Is Melton going to break Labor’s ‘wall’ in the west?

By Rachael Dexter

Melton square image for slow blog featureCredit:Matt Absalom-Wong

The windblown seven-hectare farm block at 245 Ferris Road on the outskirts of Melton doesn’t look like much: there’s no water, no electricity and not even a road onto the site.

But in the past six weeks, a temporary fence has gone up and a Victorian government sign has been hammered into the red soil. It reads: “Your new Melton Hospital”.

Temporary fencing at the site of the new Melton Hospital at Cobblebank in Melton.Credit:Luis Enrique Ascui

Corflutes with incumbent Labor MP Steve McGhie’s face emblazoned on them congratulate Melton residents for receiving a hospital that is two years from starting construction. It won’t open for another seven.

This empty block has become a focal point for the cynicism of disenchanted Labor voters in the outer western seat held by the party for 30 years.

“The $900 million fence,” scoffs 66-year-old Ian Barnes, a local for 40 years. “It’s a legendary joke in Melton.”

The retiree has invited The Age to the little-known Melton Botanic Garden, where he volunteers from 6am every day planting natives, sweeping paths and making sure local fishers plucking cod from the lake leave no used lines or hooks behind.

It is a rare oasis amid the suburban sprawl: thousands of house and land packages have been carved from farming plains over the past two decades, encircling the satellite city 44 kilometres west of Melbourne’s CBD.

Long-time Melton resident and volunteer at the Melton Botanic Garden, Ian Barnes.Credit:Chris Hopkins

Demographically, Melton is younger, poorer and growing faster than Greater Melbourne. Political analysts believe places like it could be brewing a “seismic shift” for how the major parties fare in outer suburbs in this election.

The population of the seat has climbed by nearly 20,000 people between 2016 and 2021, according to the Bureau of Statistics. The increase was driven mainly by young, ethnic minority families with new babies searching for an affordable, decent-sized standalone home.

Locals like Barnes complain that the population increase hasn’t been accompanied by the infrastructure necessary to support it. They watch with dismay as developers raze farmland for more homes without the roads, transport or services to back them up.

Housing estates in Melton.Credit:Jason South

”You keep building [houses], but you’re not building [infrastructure] with it,” he says. ”People are sick and tired of the promises. In the state budgets every year, [it says], ‘Melton’s gonna get this, Melton’s a growth area’, but it’s all full of crap.”

Melton is hugely car-dependent: 63 per cent of households there have two or more cars, according to the latest census, and 71 per cent travel outside the council area for work.

The two main arterial roads between Melton and Melbourne, the Western Highway and Melton Highway, are considered so inadequate and unsafe (“chariot class”, as the local mayor puts it) that the council has made the duplication and upgrade of both a key election demand, saying a federal Labor commitment for a $10 million Western Highway upgrade and $14.9 million from the state government to upgrade Melton Highway are not enough.

Yesterday the Liberals announced a $1.5 billion commitment to add extra lanes to the Western Freeway, duplicate the Melton Highway and upgrade three interchanges in the seat.

Primary school-age students are an increasingly significant proportion of the seat’s population – 11.8 per cent compared to 8.7 per cent across Greater Melbourne.

That growth is evident in local schools that can’t keep pace, filling their grounds with portable classrooms: Strathtulloh Primary School in Melton South, for example, which opened in February this year for 525 students, will have close to 1100 enrolled by the start of the 2023 school year.

The electrification of the country V-Line service, first floated in the early ’70s, promised by Victorian Labor in the early ’80s and rolled out again at the 2018 election, burns in the memory of many Melton residents as the epitome of slippery political promises.

Such voter scepticism has Labor insiders “terrified” of losing a seat that has been a party stronghold since its creation in 1992. In the past two elections, Labor’s vote slid backwards here even as the rest of the state swung towards the party.

Labor’s margin in Melton dropped from 11.2 per cent in 2014 to just 4.3 per cent at the 2018 election. After a boundary redistribution ahead of this election, that has nudged up to 5 per cent.

According to ABC election analyst Antony Green, if 2018’s voting patterns were replicated under the new boundaries, leading independent candidate Dr Ian Birchall would knock out the Liberals to finish in second spot behind Labor. He would then need 80 per cent of Liberal preferences to take the seat – a big ask, but within reach.

The Liberals, who have historically barely had a presence in Melton, are campaigning hard there.

“I would say that if you were to identify a seat that has been transformed from safe Labor to vehemently anti-Labor, this is it,” says Kos Samaras, political consultant and former Labor campaign director.

He believes Melton could be the first brick to fall in a “red wall” across the outer west built by generations of Labor loyalty.

Samaras says there are “two Melbournes”. One is doing well — the inner-city, educated and affluent suburbs.

Melton is part of the other Melbourne, which takes in sprawling and more disadvantaged suburbs in the west, north-west and outer south-east. “[It’s the difference between] who got to work from home and who did not. Who gets to access all the public transport and who does not.”

Current Melton MP Steve McGhie was parachuted into the seat three weeks out from the 2018 election – the former Ambulance Union boss was convinced to postpone retirement to patch a hole left by the dumping of former Melton mayor Justin Mammarella.

Mammarella was dropped as Labor candidate for his connection to an Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission probe which resulted in him being charged with electoral fraud. He had been meant to fill the void left by Don Nardella, who held the seat for 19 years before being expelled from the Labor Party over a $100,000 expenses scandal.

McGhie’s willingness to come out of retirement is proof of his commitment to the people of the area, he tells The Age over a cup of coffee in Melton’s Jolly Miller bakery.

“I could be travelling around in a caravan right now. That was the plan for me and my wife … I couldn’t care less about my political career,” he says.

He’s geed up by that morning’s announcement by Premier Daniel Andrews that Melton would receive three level crossing removals – and bristles at any suggestion that the area has been neglected.

Incumbent MP Steve McGhie in the seat of Melton, 45 kilometres west of Melbourne’s CBD.Credit:Jason South

“In less than four years, I’ve managed to bring $2 billion worth of infrastructure into Melton and Bacchus Marsh,” he says, arms crossed and shoulders up.

This week alone, Labor has announced multiple school builds and upgrades.

“People will see that and vote for me. Or if they don’t – good luck to them.”

Asked if the morning’s level crossing removal announcements were a sign that Labor is worried about losing the seat, McGhie insists that the seat “hasn’t come on the [level crossing removal] list for any other reasons apart from putting a good case forward”.

Labor and Liberal corflutes near Melton train station.Credit:Chris Hopkins

The announcement that level crossings would be removed by 2028 was major news for people in Melton, who can spend up to half an hour waiting at boom gates in traffic a kilometre long at peak times.

But the commitment, which accompanied a $650 million pledge to upgrades along the Ballarat line to increase the capacity of V-Line trains, was an unavoidable reminder of the decades-long promises to electrify the rail line to Melton.

Andrews maintained electrification was still on the cards at some unknown point in the future, and that the upgrades were a “necessary step” towards it.

Train complaints are a daily occurrence over the counter at MGS Indian Wholesale Supermarket in central Melton, says manager Upinder Singh.

Singh, who lives in a housing estate in Cobblebank popular with the area’s growing Indian community, says families who move to Melton often feel misled.

“When they were thinking to buy a house in Melton, obviously they heard that, ‘you’re gonna get the hospital, the trains, better roads and everything’,” he says. “But when they actually come here [it’s not here].”

Upinder Singh, Melton resident and manager of the MGS Indian Wholesale supermarket. Credit:Chris Hopkins

Melton is a perfect example of one of Melbourne’s many “rapidly growing greenfield fringes”, according to Julian Szafraniec, a spatial economist and partner at SGS Economics and Planning.

Almost half the homes are mortgaged, and the area is becoming “dramatically more ethnically diverse over time”, with population growth driven by migrants from South Asia, Africa and the Middle East.

With 40 per cent of the electorate working in blue-collar fields, Melton still has a working-class profile. But the share of residents with university degrees has doubled over the past decade to 15 per cent.

The ‘little black galaxy’

It’s a Thursday evening in early October, and about 100 people are at the Melton golf course clubrooms for independent candidate Birchall’s campaign launch.

It has the feel of a footy club get-together: there are orange balloons, plates of party pies and free pots of beer.

“Why aren’t we [treated] like all the other seats on the other side of town?” the independent candidate says into the microphone.

Dr Ian Birchall addresses the room at his campaign launch.Credit:Rachael Dexter

“The sandbelt seats have been pork-barrelled for years — they’ve [already] had all their level crossings replaced, they’ve all got hospitals, they’ve all got major schools, universities and TAFEs.

“And what have we got for all our taxes and being loyal Labor supporters? Nothing.”

Birchall is a brain scientist from the Florey Institute and a Melton local of 20 years. He emerged as a candidate five weeks out from the 2018 election for the “Melton Hospital Group”, a community organisation of locals and doctors behind the push for a 400-bed hospital in 2017.

With a meagre $8000 budget, Birchall won 11 per cent of the vote and, according to his campaign manager, after preference flows came within just 700 votes of winning the seat.

Dr Ian Birchall at the site of the Melton Hospital which he has campaigned for since 2017.Credit:Jason South

In 2018, Birchall was hindered by the sheer number of independents in the field. Since then, both the ALP and Liberals have campaigned on building a hospital, but Birchall is damning of the scale and pace of the current project, which is yet to go to tender.

The City of Melton is bigger than both Bendigo and Ballarat but “is the only comparable population without 24-hour hospital emergency and specialist care”, Birchall says. The closest emergency room is at Sunshine Hospital, which is a 25 to 30-minute drive without traffic.

“The hospital is slated to have 274 beds, which would not cope with today’s demand, let alone with twice the population,” he says. “It’s too little, too late.”

It’s a poignant issue for Melton, which has a life expectancy 13 years lower than bayside suburbs. Many of those attending Birchall’s launch have come to voice their horror stories of travelling hours for critical care, cancer treatment or dialysis.

Birchall wants to see a private hospital in Melton, a TAFE and says if he was voted in he would advocate to place Melton City Council under administration. During a question session, some in the room shout full-throated support for Birchall, thrilled at the opportunity to vent about everything from crime rates to overgrown sidewalks.

Others, like former Labor voter and party member Sallie Davies, 50, are more reserved. Although she’s lived in Melton most of her life, Davies spent a short stint in a French town of the same size and it drove home to her that Melton is a “third-world suburb”.

“It was 1000 kilometres away from Paris and was one of the poorest regions in France and I didn’t even feel like I was missing out on anything because they had everything,” she says.

“I actually call Melton ‘a little black galaxy’. You hear all about these amazing things happening outside of Melton but nothing ever happens here except the population gets bigger.”

Melton resident and former Labor party member Sallie Davies at the campaign launch for independent Dr Ian Birchall.Credit:Rachael Dexter

These days Davies is a swinging voter between the Greens and independents and she’s sympathetic to Birchall’s pitch. But for a younger-than-average electorate, she’s concerned about the lack of youthful faces in the room.

“There’s a whole room full of old people here,” she says. “And I include myself in that because I’m 50.”

ABC analyst Green says Birchall’s turnout this time will depend entirely on how good his campaign is.

“Some independents think they are better known than they actually are,” he says. “All of the things that the teals did, you have to do: get your name known, staff the polling places, door knock. But he’s a good chance.”

Birchall also has to reckon with Liberal candidate Graham Watt.

Melton Liberal candidate Graham Watt speaks to Thornhill Park residents Chander and Manisha Sharma.Credit:Chris Hopkins

A former athletics champion turned carpet-cleaning business owner and mobile-phone dealer, 46-year-old Watt was state MP for Burwood from 2010 to 2018 – when the “Dan-Slide” saw him turfed out for Labor’s Will Fowles.

The religious conservative moved to Melton with his wife, former DLP upper house MP for Western Metro Rachel Carling, and their family earlier this year.

The Liberal Party hasn’t held a seat in Melbourne’s west this century, but Watt says he believes the party is “competitive” in Melton.

We meet in Thornhill Park, a community of nearly 6000 who regularly spend 30 minutes doing a U-turn to get in and out of their estate because a developer-promised overpass has failed to materialise.

Like Birchall, he is running hard on the perception that Melton has been overlooked – he has adopted the hashtag #endtheneglectofmelton on his prolific Facebook posts.

Watt, who made headlines in 2015 for refusing to stand for a speech by domestic violence campaigner Rosie Batty, says stringent lockdown measures scarred people in Melton.

“Lots of people want to talk about the roads and the hospital but you can’t get away from conversations here in Melton with most people having an opinion on Daniel Andrews,” he says. “And frankly, that opinion mostly isn’t a very high opinion.”

The Liberals earlier this year committed to starting construction on the hospital a year earlier than Labor, and Watt claims it could be rescoped.

He recently posted a video online at the hospital site telling followers the hundreds of metres of temporary fence was erected to “protect the member for Melton, the government and the Premier from criticisms that they’ve done nothing and will continue to do nothing for years to come”.

It’s unclear what role the newly-formed anti-lockdown Freedom Party Victoria will play in Melton, but Watt is also pushing material against lockdowns, jab mandates and “Andrews’ pandemic laws”.

Apart from their new roads funding pledge, the Liberals have made no other specific announcements for Melton, except for a commitment to rerouting or undergrounding controversial AusNet power lines. “There will be more to come,” Watt assures The Age.

But Samaras is blunt in his assessment based on focus groups in Melton.

“They don’t like the Liberal Party as much as they don’t like Labor,” he says.

Back at the Botanic Garden, Ian Barnes doesn’t know who’ll get his vote in four weeks but he’s bemused by all the media and political attention suddenly trained on his hometown.

“There’s a real sort of buzz around this place,” he says. “Maybe there’s change coming.”

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