Victorian Parliament Speaker Maree Edwards will retire from politics at the November state election, ending almost 16 years as the Labor MP for Bendigo West and leaving the party scrambling to find candidates for both of Bendigo’s state seats less than three months before polling day.
Edwards confirmed on Thursday that she would not seek another term in Bendigo West, a seat she has represented since 2010. Her departure follows former premier and neighbouring Bendigo East MP Jacinta Allan, who announced earlier this month that she too would leave parliament at the November 28 election.
The double retirement means Labor will go to the election without either of the two long-serving MPs who have dominated state politics in the regional city for years.
Edwards told ABC Central Victoria she believed Labor could still retain both Bendigo East and Bendigo West and said candidates would be selected quickly.
“We will be extremely competitive,” she said, warning there was “a lot at risk”.
Edwards said her decision had been under consideration for a long time and followed the death of her husband, Steve Kolotylo, last year.
She rejected suggestions that she was leaving because Ben Carroll replaced Allan as premier in July, saying recent leadership changes had actually delayed the timing of her announcement rather than caused it.
Her retirement adds another senior departure to a substantial generational change taking place inside Victorian Labor ahead of an election in which the government is seeking a fourth consecutive term.
Senior Labor figures Lily D’Ambrosio and Harriet Shing announced last month that they would leave cabinet and parliament following Allan’s departure from the leadership. The Australia Today has also reported that retiring Labor figures include former ministers Danny Pearson, Mary-Anne Thomas and Gayle Tierney.
Edwards’ exit is particularly important because she is not merely a government backbencher.
She has served as Speaker of Victoria’s Legislative Assembly since August 2022, after spending five years as Deputy Speaker from 2017. She was the fourth woman in Victorian history to become Speaker and, after Labor’s 2022 election victory, became the first woman to be re-elected to the position.
Premier Ben Carroll paid tribute to Edwards, saying she had represented Bendigo West and served the Victorian Parliament with “integrity, humility and care”.
Carroll said Edwards had earned respect from MPs across party lines through an approach he characterised as patient, fair and firm.
“The truest measure of any Speaker is the respect they earn across the whole chamber,” Carroll said in a statement announcing her retirement.
The Premier also pointed to projects delivered during Edwards’ time as the local MP, including the redevelopment of Kalianna School and Castlemaine Secondary College, upgrades to Bendigo TAFE, the new Bendigo Law Courts and the Bendigo Hospital Day Rehabilitation Facility.
Edwards grew up in Maryborough as the daughter of factory workers and worked in local government in Maryborough and Benalla before entering parliamentary politics.
She later worked for 11 years as an electorate officer to former Bendigo West MP Bob Cameron, giving her extensive experience in the seat before she succeeded him at the 2010 election. She completed a Bachelor of Arts with honours from La Trobe University as a mature-aged student while raising a family and caring for her then terminally ill husband.
Edwards won Bendigo West in 2010 and retained it at the 2014, 2018 and 2022 elections.
At the last election she secured 46.47 per cent of first-preference votes, compared with 24.99 per cent for Liberal candidate Ken Price. On the conventional Labor-Liberal two-candidate count, Edwards finished with about 64.4 per cent, leaving Labor with a post-election margin of roughly 14.6 percentage points.
That history would ordinarily make Bendigo West a comfortable Labor seat.
But Edwards’ departure changes the political calculation.
The Nationals have already endorsed David Hutchings, a Lockwood South accountant, CFA volunteer and emergency responder, to contest Bendigo West. It is the first time the Nationals have run a candidate for the seat in 16 years.
Hutchings has argued Bendigo West has been taken for granted by Labor and is campaigning on state debt, roads, crime and cost-of-living pressures.
His candidacy was announced before Edwards confirmed her retirement, meaning the Nationals now have an established candidate campaigning against a Labor opponent who is yet to be selected.
The same problem confronts Labor next door in Bendigo East.
Allan represented that electorate for 27 years before confirming on August 14 that she would not seek re-election. She entered parliament in 1999 at 25, later becoming deputy premier and then Victoria’s second female premier following Daniel Andrews’ retirement in 2023.
Allan stepped down as premier in July after losing support within Labor’s parliamentary ranks, with then-deputy premier Ben Carroll taking over the leadership.
Her retirement from parliament followed soon afterwards.
The Nationals have already been positioning themselves to target the two Bendigo electorates. Publican Andrew Lethlean is contesting Bendigo East, while Hutchings is running in Bendigo West.
Monash University politics professor Zareh Ghazarian told the ABC that the two seats could become a test of Labor’s standing outside Melbourne.
He said Labor now faced the difficult task of selecting new candidates and introducing them to voters with only around three months remaining before polling day.
Bendigo East and Bendigo West could become a “litmus test” of sentiment across regional Victoria, he said.
The timing is particularly uncomfortable for Labor because statewide polling continues to show the government behind the Liberal-National Coalition.
A DemosAU/PremierNational poll of 1,007 Victorians conducted from August 6 to 11 put the Coalition on 32 per cent of the primary vote, Labor on 23 per cent, One Nation on 22 per cent and the Greens on 13 per cent.
On a two-party-preferred basis, the Coalition led Labor 55–45.
Opposition Leader Jess Wilson also led Carroll as preferred premier by 43 per cent to 34 per cent, although Carroll performed better against Wilson than Allan had in the previous poll.
Polling is not a prediction of individual seat outcomes, and Bendigo has developed into strong Labor territory over several decades.
But the absence of two deeply established incumbents potentially gives Labor’s opponents an opportunity that has rarely existed in recent elections.
Bendigo West has been held by Labor continuously since Bob Cameron defeated Liberal MP Max Turner in 1996, while Allan transformed Bendigo East from what had once been a competitive regional electorate into a strong Labor seat during her 27-year career.
The challenge for Labor is therefore not simply replacing two names on ballot papers.
Both Allan and Edwards developed substantial personal profiles in the region over decades, while Edwards’ role as Speaker gave Bendigo West representation in one of Parliament’s most senior offices.
Former premier Allan, responding to Edwards’ retirement, described her as a close friend and praised her work during the deadly Harcourt fires earlier this year, saying Edwards had worked extensively to support the affected community.
Carroll similarly emphasised Edwards’ advocacy for regional communities and people with disability.
Before becoming Speaker, Edwards chaired parliamentary inquiries examining abuse in disability services, autism services and perinatal services. She also chaired the Bendigo Metro Rail Taskforce and the Bendigo Tech School project committee.
Her departure means the next parliament will also require a new Speaker regardless of which party forms government.
The Victorian election will be held on Saturday, November 28, with voters electing 88 members of the Legislative Assembly and 40 members of the Legislative Council. Election writs will be issued on November 3 and candidate nominations will close on November 9.
For Carroll, Edwards’ retirement adds urgency to Labor’s preselection process as his government attempts to reset after the internal upheaval that ended Allan’s premiership.
Carroll has spent his first weeks as Premier announcing changes on issues ranging from the Suburban Rail Loop to public-sector reform and cost-of-living measures, while seeking to convince voters Labor has changed direction under new leadership.
But in Bendigo, the party must now do something it has not had to do for decades: introduce voters simultaneously to new Labor candidates in both Bendigo East and Bendigo West.
Edwards insists the seats remain winnable.
The election will determine whether voters see the departure of two of Bendigo Labor’s longest-serving figures as simply a generational change — or an opportunity to redraw the political map of one of regional Victoria’s strongest Labor heartlands.
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