MEMBERS for Euroa and Yan Yean each retained their seats at Saturday’s state election, both winning by significant margins.
Member for Euroa Steph Ryan retained her seat for the Nationals with a convincing victory over Labor candidate Fionna Deppeler-Morton.
Ms Ryan’s victory went against the state-wide trend of Labor victories that gave Premier Daniel Andrews a second term in office with 51 seats won by the sitting government at time of writing.
Ms Ryan won 60.8 per cent of the first preference vote in the Nationals strong hold, a 25.5 per cent swing after the Liberal Party did not enter a candidate.
Meanwhile, Ms Deppeler-Morton won 27.7 per cent of the first preference vote.
After preferences, Ms Ryan won the seat with 66.1 per cent to Ms Deppeler-Morton’s 33.9 per cent, a 1.6 per cent swing towards the Nationals.
Ms Ryan was heavily favoured further north in Benalla and Euroa, while Broadford’s Ms Deppeler-Morton provided tougher competition in Broadford, Kilmore, Wandong, Seymour and Clonbinane.
There was a 4.8 per cent swing in favour of the ALP and a 6.1 per cent swing against the Liberal Party.
Euroa was one of six seats won by the Nationals and one of 24 won by the Coalition.
Ms Ryan said she’s humbled to be returned to the seat of Euroa in the face of a state-wide swing.
“The result is bitter sweet. While The Nationals performed strongly across the state, the swing against the Liberals means Labor has retained government,” she said.
“Labor’s re-election means the $2 billion the Liberals and Nationals committed to the Euroa electorate to improve our train service and build much needed infrastructure including the Kilmore bypass to revitalise the town will be much harder to achieve.”
FOLLOWING the state-wide trend, Labor MP Danielle Green retained the seat of Yan Yean, winning two-thirds of the vote after preferences.
Ms Green’s win was one of 51 for Labor as of 10.30am Monday morning, giving Premier Daniel Andrews a second term in office.
Ms Green defeated former Liberal candidate Meralyn Klein with a 13.1 per cent swing towards the ALP to retain the seat she has held since 2002.
Ms Klein was disendorsed by the Liberal Party after she was featured in a video published by far-right party the Australian Liberty Alliance.
While Ms Klein appeared on ballot papers as a Liberal candidate, she was running as an independent on election day.
Ms Green won 55.2 per cent of first preference votes with 63.8 per cent of votes counted, a 12 per cent swing in her favour.
Ms Klein, meanwhile, won 27.7 per cent, a 14.8 per cent swing against her.
Greens candidate High McKinnon won 6.4 per cent and other parties won the remaining 10.8 per cent.
Ms Green dominated the polls in Diamond Creek, Doreen, Laurimar, Mernda and Wallan while it was a closer contest in Whittlesea, Wattle Glen and Beveridge.
Ms Green said she was stunned by the result.
“It felt very good at prepoll and the feeling got better every day. I never in my wildest dreams expected to win on primaries and I’d never done that before in five elections,” she said.
Ms Green said work has already started on Labor’s plans for the new term.
“Yesterday, the North East Link went to market as we promised and that’s a huge game changing project,” she said.
“Mental health professionals will be in schools from the start of the next school year and I think that’s crucially important to support our young people, especially in the lead up to the 10th anniversary of Black Saturday. And it’s important to me to support people who will be doing it tough in the lead up to the anniversary.
“As soon as the ministry is known, I’ll be making contact with the relevant ministers to start making progress on the things we’ve promised like the new community hospitals in the north, new paediatric department at the Northern, new schools, continuing to work on the new campus for Beveridge PS, additional carriages for the Seymour line and the overall positive plan we have for Melbourne’s north.”
