By-Elections: What You Need to Know

With three Parliamentary sitting weeks since 6 March, the acquisition of nuclear-powered submarines under AUKUS, the debating of the Safeguard Mechanism and the New South Wales state election, this past month has been an extremely busy one for Australian politics.

The agenda isn’t set to simmer down just yet, given that on Saturday, 1 April; we will see the first by-election under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s Labor Government and for the 47^th Parliament of Australia. Here at Nexus APAC, we’ve compiled a summary on by-elections and why the Aston by-election matters.

What Is A By-election?

By-elections are held in order to fill casual vacancies in an office between general elections. Casual vacancies in the Australian House of Representatives arise when a member dies, is disqualified or resigns, or for some other reason, the seat becomes vacant. Only people enrolled in the electorate where a by-election is being held can vote.

The Speaker of the House has the discretion to issue a writ to call a by-election, unlike federal elections where that duty falls to the Governor-General.

Whilst Australians use the term ‘by-elections’, they are known differently around the world – for example, ‘special elections’ in the United States of America and the Philippines, ‘bye-elections’ in Ireland and ‘bypolls’ in India.

Since the creation of the Australian House of Representatives in 1901, there have been 160 by-elections, rendering this Saturday’s upcoming by-election in the federal electorate of Aston, the 161^st. Of these by-elections, just 38 saw a seat flip from one party to another.

In Australia’s two most recent by-elections for the seats of Eden-Monaro and Groom, both in 2020, the incumbent party won back their respective seats.

The Aston By-election – What You Need To Know

The Aston by-election will be held on Saturday, 1 April 2023, to elect the next member of the Australian House of Representatives in the electorate of Aston in Victoria.

The by-election was triggered by the resignation of Liberal shadow frontbencher The Hon Alan Tudge MP on 17 February 2023. Mr Tudge had held the seat since 2010.

Aston is currently a marginal Liberal seat, held by a margin of 2.8%.

Aston (shown below) covers 113 square kilometres, taking in all of the City of Knox in Melbourne’s outer east. It includes suburbs to the east of the Eastlink section of the M3 freeway between Police Road and Dandenong Creek, including Wantirna, Bayswater, The Basin, Boronia, Knoxfield, Ferntree Gully, Rowville and Lysterfield.

During the 1980s, Labor was highly competitive in Aston at both a state and federal level. In the early 1990s, high-interest rates and economic downturn caused this to change. Since then, the electorate has been considered a safe Liberal seat – that is, until the 2022 election when the gap closed dramatically. Aston swung against the then Morrison government much more strongly than Victoria as a whole – not unusual for safe seats that see less intensive campaigns than more marginal seats.

For the by-election, frontrunning candidates are the Liberal Party of Australia’s Roshena Campbell, a barrister and City of Melbourne councillor, who, if elected, would be the first female Indian-Australian MP from the Liberal Party, and the Australian Labor Party’s Mary Doyle, the party’s experienced candidate against Mr Tudge at the 2022 federal election who won preselection unopposed. She is a union organiser and breast cancer survivor. When Ms Doyle ran against Mr Tudge in 2022, she narrowed Aston’s margin down from 10.1% to the current 2.8%.

Why Do By-elections Matter?

Prime Minister the Hon Anthony Albanese’s Labor Government currently holds a majority in the House of Representatives by just two seats. Whilst the Aston by-election won’t change the balance of power, every seat counts. The upcoming by-election will also be both an indicator of public support for the Government and the Opposition and an assessment of the performance of Prime Minister Albanese and the Opposition Leader the Hon Peter Dutton MP so far.

Whilst the Liberal Party is likely to retain the seat of Aston, the Labor Party is not sitting out on the campaign, having sent the Prime Minister into the electorate on repeat visits.

By-elections can also be important if a minority party needs to gain one or more seats to gain official party status or the balance of power in a minority government.

The last time a government won a seat from an opposition party was the Kalgoorlie by-election in 1920.

Just two weeks ago, the Northern Territory Division of Arafura saw Labor’s Manuel Brown gain a seat in a by-election for the Northern Territory Legislative Assembly. Should Labor win Aston, the Labor party will have won an election three Saturdays in a row in light of its NSW state election win on 25 March 2023.