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Former triple j broadcaster Tracee Hutchison will pitch herself as a community-backed independent candidate in the upcoming state byelection in Nepean, seeking to capitalise on voter frustration with the major parties.
“I think people are looking for authenticity,” she said. “People don’t see themselves any more being reflected in the candidates or MPs being put up by the major parties.”
The byelection, which will be held on May 2, was triggered when former deputy Liberal leader Sam Groth resigned citing infighting within his party as the reason for leaving months before the state election.
Hutchison is supported by the group Independents for Mornington Peninsula and said a growing dissatisfaction with politics was pushing voters toward alternatives, claiming the “big parties increasingly don’t represent us”.
“There is nothing that brings the attention to the two major parties than the prospect that they might lose the seat,” she said.
The Liberal Party has endorsed three-time Mornington Peninsula Shire Mayor Anthony Marsh to defend the traditionally conservative seat, while Pauline Hanson’s One Nation has nominated local business owner Darren Hercus and the Greens have announced women’s health researcher Sianan Healy as their candidate. Labor will not run a candidate.
The byelection will be held just seven months before the state election, and comes as support for the major parties in Victoria has crashed to the lowest level on record.
According to the latest Resolve Political Monitor conducted for The Age over the first two months of this year, 42 per cent of respondents said they would support a minor party or independent candidate at the next state election, representing an exodus of more than 470,000 voters from the major parties since 2022.
Though the Liberals enter the Nepean race holding the seat by 6.4 per cent, Resolve political analyst Jim Reed said circumstances around Groth’s departure, as well as Labor’s absence, could create an opening for the independents and minor parties.
“Nepean covers usually safe Liberal territory, but did go to Labor in 2018. It shows how far Labor have fallen since then that they aren’t even considering running here now,” Reed said.
“Byelections typically provide an opportunity for local voters to vent their displeasure at a poor performing government ... or at the circumstances of the incumbent’s departure. That sort of major party protest, coupled with the above-average age of the local population, lends itself to a One Nation surge, but it’s likely that an independent may do better here given its also affluent and has independents taking decent vote share at a federal level.”
Strict fundraising laws in Victoria – which are being challenged in the High Court – cap donations from any individual or entity at $4850 over a four-year period.
The political funding body Climate 200, which offered financial backing to Ben Smith when he ran in the federal seat of Flinders, which overlaps Nepean, argues the fundraising laws in their current form give the major parties an inherent advantage.
Hutchison was born in Rosebud, where she attended kindergarten and primary school. She later attended Toorak College in Mount Eliza on a scholarship.
The 63-year-old began her career at triple j in the 1980s, and did on-air stints at 702 Sydney and 774 Melbourne. She is also a former columnist for The Age.
Until recently, she was chair of Green Music Australia. She says her political outlook was shaped in part by environmental campaigns of the 1980s, including the Franklin River dam dispute, and that she had to “straddle the line between journalism and advocacy”.
Hutchison previously held discussions with Labor about standing as a candidate at the 2019 federal election in the seat of Flinders, but disagreed with the state party’s initial support for an LNG import terminal at Crib Point.
Hutchison bought a house on the Mornington Peninsula 20 years ago and has increasingly based herself there over the past five years.
“I have shown up for this place and I care deeply about it,” she said.
Her campaign is expected to centre heavily on the ageing Rosebud Hospital – where she was born – which she says has struggled to keep pace with population growth and needs to be rebuilt to serve the southern end of the peninsula.
“It is not that far removed from the bush hospital that I was born in 60 years ago, and it’s just not good enough,” she said.
It’s an issue that became personal last month, when she broke a bone in her foot and spent five hours in the emergency department.
“I watched that hospital and the people who work there continue to deliver above and beyond, stretched to capacity and still manage to look after people.
“We are 80 kilometres from the [CBD of the] capital city of this state, and we are still struggling to have the most basic, well-functioning emergency department without people having to be ferried off to Frankston Hospital.”
Last year, Rosebud Hospital received $4 million for repairs and refurbishments from the state government.
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