Labor will be defending two marginal seats with new candidates at the 2026 state election after Melton’s Steve McGhie and Bayswater’s Jackson Taylor announced they would step aside.

Further retirements are expected, and Victorian Labor is likely to open preselections for lower house seats in October. The announcements follow a spate of veteran Liberals confirming they will not contest the November 2026 poll.

McGhie and Taylor have both been in parliament since the 2018 “Danslide”.

Melton has been held by Labor since the seat’s creation in the 1990s but has increasingly come under threat. McGhie fended off challenges and retained the seat with a 4.6 per cent margin in 2022, but Melton will again be viewed as the seat most vulnerable within Labor’s “red wall” of the outer northern and w

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