australia Party, Pauline Hanson's One Nation and the Liberal Democrats.

Owen Miller

FUSION

Miller has extensive expertise in technology and entrepreneurial innovation, having worked since 2015 at major tech firms in the United States. He has now moved back to Melbourne.

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Roshena Campbell

Liberal Party

Campbell has served as a City of Melbourne Councillor since 2020. She works as a barrister in commercial law and corporate governance. Prior to that she was a solicitor with a leading national law firm for nearly a decade. Campbell has represented some of Australia’s largest companies as well as state and local government bodies and acted in some of Victoria’s most significant litigation, a number of Royal Commissions and also provided pro bono legal services. She has volunteered with and served on the committees of a number of non-profit organisations. Campbell moved to Melbourne as a 20 year-old, is married to Herald-Sun weekend national political editor James Campbell and has three young children. If elected she would be the first woman of Indian heritage to serve in the House for the Liberal Party.

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Angelica Di Camillo

The Greens

Contested the state seat of Rowville at last November's state election. Rowville covers the southern half of Aston.

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Mary Doyle

Australian Labor Party

Doyle was raised in Echuca, the youngest of nine children, and has lived in Melbourne's outer east for 35 years. She worked in several ad hoc jobs before attending TAFE to study Performing Arts, performed in a few bands in the local music scene as a singer, and overcame breast cancer when she was 25. She has since married and had two children. Doyle has worked as an Organiser with several unions worked for ACTU as the Marketing Officer then later as the Partnerships Manager. Doyle was the unsuccessful Labor candidate for Aston at last year's Federal election.

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Maya Tesa

Independent

Was the Liberal Democrat candidate for Jagajaga at the 2022 Federal election.

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