Federal election 2025: Victoria shapes as key battleground as Peter Dutton launches campaign

While Anthony Albanese may have kicked off his pre-election blitz in a seat he himself deemed unwinnable, Peter Dutton opted to begin his unofficial campaign with a different tactic.

During the Prime Minister’s week-long three-state offensive, replete with infrastructure and housing announcements, press conferences and local radio interviews, Mr Dutton remained on the downlow.

He let Mr Albanese dominate news headlines for the week with visits to Katter country; a safe Queensland LNP seat; a cattle property in remote NT; and his two days in WA, while most of the country was still on holiday-mode.

But on Sunday, he kicked into gear. Declaring the Liberal Party was “back in town” at a campaign-style rally in the Melbourne electorate of Chisholm, the Opposition Leader’s 40-minute pitch to Party faithful to get Australia “back on track” was light on announcements, but laden with intent to do what hasn’t been done since the 1930s: unseat a Government after just one term.

With a belief it can be achieved, he was careful in his next appearances. Still in Melbourne on Monday, this time in the eastern suburbs electorate of Aston, he announced $7.5 million over three years to boost Crime Stoppers and pledged $400,000 for floodlights at a Kooyong cricket ground.

Victoria, a tough hunting ground for the Coalition since 2004, has not tended to be an election-decider in recent history - but strategists on both sides acknowledge the Labor-stronghold could wind up a kingmaker this time around.

The Coalition won just 11 of the state’s 39 seats in the 2022 election, before losing Aston in a historic 2023 by-election. However the abolition of Labor-held Higgins has tightened margins. In the Melbourne seat of Chisholm, election analyst Antony Green says the redistribution means the Government’s lead has been halved from 6.4 per cent to 3.3 per cent.

Acknowledging that the seat was in the Coalition’s “to win” pile, Mr Dutton told Victorians on Sunday: “If we win Chisholm, we’re a step closer to winning government. And if we win government, we can get Victoria and our country moving again”.

While the polls suggest a Labor minority Government is the most likely post-election outcome, the Coalition used its first major move of the year to show it isn’t going down without a fight.

Former Liberal party strategist and Redbridge director Tony Barry said the Coalition realistically would need to win six to eight seats in Victoria to help make up the 19 seats it needs to win to get back into Government.

“On a sunny day, the Liberals will pick up Blair or Lilley in Queensland, two in WA — Bullwinkel and another, Boothby in South Australia, Lyons in Tasmania, and maybe even Lingiari in the NT. That leaves 13 out of Victoria and NSW,” he told The Nightly.

“Realistically, they’ve got to pick up six out of Victoria, but arguably more.

“Because if some of those sunny seats in WA don’t flip and it’s quite ambitious to pick up any more in Queensland, Victoria will need to get closer to eight.

“The Liberals would be looking at (Victorian electorates) Corangamite, Bruce and Holt. There’s a lot of work to do, but it’s plausible.”

Mr Barry said there had been a real attitudinal switch since the 2022 election, coupled with plummeting popularity for the long-reigning state Labor Government, which should buoy the federal Liberals.

Pair that with recent polling that shows the Coalition gaining ground, the Liberal Party believe themselves to be in strong position for a fight.

The latest Resolve Political Monitor showed Victorian voters had lifted the Coalition’s primary vote from 33 to 38 per cent, while Labor’s numbers fell from 33 to 29 per cent.

While that poll showed the Prime Minister still has the personal edge over Mr Dutton, the gap is narrow.

“The preconditions are there for a good swing,” Mr Barry said, pointing to recent Redbridge polling that predicts a four to five per cent swing.

If that manifests, it would bring Labor-held McEwen and its notional redistributed margin of 3.8 per cent margin into play; as well as Bruce, where the lead has narrowed to 5.3 per cent due to new boundaries.

The swing against Labor at least year’s Dunkley by-election also puts the seat - which it holds by 3.6 per cent - in play.

The Liberal Party will also be trying to regain Kooyong and Goldstein – former blue ribbon seats it lost to the “teal” wave in 2022, both of which it believes are winnable.

With a path back to victory laid out before him, Mr Dutton began his rally on Sunday declaring “the Liberal Party, at a state and federal level, is back in town!”

He had no new policies or major announcements in his speech, but instead used it to outline the Coalition’s 12 priorities and the offer of an alternative for the next three years.

Mr Albanese, who on Monday criticised his opponent’s rally as the “biggest damp squib done by any political leader to begin a political year in an election year that I have ever seen”, had begun the year on a different path.

Announcing a $7.2bn investment in the Bruce Highway last Monday in Queensland’s Wide Bay, a safe Coalition seat, Mr Albanese acknowledged the land he was standing on was not in his sights.

But, his presence there was deliberate. He spent last week travelling tens of thousands of kilometres in a bid to present himself as a Prime Minister for all.

“That’s because I’m determined to represent all Australians, regardless of where they live. To do the right thing in the national interest. And that’s something that drives my Government,” he said last Monday.

A return to Wide Bay is unlikely to be high on his pre-election to-do list, with the PM set to increasingly focus his attention on battleground seats and states.

With a notional 77 of the 150 lower-house seats, Labor has less of a ways to fall than the Coalition has to climb - but as Mr Albanese has publicly said on a number of occasions, the ALP doesn’t take any of those seats for granted.

What’s clear is that Victoria will be a key hunting ground this time around. Labor operatives have McEwan, Aston and Dunkley high on their must-hold list, and the Government believes they’ve done enough in the past three years to keep Victorians’ favour.

Mr Dutton’s pre-election campaign launch banks on voters feeling otherwise.

With no absolute way of knowing until election day, voters in suburban Melbourne should expect to see both leaders a fair bit in the coming weeks or months.

As Mr Barry sums up: “It’s been a long time since Victoria was considered a critical state, but when doing the electoral math, this election it will be”.