But on election night,the Liberal Party’s primary vote dropped 8.9 per cent in the seat,a result which left Werner “astonished”. After the loss,she penned a piece for News Corp attributing the party’s poor showing in Melbourne’s east to a “lack of long-term engagement and work within multicultural communities” and claimed she had been “hung out to dry”.
She has since tempered this criticism somewhat,but maintains Labor has been “more proactive and getting into migrant community groups”.
“Politics is meant to represent the makeup of what Victoria or Australia looks like,and we have work to do to get it there,” she toldThe Sunday Age.
“We need more women representing the Liberal Party and coming from an ethnically diverse background and being young,gives me a different perspective.
“Having new members with different backgrounds,that contributes to having a broader perspective,being more representative and being engaged in the community in different ways. It all makes for better policy.”
Werner still draws inspiration from her family’s migrant background. As a child,her Popo,Chinese for grandma,had hidden in the jungles of Malaysia during the Japanese invasion.
Her parents,Belinda and Peter,migrated to Melbourne in 1987,settling in Box Hill before saving up to buy a house in the nearby suburb of Blackburn North. Her father worked three jobs and the couple took out bank loans to send Werner and her brother to elite private schools in Melbourne’s east.
“I think my success in becoming a candidate was a symbol for them of their hard work,” Werner said.
Going into next month’s election,theLiberal Party holds Warrandyte with a 4.2 per cent margin. But factional fighting and the decline in the party’s support in the seat mean Werner’s win is far from guaranteed.
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Most of Warrandyte sits within the federal seat of Menzies,where Labor received a 6 per cent swing at the 2022 federal election,in part driven by a backlash from Chinese-Australian voters.
Liberal MPs are already framing a loss in the seat as theend of John Pesutto’s leadership following months of division triggered by his decision to try and expel upper house MP Moira Deeming for her involvement with the Let Women Speak rally that was gatecrashed by neo-Nazis.
On that saga,she concedes both sides – Pesutto and Deeming – could have handled the issue better,but said she remains supportive of Pesutto as leader.
Werner says she isn’t aligned to either faction,but time spent as a youth pastor with Christian Pentecostal megachurch Planetshakers has seen her linked to the party’s religious right whose members overwhelmingly backed Deeming to remain in the party.
Labor has until August 9 to decide whether to contest the seat. In Labor’s absence,Greens candidate Tomas Lightbody,the deputy mayor of Manningham Council,is predicted to be Werner’s strongest competition in the August 26 byelection.
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