{"id":644994,"date":"2026-05-02T13:44:14","date_gmt":"2026-05-02T13:44:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/644994\/"},"modified":"2026-05-02T13:44:14","modified_gmt":"2026-05-02T13:44:14","slug":"anthony-marsh-wins-nepean-by-election-retaining-seat-for-liberal-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/644994\/","title":{"rendered":"Anthony Marsh wins Nepean by-election, retaining seat for Liberal Party"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Liberal Party has retained the Victorian state seat of Nepean, on the Mornington Peninsula.<\/p>\n

The former Mornington Shire Council mayor Anthony Marsh succeeds former deputy Liberal leader and tennis player Sam Groth, who resigned from parliament in February.<\/p>\n

The ABC’s elections analyst Casey Briggs called the by-election less than three hours after vote counting began.<\/p>\n

“Mr Marsh’s two main challengers, One Nation’s Darren Hercus and independent Tracee Hutchison, both currently have just over 20 per cent of the primary vote,” Briggs wrote in his Nepean by-election commentary<\/a> as he projected the win.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Marsh has around 40 per cent, and a preference count between Marsh and Hutchison shows the Liberals easily winning.”See results of 2026 Nepean by-election from 6pm here<\/a><\/p>\n

Voters will choose who replaces former professional tennis player and deputy Liberal leader Sam Groth at the Nepean by-election ahead of the Victorian state election in November.<\/p>\n

The Liberal Party has held the seat on the Mornington Peninsula, south of Melbourne, for all but one term over the past 40 years.<\/p>\n

Mr Marsh was elected to local government as an independent in 2020, after spending time in the air force.<\/p>\n

He also owns a small business.<\/p>\n

Mr Marsh only joined the Liberal Party weeks before the by-election.<\/p>\n

He had previously said he would not run for parliament but now says he is doing so due to the performance of the state Labor government.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Anthony Marsh only joined the Liberal Party in the weeks before the election. (ABC News)<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

He was tipped to win, but analysts were watching for any challenge from One Nation.<\/p>\n

The by-election comes just six months before the 2026 Victorian general election.<\/p>\n

In his victory speech, Mr Marsh described becoming the Member for Nepean as “the honour of my life”.<\/p>\n

“I’ll be on the ground each and every single day fighting for the people of Nepean as we lead into one of the most important state elections that we’ve seen.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Anthony Marsh says his win followed a hard-fought campaign.\u00a0 (ABC News: Patrick Rocca)<\/p>\n

After the speech, Mr Marsh told the ABC it was a hard-fought campaign.<\/p>\n

“One Nation and everyone else jumped into the race,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Elections, by nature, are a competition, but I just gave it everything I could and we got the result we wanted.”<\/p>\n

He said the party was focused on November.<\/p>\n

“There’s another election to come, but let’s get on the ground first and show people that they made the right choice.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Anthony Marsh was joined by senior Liberal party members, including leader Jess Wilson.\u00a0 (ABC News)<\/p>\n

Mr Marsh entered the Liberal gathering behind Opposition Leader Jess Wilson.<\/p>\n

In introducing Mr Marsh, Opposition frontbencher David Southwick said it had been a tough campaign but that the result was good news ahead of the November state election.<\/p>\n

“The people of Nepean have said yes for Jess,” he said.<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Opposition leader Jess Wilson described Anthony Marsh as a passionate local representative. (ABC News: Patrick Rocca)<\/p>\n

Ms Wilson accused Labor of neglecting the electorate.<\/p>\n

“The government did not even run a candidate here,” she said.<\/p>\n

“That demonstrates how little they care about people here on the peninsula.”<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Darren Hercus accused the Liberal party of mailing out incorrect information about One Nation’s policies. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

One Nation candidate Darren Hercus held a roll of toilet paper as he began his post-election speech, accusing the Liberal party of causing his support to plummet by claiming his party wanted to privatise the local Rosebud Hospital.<\/p>\n

Mr Hercus said the claim was false, adding that the toilet paper was “to give to the Liberal party for all the crap they’ve dealt on me”.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“Even if we don’t win, we’ve stuck to the moral high ground,” he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Mr Hercus said the by-election would act as a launching pad for his campaign at the general election.<\/p>\n

“We’re going to go hard, go again … One Nation is going to bring it home in November.”\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"A<\/p>\n

Independent candidate Tracee Hutchison says it was a tough campaign against the Liberal and One Nation parties. (ABC News)<\/p>\n

An emotional Tracee Hutchison thanked her supporters and said she could not be more proud of their efforts during the campaign.<\/p>\n

“This is my home town, I was born here, I’m a Rosebud kid,” the former ABC journalist said.<\/p>\n

She also vowed to stand again in November.<\/p>\n

“Democracy is a wild and wonderful thing, the privilege to vote is extraordinary and it’s deeply humbling watching people going into a voting booth with your name on a how-to-vote [card].<\/p>\n

“Two big parties have thrown everything at this \u2014 and me \u2014 and we have had a genuine local campaign that has shown that people do have the power in politics, and this is what it looks like.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Liberal Party has retained the Victorian state seat of Nepean, on the Mornington Peninsula. The former Mornington…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":644995,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,44],"class_list":["post-644994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-australia","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644994","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=644994"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/644994\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/644995"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=644994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=644994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=644994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}