12-05-2025
Liberal Party adds much-needed woman to ranks with Mary Aldred win in Monash
Victorian Liberal MP Mary Aldred has vowed to "get cracking" on standing up for small businesses and employment across Gippsland as she starts day one in her new job as the federal member for Monash in regional Victoria.
The ABC is projecting Mary Aldred will take the Gippsland seat for the first time after a complicated vote count concluded 10 days after the Albanese government claimed overall election victory.
In her first interview since her election win, Ms Aldred said she was humbled by the result after a drawn-out vote count.
"It's looking like a very clear result, which I'm very humbled by," Ms Aldred said.
"I will wait for the formalities to be announced by an appropriate entity but at this stage it looks like a clear outcome.
"My community is about to send me to Canberra to do a job and that is to stand up for them. I will not take a backwards step."
Ms Aldred said she will take a "national stand" for small and family business "from day one".
She is also the first female federal government representative in the lower house in Gippsland, an achievement "that is not lost on me".
"I've been a member of the Liberal party for a long time. All my way through I've had very supportive friendships," she said.
The southern Victorian seat, which stretches from Wilsons Promontory in the south to Warragul in the west and Aberfeldy in the north, had been on a knife's edge since polls closed on May 3.
It came down to a three-way contest between Ms Aldred who outpolled the field on primary votes, Labor's Tully Fletcher, and independent candidate Deb Leonard.
There were no candidates with more than a third of the first preference vote, and it had not been clear which two candidates would be the final two in the count.
Morwell resident Steven Presley said he predicted the result would be difficult to call but it took way longer than he thought.
"It's frustrating to me and frustrating to workers in the Latrobe Valley because Labor won't put up a blue-collar, worker-oriented candidate," he said.
"They keep putting up white-collar office workers and the area is predominantly construction and mining workers.
"The Labor vote is totally split and you see that in the result.
Monash became a seat to watch in 2023 when Liberal Party stalwart Russell Broadbent lost party preselection to Ms Aldred.
He placed fourth in this month's election after standing as an independent.
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Ms Aldred's campaign manager Garry Blackwood said it had been a "weird" and "highly unusual" recount of votes.
"I was talking to some supervisors down at the vote-counting centre here in Warragul and one of them, in particular, had been doing this job for 50 years and never come across [the format of re-counting votes] before," he said.
"I think it must be a new idea that the the AEC has come up with to to make sure that the preference flows come up with the right results.
"To me it's a bit of a departure from tradition because traditionally we've had the two-party-preferred method and that's served us very, very well.
Live results: Find out what's happening in your seat as counting continues
This election was Phillip Island-based lawyer Deb Leonard's second tilt at the seat and she mounted a long and well-financed campaign.
Ms Leonard did not distribute any preferences on her how-to-vote cards which she said partially contributed to the complexity of the count.
"It's very unpredictable," she said.
"People have decided not to follow the how-to-vote cards. They're thinking for themselves about where their vote will go.
"That's also part of what's made this count [unusual] because preferences aren't flowing to where you'd normally expect them to go."
Ms Aldred was the founding CEO of the Committee for Gippsland and CEO of the Franchise Council of Australia.
