Aston in the time of by-election

The corflutes are up, and the candidates are circling. It’s byelection season in the outer east of Melbourne - as far east in the city that you can get. Beyond lie the Dandenong and Yarra ranges, to the south of them the plains of Gippsland.

This is the forgotten corner of Melbourne, beyond the tramline, beyond the cares of the rest of the city. For what is Melbourne without a tramline?

It’s barely touched by the trainline as it skirts the northeast of the electorate. Trains might trumble past every half hour if you’re lucky.

It’s separated from the rest of Melbourne by a creek not even two metres wide in most places, a good jump or a well placed log can clear it easily. But this barrier can only be crossed by road in a few select places. It’s one of the few natural borders in Melbourne.

It is a place of isolation, in Melbourne but not of Melbourne. Like Melbourne but separate from it. A place between creek and forest and mountain. An inbetween place.

And those few bridges act as a portal between the Melbourne people know and the Knox that they don’t. Farmland and paddocks are a passageway on all sides.

But that isolation is being tested as Alan Tudge’s resignation has instigated one of the most important byelections in the past 20 years.

Now newsrooms are desperate for stories about Aston, about Knox, (for they are the same place).

This forgotten place has become ‘the mortgage belt’, and stories of struggle dominate - they are the ones that sell of course. And people are struggling. Tents have started to appear in parks, and I have no doubt that many more are camping and living in the surrounding forests, just as they did in the 1890s and the 1930s.

The forests become a refuge in times of struggle.

But they have also painted this place as Liberal Heartland. The final stronghold of a once proud party that is now scraping around for relevance.

But these are not the only stories of Aston. For this place doesn’t have only one or two tales. And Aston is not a singular entity. It’s more like four places in one.

Broadly, it can be split like this (although keep in mind that the borders are much less rigid than presented):

1. The North-East: East of Scoresby Rd, North of Burwood Hwy

2. The West: West of Scoresby Rd, North of Burwood Hwy

3. The Centre: South of Burwood Hwy, North of Corhanwarrabul Creek

4. The South: South of Corhanwarrabul Creek.

There is a noticeable disconnect between the Northern three sections and the south, with only three bridges connecting the north and the south. This is probably why Alan Tudge was so proud of one the bridges he built over the Corhanwarrabul Creek.

The South, therefore, has a different character - and this is revealed in the electoral map as well. It is Liberal Heartland, the newest and most populous part of the electorate, with Suburban development only beginning in the 1970s. This is the true mortgage belt. A land of pale bricks and housing estates.

The oldest area (in terms of suburbia at least), by contrast, is the North-East, with suburban settlement going back over a century. This has become, rather recently, Labor Heartland - and in some places Greens Heartland. It would never happen, but an electoral boundary based on this area, extending into the Dandenongs would be an interesting electoral contest between the Greens and Labor, at least at state level. During Covid the Communist Party even became active in the area. There are few modern estates here, and those developments that there are are so small that they do not have the problems associated with other, larger, estates.

It is also forest and hill country. Bushfire overlays are relevant to a decent area of this region, which of course also affects its character.

This is not the Liberal Heartland that the media have latched onto.

That just leaves the west and the centre, swing country where the election will probably be decided, and a region that broadly follows Burwood Hwy. It’s where, with a proper public transport system, the centre of the region should be. But the failure of Urban Planning and the fact that this place is forgotten means that we are instead stuck with a city with no centre. And no heart. Knox City is currently in the middle of its first redevelopment in around 25 years and looks like it could become the promised centre, but it will take imagination by all levels of Government to make it so.

Where the border of the North East and the West/Centre actually is another story. I have arbitrarily drawn it as being along Scoresby Rd. Booth results suggest that Stud Rd might be a better border. But the actual border lies more in a person’s state of mind. Do they look to the railway line or to the roads for access out of Knox? If they look towards the Railway, they are in the North-East, towards the road and they are Westies.

This is understandable. Those who rely on communal transport are more likely to lean towards socialism (either real or the imagined socialism of the Labor Party), while those who rely of cars will usually tend towards the individualism that the Liberal Party purports to stand for.

Of course, railways were planned for other areas, from Glen Waverley through to Knox and the infamous Rowville Railway which has been promised for more than 50 years now. The current proposal for rail to Rowville has been reduced to a trackless tram - little more than a very nice electric bus.

We are really in the forgotten world on this side of the Dandenong Creek.

Federal Election Results in Aston Booths at the 2022 Election

From: https://www.tallyroom.com.au/astonby2023

Booth results from the 2022 State Election for Bayswater, Rowville and Monbulk

from: https://www.pollbludger.net/vic2022/Results/?

So, aside from the North-East, we love our roads; we have to. And that’s why the Liberals have jumped on the apparent cutting of roads funding by the Federal Government. But there’s a problem with that. The Roads would only have benefited the south of the electorate, the area that is already Liberal heartland. For the rest, the roads serve very little purpose - unless people are desperate to get to or from Rowville.

And that’s why the road funding campaign by the Opposition hasn’t really gathered any momentum around the area. But since local public transport is not the responsibility of the Federal Government, the road focus of the campaign is understandable. This does not make it less misdirected though.

So what do locals want in a local member? What can a local federal member provide?

It does boil down to cost of living: Housing policies, tax, power prices. In this, Aston is no different to the rest of Australia. But Aston is a place in transition and of transition. Large blocks which once had single houses with large backyards are making way for units of 5, 10, 20 residences. And yet housing prices are not coming down. And no sooner has a new property sold, a ‘For Lease’ sign goes up. Renters then get all the costs of renting, with few of the benefits.

Once again, this is really not a Federal Government issue. But actual local MPs can take concerns to Parliaments and at least get some kind of framework in place. But only if they know and appreciate the area. Aston will not be home to a new CBD, nor a satellite city, it’s simply too isolated this side of the Dandenong Creek. But it can be a centre for the Outer East, if a plan through all levels of Government, by people who know the area, is worked out. That is what the people here want, a plan. And that is precisely what they are not getting, because still no one in Government actually knows the region.

They need to know that this is not Brunswick, but likewise it is not Belgrave. And it will always be outer-suburbia. There is nowhere else in this direction that suburbs can sprawl into.

After the Federal Election, many in the media painted Aston as the final Liberal Heartland in Melbourne. It is anything but. It is an ignored place, a cross section of society. From the people who are suffering the most, to the ones who have never suffered in their life, from those living in tents in the cold and wet of a temperate rainforest to those on acres and acres of land.

This is not a standard electorate.

And those people in the media who have been trying to write about the area constantly misunderstand this.

Where the election will go on Saturday, nobody knows. There have not been leaks about polling from either major party - even in this area we are forgotten it seems. But whoever wins, the story will not be of a Liberal seat swinging either way. It will be of a forgotten people who, for the first time in many many years, will have a chance to make their voice heard in a true electoral contest.

It would have just been nice if some locals had’ve been involved.