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City of Melbourne councillor Davydd Griffiths has announced he will run as a Labor candidate for the seat of Melbourne at the upcoming state election in November.
The 51-year-old, who was elected to the council in 2020, has been a member of the Labor Party for 30 years, and said there had been “a long, slow fuse” to his upcoming tilt at parliament.
He had put up his hand for Labor pre-selection because of the opportunity it offered to address issues that he was passionate about, Cr Griffiths said. “And obviously the lessons and things I’ve seen, being a local councillor have helped inform that,” he told North West City News.
The Flemington resident will face a significant challenge lining up against incumbent Ellen Sandell, who has held Melbourne since she won it for the Greens in 2014.
In 2022 Ms Sandell received 37 .29 per cent of the primary vote compared to Labor candidate Rebecca Thistleton’s 30 .65 per cent, and after preferences were distributed had 60 .19 compared to Labor’s 39 .81 per cent.
The seats of Melbourne and Prahran were the first Greens lower house wins in Victoria.
Before that Melbourne had been held by the ALP since 1955 and for much of the first half of the 20th century.
Cr Griffiths said he wasn’t motivated by the idea of winning the seat so much as a belief in the “real need for a strong local voice”.
He sees “services for residents and locals, particularly as our population grows locally” as the key issue for the electorate.
While every level of government worked together, he said, “certainly some of those big things, like schools and hospitals and public transport, obviously fall into the bailiwick of the state government”.
Born and raised in Bendigo, Cr Griffiths moved to Melbourne when he was 18 to study teaching and spent six years working at Glen Waverley Secondary College and Mac. Robertson Girls’ High before moving into politics – first as an electorate officer, then a policy advisor in health, mental health and education to ministers in the Victorian parliament.
After leaving policy work and spending a few years as a stay-at-home dad, he made the unusual shift to hospitality, setting up a beer and burger bar in Macaulay Rd with a friend, which they operated for just under two years, before buying and running the Royal Mail Hotel on Spencer St for another two-and-a-half years.
As a councillor he has been involved in a broad range of areas, including education, infrastructure and economics, and is currently the portfolio lead for environment and deputy for community, health and city services.
Davydd Griffiths with his family in Kensington ahead of the 2024 City of Melbourne council elections. Photo: Hanna Komissarova.
Cr Griffiths said his family – wife, former councillor and former Labor member for Melbourne Jen Kanis, and 14-year-old son, Blake – had played a genuinely meaningful role in the council work he had done, with Blake also providing a constant, very real link to the future.
As for the unusual Welsh spelling of his first name, Davydd, “it doesn’t cause me any grief at all,” Cr Griffiths said.
“It makes you stand out, so people don’t forget you, and that’s why you’ve got to make sure that you’re always delivering, because they can track you down pretty easily.”
Asked if he would remain on the council until the state election in November, Cr Griffiths said he would be following the appropriate protocols.
If there is a need to replace him, it’s highly likely that his fellow Labor candidate at the 2024 election Zainab Abdi Sheikh – who ran second on the group’s councillor ticket – would replace him on council.
With the 2024 Labor ticket having received more than 0.5 quotas and preferences from other teams, it’s anticipated that if Cr Griffiths were to defeat Ms Sandell, Ms Sheikh would become the first woman of African descent to serve on the City of Melbourne.
Ms Sheikh is a dedicated and passionate senior community development worker who currently serves as operational manager at Somali Women’s Development Association Inc. and as a community advisory committee member at the Royal Melbourne Hospital.
And there could be more appetite for change in Melbourne. Cr Griffiths will take a lot of heart from last year’s federal election, where new Labor MP Sarah Witty claimed the seat of Melbourne from Adam Bandt, who had held the seat for the Greens since 2010.
A beer lover and the president of the Flemington and Kensington Bowling Club, Cr Griffiths said that being pre-selected for the Labor Party was an opportunity “lots of really good people don’t get” and was something he was “genuinely really honoured” by.
“To have that chance is really meaningful to me, it’s meaningful to my family and I want to make every post a winner now that that’s happened,” he said. •
