By Michael Newhouse
ANDRE Haermeyer may still be the new kid on Melbourne’s western block, but that didn’t stop the former police minister notching up another big win for Labor at the State Election.
In his second election standing for the safe Labor seat of Kororoit, Mr Haermeyer pulled 75.75 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote, with just over 83 per cent of the vote counted.
Mr Haermeyer and other ALP members, including Brimbank mayor Natalie Suleyman, and fellow councillor Jenny Barboza, gathered at St Albans’ Maltese Club Klabb Ghannejja to watch the results come in on Saturday night.
When Star turned up Mr Haermeyer was busy filling in the results on a large board, adding up individual polling booths, and eventually coming to the conclusion that when all the votes were counted Labor would have had a swing of about 1 per cent against it – a very good result, after the previous election’s record win, he said.
He criticised his party’s campaign tactics and botched preference discussions, but used the party’s mediocre campaign to rub salt into the Liberal Party’s very deep election night wounds.
“Given the fact that we actually ran a very ordinary campaign, I thought, centrally, that the result is remarkable,” he said in his election night speech.
Mr Haermeyer’s Liberal opponent Mick Alexander was almost outpolled on first-preference votes by Family First candidate Tania Walters, who notched up 13 per cent of the vote.
“The Liberal Party scored 15 per cent (15.65 to be exact) in this area – that’s abysmal,” Mr Haermeyer said.
“I think it’s perhaps indicative of the contempt with which they always treated this area.”
Elsewhere, the Greens’ Marcus Power polled a slightly lower than expected 7 per cent, while the Citizens Electoral Council’s Andre Kozlowski managed 2.1 per cent.
Asked why the Liberal Party’s claims of Labor neglect in the West failed to resonate with voters, Mr Haermeyer put it down to basic hard work.
“I think we campaigned very hard,” a relaxed Mr Haermeyer told Star on Saturday night. “We had all sorts of people out here saying Labor has taken the West for granted, yet they haven’t bothered to put out a leaflet; other than handing out a how-to-vote card they haven’t done a thing.”
Despite his strong win, it’s widely tipped that Mr Haermeyer will lose his cabinet portfolios (manufacturing and export, financial services and small business) and be sent to the back bench when Parliament resumes next year.
“As far as cabinet goes, there’s a whole lot of discussions that will involve the Premier, that will involve my caucus colleagues, and at this stage I wouldn’t comment on that," he said.
Some in the Labor camp are predicting this could be Mr Haermeyer’s last term, after moving from the marginal seat of Yan Yean, in Melbourne’s North, in the 2002 election.
