Liberal candidate Wendy Lovell is celebrating re-election for her sixth term as Member for Northern Victoria, but at the same time being forced to contemplate her party’s dismal overall result in the state election.
Ms Lovell has been returned to the Legislative Council, along with Labor’s Jaclyn Symes, who leads the government in the upper house and also has the roles of Attorney-General and Emergency Services Minister in the Andrews Government.
They are joined by the Nationals’ newly elected Gaelle Broad, which means the Coalition effectively wins a seat from Labor after Mark Gepp’s retirement.
The Animal Justice Party’s Georgie Purcell and Invergordon’s Rikkie-Lee Tyrell, of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation Party, are the other winners.
Speaking at the declaration of the lower house seat of Shepparton District for the Nationals’ Kim O’Keeffe on Friday, December 9, Ms Lovell said it was an honour to be re-elected.
“It's always very humbling to be re-elected and to have so much faith put in you,” she said.
“This is my sixth time that I've been elected to represent this community, so I've worked very hard over that period and people have often obviously had the confidence to put their faith in me once again, which I'm very grateful for.
“I promise them that I will work extremely hard to return that confidence.”
Labor has retained government with 56 seats, one more than in 2018, and the Coalition is facing a 29-seat deficit despite the Nationals winning three more seats than at the 2018 election for a total of nine.
The Liberals, on the other hand, have gone backwards by three seats to have only 18.
Instead of winning government, the Liberal Party is facing suggestions from some senior Nationals that it consider dissolving the coalition, and commentators are even questioning the Liberals’ long-term future.
Ms Lovell partially blamed the Liberal Party’s poor performance in the state election on the redistribution of two seats and denied the party had pandered to noisy disgruntled fringe groups, particularly during the pandemic, rather than the central majority.
“One of the things that came through loud and clear from people to me during COVID was, you know, ‘Why isn't the Opposition doing more to hold Daniel Andrews to account? Why are they letting him get away with this?’,” Ms Lovell said.
“Well, the people of Victoria, if they want to give him such a large majority in the parliament, they've got to accept what he does because we can jump up and down and we can debate things in the parliament, but we just don't have the numbers to carry a vote against him.”