The Andrews government will find out this week if it faces a potentially disastrous byelection in the inner-north electorate of Brunswick.
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The state seat's MP, Jane Garrett, says she will announce this week whether she intends to resign from Parliament, triggering the byelection, to run for lord mayor of Melbourne.
It could be a nervous few days for Labor, which was trounced by the Greens in a byelection in November in Northcote, a seat with a similar demographic profile to Brunswick and which had been held by the ALP for 90 years.
The loss of Northcote leaves the Andrews government with a knife-edge one-seat majority in Parliament, although Labor could still govern if it lost Brunswick. It would need to rely on the vote of disgraced Melton MP Don Nardella, who now sits as an independent.
Ms Garrett told radio station 3AW on Sunday that she was keen for a tilt at the lord mayor's job but that there were many factors to consider.
“I’m weighing it up and talking to a lot of people,” she said.
“I’m clearly interested in it, having been a mayor at the City of Yarra back in 2010 and I loved that job."
Ms Garrett has had a difficult relationship with Premier Daniel Andrews since she resigned from the ministry in 2016 after the two disagreed on a controversial new workplace agreement for the Country Fire Authority.
Many in Labor were furious when she announced in September last year that she would not re-contest Brunswick and sought a move to the Upper House instead. She was eventually blocked by factional enemies in the party.
She told 3AW on Sunday that the impact of a difficult byelection on her party colleagues was one of the factors to be considered.
But Ms Garrett insisted that Brunswick could remain a Labor seat with the right candidate and the right campaign.
“Of course it plays on my mind, I love the Labor Party and it’s a very major thing to cause a byelection," she said.
“The key in Brunswick will be making sure the candidate the Labor Party chooses has a track record of local engagement and delivery.
“Northcote was a very difficult result, there were issues around how that campaign was run.”
With former ACTU President Ged Kearney fighting the federal byelection in Batman, the next most likely candidate to contest Brunswick for Labor is little-known union organiser Cindy Louise O’Connor.
