While all the seats have not yet been called, is likely the Andrews government will returned to a position of strength similar to the one they have occupied for the last term of government. A couple of seats have changed hands, one for each party cancelling out any real gains.
What further consolidates Dan Andrews’ hold on power is that the opposition is in the state of complete disarray both politically and organisationally.
Organisationally, they need to reform the system by which they preselect candidates. This will be a difficult and tortuous process but they need to stop pre-selecting candidates that are so extreme that they have no real connection to any anybody other than like-minded religious extremists and right-wing crackpots.
Politically, they need to be able to select new leader rather than recycling Michael O’Brien who lost his job to a recycled Matthew as leader of the party.
They also need to do something about Treasurer David Davis who has become a walking advertisement for why people should not vote for the Liberal party.
The Greens are celebrating a “Green Wave”. It’s a bit of an exaggeration as they have so far picked up two seats and may possibly pick up a couple more. They are gaining strength in inner Melbourne but it is hardly a wave, more like the tide coming in.
With the Andrews government having a large and comfortable majority, Greens will not be in the position of power they had hoped for a hung parliament.
The Greens are now in the very fortunate position where they are often one of the top two candidates when the votes are counted. This means they benefit from whole range of preferences from people who probably wouldn’t vote for them but preferences are distributed to the last two standing.
This time round the Liberals gave their preferences to the Greens. In Richmond, which the Greens won for the first time, Liberal party voters had a choice between the Greens and Labor for their second last preference which is the one that gets distributed to the top two candidates.
The Greens are now in a position where they will get either Labor preferences or Liberal preferences which means that once they are established in a seat they will be very hard dislodge.
There is one surprising aspect to this election, which didn’t follow the trend in the Federal election. When counting stopped on Saturday night, there were no Teal or independent candidates elected. In fact, a number of independents lost their seats to Nationals in regional electorates.
It remains to be seen, if the final votes are sufficient to elect Teal candidates to Parliament.