2025 was a big year for Holt Member Cassandra Fernando as she won her second term in the May Federal Election with an overwhelming advantage.
According to the final Australian Electoral Commission results, the Labor MP won 64.03 per cent of the two-candidate-preferred vote against Liberal candidate Annette Samuel, who received 35.97 per cent.
The result represented a swing of 6.92 per cent towards Labor.
On first preferences, Fernando led the field with 44,686 votes (45.03 per cent) among six candidates, earning a higher share of the primary votes than in her last election in 2022.
Her re-election formed part of Federal Labor’s wider victory in the south east seats, with massive swings also in Bruce, Hotham and Isaacs.
Ahead of the election, Fernando took part in Star News’ Who’s running in Holt questionnaire and listed the three biggest issues facing the Holt electorate: cost of living, mortgage stress and local infrastructure.
Looking back, her campaign was run tightly around those three themes.
On living costs and mortgage stress, she promoted Federal Labor’s measures aimed at easing household pressure, including income tax relief, energy bill support and expanded Medicare service.
Infrastructure formed the centrepiece of her local advocacy, with Fernando lobbying for and helping secure major funding commitments to address traffic bottlenecks, including $100 million to remove and signalise the Berwick-Cranbourne Road, Clyde-Five Ways Road and Pattersons Road roundabout, $41.75 million to remove and signalise the Thompsons and Berwick-Cranbourne roundabout, $30 million to duplicate a section of Evans Road at Cranbourne West, and $10 million for the planning to upgrade Western Port Highway.
Her advocacy efforts also helped secure $10.68 million for a new stadium at Casey Fields, a new Medicare Mental Health Centre in Cranbourne, and grants for six community language schools in Holt.
Fernando celebrated the victory with her team on the election night, with a whole room of Labor volunteers and supporters.
She described her campaign as one built on “fairness, equality, and more importantly, compassion”.
“And the fundamental belief that no matter where you come from, what you look like, we all deserve a fair go,” she said then.
Talking with Star News, Fernando especially pointed out that her amazing team helped her navigate her pregnancy during the whole campaign.
“We were organised. We were staunch in what we wanted to do and to do it in a way that wouldn’t cause me any health issues, and they always made sure that my health came first,” she said then.
Speaking of her plan for the following three years, she said she would keep working hard to make sure that the community gets the infrastructure that they need.
“That’s one of my big priorities: infrastructure,” she said.
