Can this new party win seats off Labor in Melbourne’s neglected western suburbs?

The West Party has been a long time in the making.

The new minor party, running only in Melbourne’s western suburbs, was registered last year by two-time independent candidate Paul Hopper. 

But Hopper says the idea goes back to 2018, when local doctor Joe Garra ran against then-treasurer Tim Pallas in Werribee, netting almost 20% of the primary votes. The previous year, Garra helped lead a community campaign against a youth detention centre in the heart of Werribee South, forcing the Labor government to find another site.

Hopper “took the baton” in Werribee in 2022 (Garra ran in neighbouring Point Cook) and again in the 2025 by-election, in which Labor lost another 16% off its once-healthy primary vote.

“After ’22, I had a few people starting to reach out to me that saw what I was doing and Joe had been doing,” Hopper tells Crikey. “The whispers were, we’d like to do the same. Maybe we’ll do the same in our area. And then maybe if we keep doing that, a few of us will get elected one day.”

The 53-year-old car dealer says he didn’t understand the upper and lower house before he started running. But he soon realised they needed to form a party, one that could contest both houses — particularly under the old group voting ticket rules, which were recently abolished.

“I put it to, you know, probably six or eight like-minded people,” Hopper says. “Once I’m run and done — if one day I retire in 10, 15 years — we don’t want all our hard work to disappear, and then it go back to being major parties don’t care. So let’s create a party, do it properly, good foundation, good people, good values, and then move from there.”

“We do what it says on the tin,” he jokes of the very simple party name.

The party wasn’t ready in time for the 2025 by-election. But it’s certainly ready now, fielding candidates in eight of the west’s 11 districts, as well as three candidates for the upper house’s Western Metropolitan Region, with Garra at the top of the ticket.

The story echoes other independent movements around the country, such as the “Voices of” community groups, or the “Independents for Canberra” party in the ACT — lest we forget “Community Strong”. Hopper admires those movements, but says he wasn’t aware of them until after he’d started the constitutional and compliance groundwork involved in starting the West Party. In that time, he also sued the state government over recent electoral donation laws, which many saw as rigged against minor parties and independents (the High Court agreed). 

Melbourne’s west also has its own unique set of circumstances. The working class area has long been a Labor stronghold, but that hold has weakened in recent years, with reports suggesting seats like Sunbury and Sydenham could fall to the Coalition or One Nation.

Hopper says there is a longheld belief that the west “gets a raw deal by way of government investment.” For a long time locals accepted this as simply the way things were. But voters have progressively lost faith in the Labor leadership, who have taken their support for granted.

“They’ll tell me things like, ‘I’ve voted Labor 30 years, I don’t want to vote for them now. But I’m not going to vote for them, them and them’.”

One of those “them”s refers to One Nation, about which Hopper has a lot to say. He doesn’t think Pauline Hanson’s party can win seats in the multicultural west, noting the area’s large migrant population is “near-on horrified at the thought of One Nation-type policies influencing our patch in Victoria.”

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But he says One Nation will have a significant impact, “appealing to the really, really angry person who’s had a gut full of the whole political system.”

“I’ve got friends who are mates of mine that I’ve grown up with, and they’re like, ‘Hops, I voted for you last time, but I’m not voting for you this time.’ They’ll say, ‘You’re too nice. One Nation, they’re angry. They’re going to get stuff done. They’re thumping the desk’.”

Hopper rejects the idea that migration numbers are the problem, arguing it comes down to “investment in infrastructure and police and all these other things have been handled”. He points to the Westgate Tunnel, which he believes was a waste of money.

“When $11 billion could do a lot to make the Western suburbs a better place, and we probably wouldn’t be blaming migrants for coming here in too big a numbers.”

The West Party certainly offers a less angry alternative to One Nation. It’s not entirely clear, however, what the party stands for, other than putting “community first”. The party’s website says it “supports policies which are evidence-based and not based on political ideology.” As Hopper tells me, “I’m in the middle, like I’m not out on the right, I’m not over on the left, I’m sort of just a local person” — a common theme when speaking to independents.

That, it seems, is part of the point. The West Party’s candidates, who are elected by its members (though the party is yet to have a contested vote), are free to set their own priorities, in consultation with their communities. Hopper says there are subsets within the west, pointing to vast differences between Melton and Williamstown. There are also overlaps, with employment opportunities and crime relevant issues in all 11 districts. 

When I ask how they will go about addressing such issues without ideology, Hopper says they want to listen to experts, arguing “I’m never going to be the smartest person in the room.” He then goes on to describe all the experts he has spoken to about youth crime, from police to youth workers to teachers, saying his “heart” lies in finding ways to avoid kids going off the rails through investing in culturally-sensitive support services.

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Psephologist Ben Raue reckons the party will perhaps have their best shot in the upper house, noting that it’s a moment of opportunity (and chaos) in Victoria. 

“I think it is an interesting angle for them to be locally specific,” Raue tells Crikey, noting state upper houses don’t often have meaningful area-based representation, unlike the Senate. 

“I would draw some comparisons with the Nick Xenophones and the Jackie Lambies, or the Brian Haradines, even, of Senate representation of people who pick a regional identity and represent that regional identity.”

Hopper won’t be nominating preferences on his how-to-vote in Werribee, but hopes others indies will consider preferencing him, given the work he did in getting the donation laws overturned. But the party will almost certainly need to swap preferences in the upper house if they are to stand a chance of getting Garra elected.

It will be an interesting test for political movements setting their sights on Labor across the country, and an interesting challenge to the rise and rise of One Nation. Can regular locals channel their anger better than Pauline Hanson, turning it into something more positive? Paul Hopper certainly hopes so.