Victorian election live: One Nation leader Warren Pickering deems free abortion policy ‘stupid’

From 1999 to 2018, the safe Liberal seat of Brighton was represented by Louise Asher, who was first elected to the Legislative Council in 1992. She won preselection against Mitch Fifield, a future senator.

Asher served on the Liberal front bench continuously from April 1996 up to the Liberals’ election defeat in 2014. She had two stints as deputy Liberal leader and was the first woman to serve in the party’s leadership team.

Asher retired in 2018 and James Newbury became the Liberal candidate. Declan Martin, 19, brought Labor closest to victory than ever before in the seat’s more than 160-year history, cutting the Liberal margin to 1.12 per cent. Labor narrowly won the polling day vote but lost the sizeable early and postal votes.

Newbury was elevated to the shadow ministry in March 2021, rising to shadow treasurer in January 2025 as a key backer of new leader Brad Battin. It was Battin’s fateful reshuffle in October 2025, in which Newbury was demoted to shadow attorney-general, that contributed to his removal as leader. Newbury shifted his backing to Jess Wilson in the resulting leadership contest and retained his portfolio.

The Liberals should have no trouble holding this seat, and perhaps more interesting will be the role Newbury plays in either government or opposition after the election.

Hi Grace,

You aren’t the only one who has asked.

When we talk about the preferences given by a political party to another, we mean the way they advise their voters on how-to-vote cards, which are handed out at polling booths.

Every voter is free to preference candidates in whatever order they like. But some may choose to follow the advice given by their chosen political party.

Let’s take Labor for example. In Pascoe Vale, the party is telling voters to vote 1 for candidate Anthony Cianflone, and has a recommended a ranking for all other political parties on its how-to-vote cards.

In this seat, it is preferencing Greens second on the card, with Liberals fifth and One Nation last.

But Labor is coming under fire today for running an “open ticket” in certain seats where it faces strong competition from the Greens, such as Prahran, leaving it open to voters to decide their preferences in these seats after voting for Labor.

Today, government minister Steve Dimopoulos defended the party’s strategy in seats like Prahran and Caulfield.

“An open ticket is a far cry from a preference,” he said.

“What we’re saying is please put Labor number one, what you do after that, you make your decision.”

Nowhere has the impact of potholes on the Victorian election been clearer than in Forest Hill in Melbourne’s east, where a pothole at the intersection of Canterbury Road and Mahoneys Road became a political battleground.

Local residents complained about potholes at the intersection, some of which had grown to a depth of 15cm. An Instagram page was even set up for the pothole earlier this month, providing daily updates.

Whitehouse City Council pleaded with the state government to fix potholes at the intersection following complaints from residents.

Forest Hill falls into the electorate of Glen Waverley, which unexpectedly flipped to Labor in 2022. Holding the seat by a margin of just 3.3 per cent, the electorate is shaping up to be a major battleground in the election.

The Liberal Party seized on the opportunity, with Opposition Leader Jess Wilson holding a press conference at the pothole to attack Labor’s record on roads.

The tactic spurred the Carroll government into action, with the potholes being repaired in the days after Wilson’s visit.

Whitehorse City Council celebrated the win and thanked the state government for the much-needed repairs. The pothole’s Instagram account had to say farewell for the time being.

Labor narrowly won Box Hill throughout the 1980s but after a redistribution it became a relatively strong seat for the Liberals. For 26 years, between 1992 and 2018, the seat was held by prominent Liberal moderate Robert Clark, who was the attorney-general and finance minister in the Baillieu and Napthine governments.

Despite Clark’s long tenure he was sensationally defeated at the 2018 election by Labor’s Paul Hamer. In 2022, Hamer secured a swing towards him and in April 2026 he was elevated to cabinet in Jacinta Allan’s final reshuffle before she was deposed three months later.

The seat is home to the second-largest proportion of Chinese-born residents in the state. Its steady population growth has been driven by overseas migration, and the suburb of Box Hill has had the most new apartment builds approved out of any eastern suburb of Melbourne. Box Hill, as well as Burwood on the southern border of the seat, will also be home to two of the six stations on the eastern section of the Suburban Rail Loop.

Box Hill lies at the upper range of the 16 seats the Coalition would be looking to win to form majority government. Labor has heavily invested in this fast-growing area and the Liberal Party has struggled for support in the Chinese community in recent years. This will likely be an important seat for both parties to win.

The state of Victoria’s roads and the growing number of potholes has become a key issue in the coming election.

As the ABC’s Kate Ashton reported in September, the proportion of state-managed roads in poor or very poor condition increased from 39 to 48 per cent between 2021 and 2024, according to an auditor-general report.

And the human toll of Victoria’s crumbling roads was brought into focus after the death of a 71-year-old motorcyclist who crashed after reportedly hitting a pothole on the Western Highway near Ballarat.

The public backlash to potholes led to Premier Ben Carroll admitting in August that the condition of Victoria’s roads was “not good enough”.

Each political party is pledging to improve Victoria’s roads if elected this month.

Labor pledged to double the number of potholes fixed this year from 250,000 to 500,000 with a fresh $352 million investment, while also piloting a program to have minimum-security prisoners perform roadside maintenance.

The Coalition has promised to boost current spending on road maintenance by 25 per cent, pledging $5 billion to repair 1 million potholes across Victoria.

The Greens say if elected, the party will bring VicRoads back into government hands, diverting money saved with public ownership into fixing the state’s roads.

And One Nation has promised to publish the condition and funding of every major regional road and create a public pothole portal for Victorians to make reports, with locked-in maintenance funding for regional roads.

In many parts of the seat of Northcote, about 7km north of Melbourne’s CBD, political messaging sits alongside bustling cafes and gentrification.

Aside from its brief dalliance with Senator Lidia Thorpe, the seat has been Labor for almost a century and swung back that way in 2018.

In 2022, Labor won the seat by just 184 votes. This year, the contest is shaping up to be just as close.

The ABC’s Mike Lorigan and Alysia Thomas-Sam have this story:

New research by RMIT suggests a large number of Victorians rate homelessness as a very or extremely important election issue.

The RMIT survey, commissioned by St Vincent de Paul Society Victoria, shows 89 per cent of those surveyed supported increased government funding of homelessness prevention programs.

Around 65 per cent of respondents believe cost of living is a leading cause of homelessness and 50 per cent say it’s their most important voting issue.

The survey polled 650 Victorian residents on their views about homelessness-specific issues.

RMIT noted that the respondents were younger, more educated and more metropolitan than the general population.

Vinnies is using the research to call for parties to commit to a three-year homelessness prevention package ahead of the election.

“Keeping people housed is cost-of-living relief, and we need a long-term plan for it,” says Ray Kelleher from Vinnies.

“Homelessness is a vote-shifter for nearly two in three (64 per cent) Victorians telling us they would be more likely to vote for a party with a commitment to increasing investment into homelessness, and prevention programs are the leading priority for funding.”

The Coalition announced yesterday it will preference One Nation above Labor, the Greens and Socialists on its how-to-vote cards in some electorates.

Meanwhile, Labor will run an open ticket in inner-city Melbourne seats, where it faces strong competition from the Greens.

It’s created outrage among some of our audience members, while others (namely Preference Pete) are less concerned.

Berwick was recreated ahead of the 2022 election from parts of Bass, Narre Warren South and the now-abolished seat of Gembrook. Its original incarnation existed between 1976 and 2002 and was always held by the Liberal Party.

Brad Battin became the member for Gembrook in 2010, defeating a two-term Labor MP with a 7.35 per cent swing towards him. The redistribution of 2021 saw more than one-third of Battin’s Gembrook constituents transferred to the reconstituted Berwick, including the seat’s most Liberal-friendly areas. Battin followed along and was re-elected to parliament.

After the election, he contested the leadership of the party against John Pesutto, losing by a single vote. When Pesutto lost the high-profile defamation case brought against him by upper house Liberal member Moira Deeming, Battin successfully moved a spill motion and won the leadership against Chris Crewther and Jess Wilson.

Battin’s time as leader started strong, with the Liberals gaining the seat of Prahran in a by-election then achieving their highest levels of polling support in the entire term. But his relentless focus on crime and lukewarm relations with factional heavyweights created tensions that came to a head in October 2025, when a shadow cabinet reshuffle saw key backers in the previous year’s leadership spill demoted. Battin was booted from the leadership a month later and replaced by first-term MP Jess Wilson, who he had promoted to shadow treasurer in the reshuffle.

The Greens have promised $1.75 million to expand the Community Paramedics program in Richmond if elected.

The program is currently piloted by North Richmond Community Health and funds free pop-up clinics run by qualified paramedics near Richmond’s public housing towers.

The Greens’ proposed funding would expand the program to other sites across Richmond.

Richmond MP Gabrielle de Vietri says the proposal is a “common-sense solution” to providing health care.

“Everyone deserves good health care, no matter their income or where they live. We’re proud to back an innovating local program and help bring it to more people across Richmond,” de Vietri says.

The Greens won the seat of Richmond in 2022 following decades of Labor dominance, and hold it with a 7.3 per cent margin.

It’s safe to say some of our Victorian audience members do not approve of the Coalition announcing its choice to preference One Nation above Labor, the Greens and the Socialist parties.

Opposition Leader Jess Wilson confirmed the call yesterday, but said it would vary from electorate to electorate based on the party’s due diligence.

If you have thoughts, leave us a comment.

A couple of federal MPs have weighed in on Victorian Liberal leader Jess Wilson‘s announcement yesterday that her party would preference One Nation ahead of Labor.

The member for Bruce, Labor’s Julian Hill, and Liberal MP for Casey, Aaron Violi both spoke to Raf Epstein on 774 ABC Melbourne this morning.

Hill says the preference announcements amount to a “deal” between the Liberals and One Nation.

“If it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck, it’s a duck,” he says.

“People are not stupid. This is a deliberate choice, it’s an unprecedented choice and it leads our society down a really dangerous path.”

However, Violi says he’s “comfortable” with the Victorian Liberals’ decision to preference One Nation ahead of Labor and the Greens.

“We’re saying to Victorians that we want you to put the Liberal or Nationals candidate first,” he says.

“Jess has also said, we vetted other candidates and where there are candidates that say abhorrent things, we will put those candidates last

“The preference recommendations are not making judgement calls on every single comment, policy or portfolio.”

Residents in central Victoria say the closure of three local polling booths is a “kick in the teeth” for rural communities, with voters facing longer trips to cast their ballots in the upcoming state election.

An analysis of Victorian Electoral Commission data has revealed 36 regional towns that had a polling booth at the 2022 state election will no longer have one within 5 kilometres.

In nine of those towns, the nearest voting centre is at least 10km away for this election.

The ABC’s Nate Woodall and Fiona Parker have this story:

Bentleigh has a long history as a bellwether held by the governing party for nearly all of the last 60 years. This means Labor has won it at five of the last six elections this century.

Current MP Nick Staikos has achieved the highest shares of the two-candidate preferred vote in Bentleigh since the seat’s first occupant, Bob Suggett, a Liberal. He has also risen higher in the government than any other member for the seat, serving in the ministry since 2024. He is currently the housing minister and was formerly the minister for the Suburban Rail Loop.

After a tight win in 2014, Staikos secured one of the highest swings in the state towards him in Labor’s 2018 landslide and his vote largely held up in 2022.

But the seats on the Frankston train line, which have had a big role in determining government, have more Liberal-leaning demographic traits the closer they are to the city centre. Bentleigh is the closest of the four and has the 17th-highest personal incomes in the state compared to 56th-ranked Frankston at the end of the line.

Staikos’s ministerial responsibilities overlap with issues that will likely be important in this district: the government’s housing policy in growth corridors like Bentleigh and the Suburban Rail Loop, which sits just outside its boundaries.

We want to know what’s shaping your vote in this election and why.

Whether it’s the cost of living, housing affordability, crime, regional roads, health care or jobs, let us know in our form below.

You can also ask the election questions you want answered from candidates, parties or the ABC.

All submissions will be reviewed by a journalist and we may be in touch if we need more information.

We’re bringing you live coverage today from the Victorian state election campaign trail.

While Labor and the Liberals have spent recent days travelling across the state in big campaign buses to critical seats, the parties will pause their travels today out of respect for Remembrance Day.

We’ll still be bringing you any new policy announcements, plus coverage from the third day of public hearings in the Big Build royal commission.