Greens won't concede Melbourne poll defeat

22 Jul 2012, 4:32 pm   -   Source: AAP

Labor has dashed the Greens' hopes of winning their first Victorian lower house seat in the Melbourne by-election but the party is yet to concede defeat.

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The Greens are refusing to concede defeat in the Melbourne state by-election until all the votes are counted, despite Labor declaring victory.

With about 1200 votes still to be tallied, the ALP was ahead by 754 in a seat it has held for more than a century.

Labor's Jennifer Kanis appears to have edged out the Greens' Cathy Oke, with 51.38 per cent of the two party preferred vote to the Greens' 48.62 per cent.

Victorian Opposition Leader Daniel Andrews said the result was better than anticipated, even though Labor's primary vote slid to 33 per cent, behind the Greens' 36 per cent.

But the Greens, who were favoured to win, won't concede until counting has been finalised.

About 1200 postal votes are yet to be counted, together with a small number of declaration votes from people who could not be found on the electoral roll.

"The Victorian Electoral Commission said last night that they prefer accuracy over speed and so do we," federal Greens deputy leader Adam Bandt told reporters on Sunday.

"The only thing we definitively know now is that the Greens' vote's gone up, the Labor vote's gone down.

"The only way they'll get over the line is a result of preference deals."

The ALP suffered a swing of almost five per cent to the Greens and is relying on preferences, including those from Family First and the Sex Party, to clinch the seat.

There was a poor voter turnout, with just 27,000 of 45,000 enrolled voters taking part.

"We always said this would be a tough fight and ... the primary vote that we've been able to achieve is significantly higher than many thought it would actually be," Mr Andrews said.

Mr Bandt said it was a historic result because the Greens had, for the first time, come first on the primary vote.

But the poor voter turnout had disadvantaged the Greens, who were hoping to clinch their first Victorian lower house seat, he said.

Mr Andrews said Labor's campaign had exposed as "a fraud" the Greens' central premise that they could deliver anything for anyone, when the party could never fulfil its promises.

Victorian Greens leader Greg Barber said the result indicated a tectonic shift in the state's politics and had been achieved in the absence of any election policies from Labor.

Both parties dismissed the role federal politics played in the campaign and said the by-election was fought on state issues.

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