SO Labor is throwing one last shot at Ripon in a bid to win the seat it lost by 15 votes, but when you hold such a majority, why would you even bother?
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The reason is simple, Ripon is strategically important to the Labor cause as one of the few truly rural seats the party can lay claim to being one of its own.
It is also a seat it earmarks for massive change in the coming years with the creation of wind energy - and the turbines that come with it – which will change the landscape forever.
The last thing the Government wants is a strong opposition in the region when the rest of the state is all for them.
For 15 years, mostly under the Bracks and Brumby Government, Ripon was held by Labor’s Joe Helper.
Even when Labor lost Government in 2010, Helper managed to hold onto his seat, but since his retirement, Labor has struggled to find a foothold in the mostly rural electorate which goes as far as Stawell and Ararat in the west to the outskirts of Ballarat such as Lucas and Miners Rest in the east.
In 2014, when Labor was returned to power, Ripon was the only seat in the state that switched back to the Liberals, albeit by a tiny margin.
Then on November 24 this year, when almost the whole state gave Daniel Andrews another four years, Ripon once again bucked the trend as Louise Staley held on in the tightest margin ever recorded in a state Election in Victoria.
So what makes Ripon so unique? If you look at the voting patterns, it is clear that one thing went missing this election and that’s the Green vote.
While the Greens can essentially garner 8-10 per cent of the vote across the state, in Ripon, despite putting up a strong candidate in a local Blampied farmer Serge Simic, the Greens only got just over four per cent.
In her victory speech, Ms Staley alluded to forestry groups and those that want to see state forests kept open to commercial use as a major reason for her re-election.
The Green who oppose this policy, were unable to hold their voting numbers in the seat from 2014 and so in turn smaller numbers have flowed to Labor.
Now, with a Liberal MP in the region, the government can expect fierce opposition from groups fighting for the retention of forests for private use.
One wonders had Labor lost an inner city seat of Hawthorn by 15 votes would it have bothered taking on that result? The chances are slim at best as Hawthorn, traditionally Liberal heartland, is not as strategically important as Ripon.
The decimated Liberals aren’t really in a position to challenge Hawthorn the same way Labor can go after Ripon. At the end of the day, given the size of Labor’s victory in the state, a court challenge over Ripon is essentially a free hit.
READ MORE: Louise Staley appointed Shadow Treasurer
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