Seat of the week: McEwen

The Melbourne fringe seat of McEwen has long been one of Victoria’s most keenly contested marginal seats, but the addition of the Labor stronghold of Sunbury in the latest redistribution may have put an end to that.

The most electorally significant change to result from the redistribution in Victoria relates to the electorate of McEwen, a traditionally marginal seat in Melbourne’s northern hinterland which has now been rendered fairly safe for Labor. This results from the transfusion of around 35,000 voters from rapidly growing Labor-voting suburbs around Sunbury, which are counterbalanced by the loss of outer urban areas further east (20,000 voters to Casey, 13,000 to Scullin and 4500 to Jagajaga), together with 10,000 to Indi and 7,000 to Bendigo in rural Victoria. The electorate maintains a stretch of the Hume Highway including Kilmore and Seymour, together with the urban fringe centres of Gisborne, Wallan and Whittlesea. Among the areas transferred to Indi are Kinglake and Maryville, which were devastated in the bushfires of February 2009.

McEwen was created with the expansion of parliament in 1984 and held for Labor in its first two terms by Peter Cleeland, who was unseated in 1990 by Fran Bailey as part of a statewide swing which cost Labor nine seats. Cleeland recovered the seat with a 0.7% margin in 1993, but was again defeated by Bailey in 1996. In 1998 it was one of a number of marginal seats which registered a below-par swing to Labor, a circumstance that allowed the Howard government to win re-election from a minority of the national two-party vote.

Consecutive swings to Bailey in 2001 and 2004 combined with a 1.0% redistribution to put the seat outside the marginal zone, but such was the swing to Labor in 2007 that Bailey needed every bit of her 6.4% margin to hold on. At first blush the result was the closest in any federal election since Ian Viner’s 12-vote victory in the Perth seat of Stirling in 1974: Labor challenger Rob Mitchell won by seven votes on the first count, but a recount turned that to a 12-vote margin in favour of Bailey. Labor challenged the outcome in the Federal Court, but the determinations the court made regarding individual ballot papers actually increased Bailey’s margin to 27.

Fran Bailey retired at the 2010 election, disappointing Liberals who hoped the esteem she gained during the bushfire crisis would stand her in good stead in a difficult seat. The party appeared to do well in preselecting Cameron Caine, a Kinglake police officer credited with saving several lives during the emergency, but he was swamped by a 5.3% swing. This made it second time lucky for Labor’s Rob Mitchell, who won preselection with the support of the Bill Shorten-Stephen Conroy sub-faction of the Victorian Right. Mitchell had earlier won a seat in the state upper house province of Central Highlands at the 2002 election, before being frozen out by the electoral reforms that took effect in 2006.

The preselected Liberal candidate for the next election is Ben Collier, managing director of Sunbury-based information technology consultancy Collier Pereira Services.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

1,337 comments on “Seat of the week: McEwen”

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  1. It’s one thing for the US press to have lots of articles on the Petreaus thing but the UK press also have article after article on it in recent days. One bit:

    [Taliban have the last laugh

    At least someone got a laugh from the tribulations of the CIA chief David Petraeus – his foes in the Taliban.

    Days after Mr Petraeus stood down from his position amid the fall-out of an extramarital affair, a stony-faced Taliban official burst into laughter at the mention of what happened to the man who served as head of US and international forces in Afghanistan in 2010 and 2011. “What a bastard! But all Americans are the same, it’s nothing new,” the unidentified official told Agence France-Presse.

    The moral code of the Pashtuns, the main ethnic group from which the Taliban draw their members, also demands severe punishment for adulterers. “From a Pashtun point of view, Petraeus should be shot by relatives from his mistress’s family,” the Taliban official continued. “From a sharia point of view, he should be stoned to death.”

    The Taliban official said he was not surprised by news of the general’s fall from grace. “It’s quite normal for Americans and Western people to behave like this – they live in free sex societies where nobody cares about this sort of thing, so what do you expect?” he said.]

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/who-is-the-real-jill-kelley-8320723.html

  2. Missed this at the end of the Hartcher article:

    [But the greatest challenge for these “moral compasses” {the independents} of the Gillard government may lie ahead. The scandal of Gillard’s long-ago boyfriend, Bruce Wilson, will not go away.

    The two were an item when the former AWU official stole money from the union through the mechanism of a slush fund that Gillard, then a lawyer at Slater and Gordon in Melbourne, helped him set up.

    Gillard insists that she did no wrong, but declines to answer new questions on the matter as they emerge in the media.

    The opposition will use the final sitting week of Parliament, the week after next, to press for answers. Gillard expects that she can simply tough the matter out.

    But if the questions get uncomfortable in the weeks and months ahead, Windsor and Oakeshott may have to consider how far they’ll go to defend the Prime Minister. Their most difficult judgments may yet lie ahead.

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/opinion/politics/independents-day–again-20121116-29heq.html#ixzz2CQYMWjBn ]

    Nice use oh the passive voice, as in, “will not go away” and “has emerged”.

    “Months ahead” was a bit of a worry, though, but I’m not sure the “questions” are all that “new”.

    I doubt whether the indies will be too troubled with them.

    Meanwhile Peter continues to keep his dreams nice and wet.

  3. CTar1@38


    Lizzie

    The other day I found a cardboard box with all the loose change emptied from his pockets each night over several years.


    I’ve got an esky full!

    Shame on you Ctar – eskies are meant for other stuff 🙂

    I just take 95 cents worth of loose change with me every time I go to the shops etc. Plus a $1 and $2 coin.

    That way I can pay the loose amounts with shopping and just get notes back in change.

    So no build up of coin. It works well.

  4. Hugh Moran @ 45 – I think Mike Carlton’s description is very apt. Not just Cardinal Pell but most spokesmen for the Catholic Church in this matter have been behaving like corporate executives of a huge multi-national company faced with a scandal, for example its products and processes have been poisoning their staff and customers. They have been much more concerned about the harm done to their company’s reputation and finances than the harm done to its victims. Once the Royal Commission was announced he has grudgingly ‘welcomed’ it, but is still saying that the problem isn’t so bad and anyway everyone else did it. Not what you’d expect from a man charged with the pastoral care of Sydney’s million or so Catholics.

  5. The last two media appearances by Rudd that I have seen have shown him NOW to be a genuine team player.

    I think he certainly does have the capacity to improve the vote for Labor especially in QLD.

    Rudd and Gillard genuinely united will be unbeatable at the election.

    Come on Ruddie, don’t let me down!

  6. Isn’t Rudd also with Turnbull? I’m hoping that just for once, the OM decide to eschew Ruddstoration hysteria in favour of some leadership speculation on the Liberal side.

    The underlying meme is that the next election should be Turnbull versus Rudd…

  7. [Denise ‏@SpudBenBean
    Abbott tweets a blatant lie about Gardasil on social media yesterday, and not a word about it from the ABC’s social media reporter? ]

  8. Abbott tweets a blatant lie about Gardasil on social media yesterday, and not a word about it from the ABC’s social media reporter?

    History is so yesterday, social media is all about the now…apparently.

  9. confessions

    Some tweets I see are hinting that it is now a badge of honour to be blocked by Latika. (Although they also complain that ABC is a public service)

  10. [The underlying meme is that the next election should be Turnbull versus Rudd…]

    WHY?

    Gillard is now clearly the most favoured among Labor voters to lead the ALP. The Labor caucus also voted a staggering 71-31 in favour of Gillard over Rudd.

    How much more sh!t do we have to watch from their ABC?

    As for Turnbull – he doesn’t have the numbers. If the ABC want the ratings to go up for Q&A they should get Tony Jones to sit on a knitting needle in a vertical position and rotate.

    That would be a must see!

  11. [The Finnigans
    Posted Saturday, November 17, 2012 at 9:11 am | Permalink
    When will they EVER learn, like Korea, Vietnam, Iraq, Afghan – there is NO and ever BEEN a military solution – ditto Israel/Palestina
    ]

    Finns

    I’m no apologist for war – quite the contrary really, much more of a pacifist – but surely WW2 was the only way of getting rid of the scourge of nazism. There was no way of negotiating with that bunch of lunatics.

  12. [Abbott tweets a blatant lie about Gardasil on social media yesterday, and not a word about it from the ABC’s social media reporter?]

    I mentioned to my Dr’s receptionist yesterday about Abbott not wanting to approve Gardasil and having to be forced to add it to the PBS. She was most surprised. Never heard anything about it before.

  13. Good Morning

    Another point regarding Israel. Remember those ships trying to bring aid to Gaza. The excuse for the Israel blockade was to stop missiles reaching Hamas.
    Well we now know that totally failed. Given how good Mossad intelligence is we know Israel knew this. Therefore the only reason for the blockade was to punish the Palistinians.

  14. Morning

    I have not watched qanda for ages, but I would love for Turnbull to explain clearly his positiion on the NBN. It would also be good if Rudd was able to articulate the differences between the current policy and what the Fibs plan actually is.
    But knowing Tony Jones and his obsession with leadershit, I am not holding my breath

  15. I think that Kevin Rudd has probably concluded that his best chances of becoming PM would be for him to take over as leader after a ‘respectable’ loss next year and have a go in 2016 or at an earlier double dissolution. This requires that he be a team player in the 10 months or so remaining until the next election. Destabilising Labor through campaigning for the leadership before then could only lead to a pyrrhic victory – PM for a few months then a disastrous defeat. Alternatively, should Labor win next year (I’d rate that as a 10 to 20% probability now, compared with zero a couple of months ago), he could look to return some time into the next term.

    The situation for Malcolm Turnbull is broadly similar, except that his leader Abbott is likely to win next year. His preferred strategy now is to support the leader and be a team player with a view to looking for opportunities in the next Parliamentary term.

  16. Good morning. Short stay.

    NOTE: Anyone living between Briz & Gold Coast prob Surfers and above, there’s a very mean storm front heading your way. We look as if we might be sideswiped, unless there’s a shift north: heavy rain, but might miss hail etc.

  17. That article by Hartcher reads like a letter he has written to himself trying to convince himself that there is no way the government can ever win an election.

    It has everything:

    * Gillard temerity on Royal Commission (FAIL).

    * Slater & Gordon “new” questions that “won’t go away” (Independents may withdraw support) (FAIL)

    * “Moral compass” lacking (FAIL)

    * Weak government on ropes in hung parliament (FAIL)

    * Peter Slipper (FAIL)

    * NSW ICAC Investigation (FAIL)

    * Bob Carr guilty? (FAIL)

    * Unrelenting pressure from media (FAIL)

    * Kevin Rudd (FAIL)

    He’s worried that all his prognostications and urging might be falling on deaf, or perhaps deadened, ears.

    Now he’s looking to the Independents to save the day by ratting on their agreement.

    His scenario goes thus: Scandal 17 years old, done to death half a dozen times over the years, comes back with new revelations to prove Gillard engaged in criminal (or at least, dodgy) goings on and Independents Oakeshotte and Windsor give up everything they have achieved to force the resignation of the Prime Minister thus committing personal political hari-kari but pleased they have done the right thing.

    He trawls through their statements on the record, and some things they have said to him in interviews, to construct a situation where the News/Fairfax smear campaign on Gillard actually causes them to take leave of their senses and vote “No Confidence” in the government, thus giving Abbott – whom they hate and detest, and who hates them, as well as promising to legislatively dismantle half a dozen of their cherished projects – the keys to the Lodge.

    His writing is lower than blogger level, his fantasies are infantile and his partisanship is manifest, as is his delusion.

    “Pin Stripe Pete” Hartcher is now right up there with Dennis Shanahan and Coke Bottles as one of the more ridiculous fantasists of the Old Media.

  18. [The risk for the Coalition is that if Labor governs well in the next year (a big if)…]

    These turkeys still don’t get it do they – in this case PVO. The government has done a magnificent job despite all the irrelevant bullshit it has copped – and as Finns keeps reminding us, has produced and fattened the largest herd of bisons anywhere in the financial world, including the only AAA rating we have ever had. Yet still we get this kind of disparaging bullshit. When will they open their bloody eyes and see the reality?

  19. BB @ 53

    I saw a snippet of Ten Breakfast Friday morning, Paul Henry (the soon to be ex host) was talking to Paul Bongiorno re AWU. Bongo was repeating why he thought it was a smear/beat up, was actually reading out the disclaimers in the latest Oz article. Henry was ploughing on with his questions implying wrong doing etc (he’s very anti Labor for those who haven’t seen him). Anyway it was wasn’t going anywhere, but at the end Bongo mentioned that he has been reliably informed the Gillard’s “non coalition opponents”, including an “ex cartoonist from the Australian”, Michael Smith, and at least one other name I didn’t catch, seriously intend to bring Ralph Blewitt (PM’s dodgy accuser) back from overseas and pay for a high profile lawyer for him themselves. I presume the lawyer is to help with this “immunity” Blewitt wants, although I wonder if it includes immunity from crimes unrelated to the AWU, such as dodgy real estate deals that caused him to flee to Indonesia.

  20. Yes BB, our incompetent, lying PM took ONE WHOLE DAY to respond to calls for a royal commission. If our corrupt system didnt allow for the corrupt governor general with her ties to the Labor party, Juliar would have been sacked by now

  21. FanBoi Paul Kelly: Abbott – the volunteer, the community activist, the rare leader who spends days living and working in Aboriginal Aust”

  22. Leroy

    Apparently it has also been alleged that Blewitt has a propensity to engage with under age girls as well. How desperate are these ratbags?

  23. I still cant figure out why these ratbags cannot just wait for the next election. The coalition and the msm cheersquad constantly remimd all and sundry that the govt is going to lose big. Why are they so focused on pursuing the PM?

  24. @timsout: That was a big slap down from @bobjcarr to Andrew Geoghegan on ABC News 24 just now.

    Geoghegan continued to ask about ICAC after Senator Carr said no comment due to risk of contempt.

  25. BB @ 84

    I’ve been reading the pommy press this morning for a couple of hours and was thinking the Guardian and Independent have heaps of articles worth reading in them while our press has just descended into :

    W E  H A T E  T H E  G O V E R N M E N T &  Y O U  S H O U L D  T O O

    … and they’ll keep telling us that same thing every day ..

  26. How embarrassing for the OM that they missed the toppling of Rudd, and have got it so wrong, so many times, about the PM, including the speech. They will probably competely miss the toppling of Abbott.

    Yet they persist with their drivel, and wonder why their readership dwindles.

    It took the PM herself, in one speech, to tell the voters what our incompetent OM had dutifully ignored; Abbott’s appalling double standards and sexism. And even then, they tried to blunt the effect by criticising her.

    As I’ve said before, I wonder what the polls would be if they gave the PM the posiive coverage they give Abbott and vice versa. 55/45 to Labor?

  27. If the S & G old stuff was so good, why didnt they trot it out in the last election campaign? It would have been of far more worth then.

    And why not wait until the next election campaign? Why now? It is all about saving Abbott. And this is it. This is all they have left

  28. GG Have you read the SMH this morning about your heroes. Some of us deal in facts about criminal behaviour. Others support the criminals. Everybody here knows which side you are on. Suffer the little children, indeed.
    Mike Carlton says it better than I can. I await your descent into childish name-calling and pubic and excretory references.

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