Warragul candidates from across the political spectrum gathered at the Downtowner Bar & Bistro on Tuesday night, making their pitch to voters for the November state election.
From bold commitments to tirades about the state’s fire service levy, the room of about 70 attendees listened attentively to what each candidate was selling, including a promise from current Narracan MP Wayne Farnham to resign if the long-awaited Warragul hospital wasn’t being built by the 2030 election.
The setting: Narracan is widely tipped as a race between the Liberals and One Nation, yet candidates from Labor, the Greens, Victorian Socialists and Family First made it to the stage.
The players: In order of who spoke, the candidates vying for Narracan are:
Moss Page, the Victorian Socialist candidate;
Ben Lucas, the One Nation candidate;
Geoff Dethlefs, the Family First candidate;
Wayne Farnham, the current Liberal MP for Narracan;
Alyssa Weaver, the Greens candidate, and;
Jannette Langley, the Labor candidate.
From left to right: Moss Page (Victorian Socialist), Jannette Langley (Labor), Alyssa Weaver (Greens), Ben Lucas (One Nation), Wayne Farnham (Liberal) and Geoff Dethlefs (Family First).
The 1-on-1s: Before the event began the Monitor spoke with sitting Liberal MP Wayne Farnham, Labor candidate Jannette Langley and One Nation candidate Ben Lucas.
Lucas told the Monitor One Nation would scrap Gippsland’s offshore wind industry, look at building a new coal-fired power plant in the Latrobe Valley and was open to extending the life of Yallourn which is due to close down in mid 2028.
Asked if he knew how much a new power station would cost, Lucas said: “Not off the top of my head.”
Asked whether the Liberal Party would work with One Nation if the minor party held the balance of power in November, Farnham told the Monitor there is no coalition between the two parties and the Liberals and Nationals are aiming to govern in their own right.
Labor’s Jannette Langley told the Monitor she’s looking to focus on the cost of living crisis, pointing to the Labor Party’s announcement it would cap public transport fares and freeway tolls to $30 a week if elected in November.
The local issues: Candidates debated a range of topics over the course of the night, from political donations and education to healthcare and homelessness.
In probably the night’s most enthusiastic commitment, Farnham said he’d resign if the new Warragul hospital wasn’t being built by the 2030 election.
Labor candidate Janette Langley’s promise to complete the hospital caused a crowd member to yell: “You’ve had 12 years.”
The crowd at the Downtowner Bar & Bistro listening to a candidate speak.
From different houses: In a rare sign of unity, Alyssa Weaver (Greens) said Victoria’s Independent Broad-based Anti-corruption Commission (IBAC) should be strengthened in the wake of the Big Build corruption allegations, agreeing with Liberal incumbent Wayne Farnham.
Us and them: Both Weaver and Moss Page (Victorian Socialist) noted throughout the event that their parties did not receive political donations from wealthy billionaires, repeatedly pointing to mining magnate and Australian billionaire Gina Reinheart’s donations to One Nation.
In one of the night's only clashes between an audience member and a candidate, an attendee heckled One Nation’s Ben Lucas’ claim that his children were being taught gender identity at school, repeatedly asking him to detail the school and curriculum.
The crowd listening to a candidate speak.
Treaty divide: A question over Treaty negotiations brought the starkest division between the candidates.
Farnham, Lucas and Dethlefs (Liberal, One Nation and Family First) all vowed to repeal Victoria’s Treaty process if elected.
Langley, Weaver and Page (Labor, Greens and Victorian Socialists) all said they supported a state Treaty and the First People’s Assembly.
Langley specifically called out that, nationally, First Peoples are still behind on 15 of 19 Closing the Gap targets - indicating that more needs to be done to improve the livelihoods of Indigenous groups.
The function room before the debate.
The vote: Aside from two terms between 1999 and 2006, the Liberal Party has held the seat of Narracan since it was formed in 1967. It covers the towns of Bunyip, Drouin, Warragul, Trafalgar and Moe and stretches from Lake Thomson in the north to Mount Worth in the south.
The electorate had over 77,000 residents at the 2021 Census but as Baw Baw Shire, which sits in Narracan, is one of the states fastest growing local government areas, there will be many new voters at the November poll.
Farnham won a supplementary election in the seat in January 2023 - two months after the 2022 state poll, due to the death of the previous Nationals candidate, Shaun Gilchrist.
The Nationals and Labor did not contest the supplementary election, and Farnham won 51.7 percent of the vote after the distribution of preferences.
Check out the Monitor’s 2026 November election guide here.