Western Metropolitan

The region of Western Metropolitan covers Labor's Melbourne heartland, encompassing eleven lower house seats in which Labor is seriously threatened neither by Liberal nor the Greens. The redistribution before the 2014 election expanded it into Melbourne's western and northern exurbia, with the addition of the new seats of Sunbury and Werribee, while Pascoe Vale and Yuroke were ceded to Northern Metropolitan.

The first election under the new system in 2006 delivered four seats to the left and only one to the right, with three seats going to Labor and one to the Greens, but the Liberals were able to gain a seat after a particularly heavy swing in the region in 2010. This came at the expense of Labor, with the Greens holding out against the third Labor candidate by 70,349 votes to 68,314 at the final count.

The Liberals failed to retain their second seat with the swing against them in 2014, but the loss was to the Rachel Carling-Jenkins of the DLP, rather than the left. The DLP first got ahead of the Liberal Democrats, who had outpolled them 5.5% to 2.6%, with preferences from Voice for the West, Family First, Australian Christians and Shooters and Fishers; and then progressively absorbed the Liberal Democrats' preferences and the surplus that remained the unsuccessful third Liberal candidate to take a quota and the fifth seat. Carling-Jenkins

The micro-party revolution of 2014 also meant Labor did not come nearly as close to taking the Greens' seat as they did in 2010, despite both parties being down slightly on the primary vote, as the Greens were pushed to a quota with preferences from the Sex Party, Animal Justice and, oddly, Palmer United.

Labor candidates

Retaining his position at the top of the Labor ticket from 2014 is Cesar Melham, a figure of influence on the Right as a former Australian Workers Union state secretary, to which the position is reserved under factional arrangements. Melham came to parliament in April 2013 when he filled the casual vacancy created by Martin Pakula's successful run at the Lyndhurst by-election. Melhem's activities in the AWU attracted the scrutiny of the royal commission into trade union corruption, and civil proceedings were brought against him in early 2018 over allegations he had artificially inflated the union's membership to gain funding and political influence in the ALP. This has not meant the end of his political career, but he stood down from his position as upper house whip and has otherwise been overlooked for promotion through his five years in parliament.

The second position on the Labor ticket, which is reserved to the Left, was the subject of a high-profile preselection contest in which Jane Garrett's search for a safer parliamentary berth was thwarted by Ingrid Stitt, state secretary of the Australian Services Union. Increasingly under pressure from the Greens in her lower house seat of Brunswick, and facing the prospect of a union campaign against her over the Country Fire Authority enterprise bargaining dispute that led to her resignation as Emergency Services Union, Garrett sought her faction's spot in Western Metropolitan, and reportedly prevailed in the local branch vote by a ratio of two to one. However, Stitt then defeated her in the ballot to determine which candidate would have the decisive backing of the Socialist Left on the party's public office selection committee, which left Garrett compelled to withdraw. She was ultimately accommodated with the top position on the party ticket in Eastern Victoria.

Coalition candidates

For the fourth election in a row, the one secure position for the Liberals is held by Bernie Finn, a former radio personality and noted social conservative. Finn was the member for the normally Labor-leaning lower house seat of Tullamarine from 1992 until his defeat in 1999, and ran unsuccessfully in Macedon in 2002 before finding a way back to parliament in the upper house region that corresponded with his old seat. After spending most of his parliamentary career on the back bench, Finn attained shadow parliamentary secretary status after the 2014 election defeat, in the autism spectrum disorder and electoral integrity portfolios.

The difficult second position on the Liberal ticket is occupied by Dinesh Gourisetty, a western suburbs business owner who moved to Australia from India two decades ago.

Other candidates

The Greens member since February 2018 has been Huong Truong, the daughter of refugees who arrived by boat following the Vietnam war. Huong filled the casual vacancy created by the retirement of Colleen Hartland, who became an inaugural member for Western Metropolitan region in 2006.