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Jodie Belyea is favoured to be Labor’s candidate in the Dunkley byelection.Credit:Women’s Spirit Project

A TAFE student who went on to become a teacher at the tertiary level,Belyea has also worked in small business. She has a child in high school.

In 2018,she founded a volunteer-led group known as the Women’s Spirit Project,which offers health and wellbeing programs for vulnerable women in the Frankston,Kingston and Mornington Peninsula council areas.

Two Labor sources,speaking anonymously to detail private internal conversations,said the unexpectedly long time taken to pick a nominee meant the byelection was unlikely to be held before late February.

Those sources said Belyea was not an experienced political operative and would require the guidance of hands-on advisers seconded from the Albanese government. But they said she was a solid candidate with strong local links and would be well-received by Dunkley voters.

Murphy’s husband Rod Glover – a professor and former prime ministerial adviser – wasurged to run by senior figures. The candidacy was his if he chose to contest,but Glover decided against entering politics.

Former Dunkley candidate David Burgess has also pulled out of the preselection race for the Liberals. The opposition’s remaining contenders are former state MP Donna Hope,Frankston Mayor Nathan Conroy and party staffer Bec Buchanan.

The byelection is looming as a crucial test for both parties.

Labor holds the seat by a margin of 6 per cent,but party figures expect a swing against the government,predicting cost-of-living issues will remain top of mind in mortgage-belt suburbs such as Carrum Downs.

Opposition Leader Peter Dutton will also be under pressure after the Coalitionlost the Melbourne seat of Aston – another mortgage-belt area – in early 2023. It was the first time in a century that a sitting government won a seat from the opposition party.

The Liberals have held Dunkley at nine of the past 14 elections,but redrawn electoral boundaries made the seat more competitive before the 2019 poll when Murphy was elected. She increased her margin in 2022.

The Resolve Political Monitor released in December showed that while federal Labor’s primary vote had fallen in the battleground states of Queensland and Western Australia,it was higher nationwide than at the last election.

The Coalition’s primary vote had dropped from 36 per cent to 32 per cent since the March 2022 vote.

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