Seat of the week: Bendigo

The federal electorate of Bendigo has been trending to Labor since Steve Gibbons gained it for them in 1998, but it is reportedly back on the Liberals’ radar with his impending retirement.

Created at federation, the electorate of Bendigo currently extends from the city itself south to Castlemaine and the Macedon Ranges around Woodend, also taking in smaller rural centres to the west and north. The redistribution to take effect at the next election has added the Macedon Ranges area from McEwen in the electorate’s south-east, and transferred Maryborough and its surrounds to Wannon in the west. The changes respectively affect about 7000 and 10,000 voters but have only a negligible impact on the Labor margin, which goes from 9.5% to 9.4%.

Bendigo was first won by Labor in 1913, having earlier been in Protectionist and Liberal hands. Billy Hughes contested the seat as the Nationalist Prime Minister in the wake of the Labor split of 1917, having recognised he would be unable to retain his existing safe Labor seat of West Sydney, and succeeded in unseating Labor incumbent Alfred Hampson with a 12.5% swing. Hughes would remain member for five years before moving to North Sydney. Bendigo was in conservative hands thereafter until 1949, except when Richard Keane held it for a term after Labor came to office in 1929. George Rankin gained the seat for the Country Party when United Australia Party incumbent Eric Harrison retired in 1937.

Bendigo emerged with the curious of distinction of being gained by Labor when it lost office in 1949, and next lost by them when they finally returned to power in 1972. The win in 1949 resulted from the redistribution giving effect to the enlargement of parliament, which accommodated the state’s northern rural reaches in the new seat of Murray and transferred Castlemaine and Maryborough to Bendigo. John Bourchier won the seat for the Liberals against the trend of a substantial pro-Labor swing in Victoria in 1972, which was variously put down to the entry of a popular Country Party candidate and attacks on Labor member David Kennedy over state aid and his liberal position on abortion. Bourchier would in turn hold the seat until the Fraser government’s defeat in 1983.

Bendigo was then held for Labor by future Victorian Premier John Brumby, who served for three terms before joining Victorian Labor’s extensive casualty list at the 1990 election. Bruce Reid served for three terms as Liberal member until his retirement in 1998, when Labor’s Steve Gibbons, a former Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union official and electorate officer to Brumby, gained the seat with a swing of 4.4%. Gibbons came within 1.0% of defeat at the 2004 election before enjoying consecutive swings of 5.2% and 3.4% in 2007 and 2010. After announcing in September 2011 he would not seek another term, Gibbons became less disciplined in his public pronouncements, proclaiming on Twitter that Kevin Rudd was a “psychopath”, Tony Abbott a “douchebag”, Julie Bishop a “narcissistic bimbo”, and Australia Day an “Invasion Day” celebrated by “throwing bits of dead animals on a cooking fire just like the people we dispossessed”.

Labor’s new candidate is Lisa Chesters, a Kyneton-based official with the same Socialist Left union that once employed Gibbons, which has lately been rebadged as United Voice. Earlier speculation that the seat might be used to accommodate electorally endangered Senator David Feeney or even a return to federal politics for John Brumby was quickly scotched. Greg Westbrook, director of legal firm Petersen Westbrook Cameron, was an early nominee, but in the event Chesters was preselected without opposition. The Liberal candidate is Greg Bickley, owner of a local transport business. Other reported nominees for Liberal preselection were Jack Lyons, owner of construction business Lyons Constructions, and Peter Wiseman, a teacher and owner of a website design business.

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.

1,296 comments on “Seat of the week: Bendigo”

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  1. Boerwar re 1047 on sociopathy

    “Because an individual’s scores may have important consequences for his or her future, the potential for harm if the test is used or administered incorrectly is considerable. The test can only be considered valid if administered by a suitably qualified and experienced clinician under controlled conditions.”

    Are you a qualified clinician?

    F

    PS Socrates agree with you but as you can see…

  2. I wonder whether the “Julia has blood on her hands” people would feel the same way if one of the others (Fawkner or Albo) had accepted the poisoned chalice.

  3. Thanks to Obeid and the crfiminals of NSW Right…Labor will be wiped out in the NSW marginals ..and the Abbott majority .
    will be won there without any need for help from other states
    O’Farrell’s last win in NSW will be the likely pattern for the Fed poll…probably a dozen losses ??
    Nothing can save Gillard at this stage
    all the conjecture is just talk….

  4. Ruddstoration is a history war. As Mr Rudd has declared himself.

    Leave discussion about timing letters etc for after the election.

    Do as Mr Rudd, Mr Crean and other Labor MP’s fight Tories!!!!!!

    (Of course Tories will ignore this. Along with MSM)

  5. guytaur:

    And then we have:

    [Think Big ‏@Thought4rce
    Channel 10 reporting Campbell Newman’s forced cabinet reshuffle without a single reference to “chaos”. #tennewssyd]

  6. Tricot @ 1003

    That is a plausible summation of the facts.

    I agree with most of what you have said.

    I would add that Rudd would more easily belt Abbott around the head in any debate and expose him for what he is – a bloody ignorant, innumerate, illiterate boofhead.

    As Rudd said today, can you imagine him chairing the G20 meeting in Australia next year?

  7. Fran B

    Hail the eccentric, once-off defiance. And yards and yards of justification, none of which convince me. Utilitarian vagaries or not.

    But, okay then, you did your eccentric bit except, you claimed you showed that ballot paper to a Legal Studies class. While claiming that you always act ethically towards your students.

    What was your justification, legally, curicululy (new word, just coined, – in a manner according to a curriculum, I’m sure you’ll be able to provide the correct term), for that little episode?

    Teaching civil disobedience is part of your remit?

    And there was something else recently, that I just browsed over unfortunately, where you did something similar with a younger class. Buggered if I remember now.

    It seems you are in the running the gold star award for Best Achievement in a Long Running Series of Coalition Opposition To Lefties Teaching Kids. Well done.

  8. [I am surprised it has been reported again today. Unless there is more to the story]
    For me it shows just how quickly and deeply anti Gillard stuff takes hold because of the reach of News ltd, compared with one Fairfax reporter reporting on questions of Abbott’s judgement.

    Why Fairfax and the ABC insist on reporting News ltd’s agenda when there is no commercial imperative to do so is beyond me.

  9. victoria – the latest AAP report is based on a response from Nestor, who he may not have spoken to directly before, in response to the earlier articles.

  10. guytaur@1046


    confessions

    Y the surprise? If they did not have Sen X they would be using meteorites in Russia, a murder in South Africa or anything else they can find as excuse not to run positive for Labor

    And of course all of that was orchestrated by Rudd! 😆

  11. Player 1

    [Compulsory preferential voting sounds like a good start.]

    Not to me it doesn’t — and as it hasn’t achieved that after all these years, I’d say I’m on solid ground on that score.

  12. [Bridget O’Flynn ‏@BridgetOFlynn
    Julie Bishop is about to be carved up at 8.00pm on Viewpoint on Sky. She’s appearing with Bob Carr. Popcorn time.]

    Now I am regretting ditching Foxtel…

  13. feeney
    [Why on earth would someone associated with her prepare such a letter, if there was no ‘plot’?]
    In case the PM was run over by a bus! It stands to reason that the Deputy PM would need to be prepared for any eventuality.

    So you seriously think that deputies should have nothing prepared in the face of the unthinkable? Nobody’s indispensable.

    Why are you like this?

    Was it not you who couldn’t decide whether to join the party or not?

    And now that you have, you have become virulently opposed to JG. What’s going on? Have you been subsumed by rhetoric?

    Or have you seen the light, and know that to be prepared for any eventuality automatically means sabotage.

    Grow up, Feeney.

  14. deblonay@1056


    Thanks to Obeid and the crfiminals of NSW Right…Labor will be wiped out in the NSW marginals ..and the Abbott majority .
    will be won there without any need for help from other states
    O’Farrell’s last win in NSW will be the likely pattern for the Fed poll…probably a dozen losses ??
    Nothing can save Gillard at this stage
    all the conjecture is just talk….

    The only slender hope I see is serious Federal Intervention and cleaning out of the NSW ALP ASAP.
    I cannot see this happening with Gillard as leader.

  15. It appears thar Latham and Rudd do have some areas of agreement. From the next Quarterly –

    “With wit and insight, Latham reveals an organisation top-heavy with factional bosses protecting their turf.”
    And
    Latham explains how Labor has always succeeded as a grassroots party, and argues for reforms to clear out the apparatchiks and dead wood.”
    http://www.quarterlyessay.com/next-issue

    Fil

  16. Fran Barlow@1065


    Player 1

    Compulsory preferential voting sounds like a good start.


    Not to me it doesn’t — and as it hasn’t achieved that after all these years, I’d say I’m on solid ground on that score.

    I only claimed it was a start. But you make a valid point – it obviously needs to be either simplified a bit or explained a bit better, since it is apparently still too complex for some otherwise seemingly intelligent people to understand.

  17. kezza2 @ 1068

    I have been a member since 1990, and campaigned on every local, State and Federal election since and before that time.

    And your credentials, please?

    I suggest you take your own advice.

  18. Kezza2:

    [you claimed you showed that ballot paper to a Legal Studies class. While claiming that you always act ethically towards your students.

    What was your justification, legally, curicululy (new word, just coined, – in a manner according to a curriculum, I’m sure you’ll be able to provide the correct term), for that little episode?]

    It was a class in which we were discussing how preferential voting worked. I thought a sample of the ballot papers would make it more real for them.

    No, I didn’t explain how I came to have them. I simply said:

    Here are some ballot papers from a recent election.

    NB: there is no specific word for what you want. The ballot papers were a resource within a unit of work within a teaching program within the (Preliminary) Legal Studies KLA (Key Learning Area).

  19. ABC amazingly replaying parts of the comments on the PM’s announcement by the Member for Indi.

    And no, she is no more coherent second time around.

  20. “A package of miserable accountancy does not substitute for proper policy developement”.
    Paul Keating in his firast QAT as PM.
    Nothing much has changed, has it?

  21. Player 1:

    [ it obviously needs to be either simplified a bit or explained a bit better, since it is apparently still too complex for some otherwise seemingly intelligent people to understand.]

    It’s simple enough to grasp. It just doesn’t and can’t return data closely approximating the public will on matters of policy — and indeed, what data it does return speaks almost entirely to other more superficial and frivolous matters — which in turn substantially explains the quality of discourse in our ‘old Media’.

  22. Fran Barlow@1076


    Kezza2:

    you claimed you showed that ballot paper to a Legal Studies class. While claiming that you always act ethically towards your students.

    What was your justification, legally, curicululy (new word, just coined, – in a manner according to a curriculum, I’m sure you’ll be able to provide the correct term), for that little episode?


    It was a class in which we were discussing how preferential voting worked. I thought a sample of the ballot papers would make it more real for them.

    No, I didn’t explain how I came to have them. I simply said:

    Here are some ballot papers from a recent election.

    NB: there is no specific word for what you want. The ballot papers were a resource within a unit of work within a teaching program within the (Preliminary) Legal Studies KLA (Key Learning Area).

    The AEC has educational material that would have met all of your requirements without stooping to what you did.

  23. 1023
    Socrates
    [Brough is not even in parliament.]

    Brough is no newcomer to the game.

    He also has Abbott’s firm, repeated endorsement over an extended period, despite all the clear warning signs about Brough’s behaviour and suitability for office.

    If – as looks increasingly likely – at least some of Brough’s machinations blow up in the Coalition’s face, it will reflect very poorly on Abbott’s judgment and consistency, and that will go a long way to neutering the political problems Labor have with Thomson, Slipper, and possibly Obeid.

    As I recall, Abbott himself defined his contest with Gillard as being about personal character and integrity.

    Suck it up, Tones.

  24. 1038
    shellbell
    [His performances in the Dresser and Cold Lazarus are my standouts.]

    Haven’t seen CL, but The Dresser was pretty good.

  25. [Accountancy is never miserable.]
    Absolutely! Plenty of scope for creativity.

    Accounting standards are crap. Assorted professional organizations, please note.

  26. Fran Barlow@1081


    Player 1:

    it obviously needs to be either simplified a bit or explained a bit better, since it is apparently still too complex for some otherwise seemingly intelligent people to understand.


    It’s simple enough to grasp. It just doesn’t and can’t return data closely approximating the public will on matters of policy — and indeed, what data it does return speaks almost entirely to other more superficial and frivolous matters — which in turn substantially explains the quality of discourse in our ‘old Media’.

    Shorter Fran: It doesn’t result in a Green government.

  27. Thanks William for your report on the seat of Bendigo.

    Steve Gibbons has done a wonderful job shoring up Labor’s vote in Bendigo.

    And even though he is retiring at this election, his recent press releases regarding the effect on Bendigo’s hospitals, the incursion of Lib identities into hospital board appointees, and the State Government’s withdrawal of $600 million from the health budget, are the most comprehensive and most reasoned explanations of why the feds are not to blame and the State govt is, outperforms Tanya Plibersek in this porfolio.

    And, I was quite amused at the confected outrage lately about Steve Gibbons tweets – especially where he called BishopJ something or other. That he should be taken out the back and shot.

    Why? Because PvO got into a snit about an earlier stoush with Gibbons.

    In particular where PvO (that’s Peter van Onselen) cracked the shits over his claims that one Steve Gibbons called Rudd a psychopath.

    PvO was wRONg.

    The argument went back and forth, and in the end PvO packed up his bat and ball and went home, vowing never to grace twitter again unless he was promoting his show.

    Gibbons had done no such thing as accuse Rudd of being a psychopath. Gibbons had a press release on Feb 18, and then some days later tweeted that (wtte) anyone who would challenge the PM should be considered a pyschopath.

    That Rudd fulfilled this, was not Gibbons calling Rudd a pyscho.

    PvO has never apologised for the accusation.

    So, if it comes up again, be on your mettle.

    And be sure to visit Gibbons site. You may be amazed at a pollie who, although he never reached the heights of minister in his party, or indeed anywhere approaching an hierarchical stint, was a very good Labor stalwart.

    That’s why Labor has such a deep batting order. A depth of talent the Libs/Nats would give an arm and a leg for. And a loyalist as well.

    http://www.stevegibbonsmp.com/

    take note, especially, of steve’s press releases over time.
    His website is pretty good.

    And his twitter argument with PvO.
    Hilarious.

    Well done Steve Gibbons. Enjoy your retirement. You deserve it.

    Why we didn’t have the likes of him in Macmillan I’ll never know. Hope the electorate of Bendigo appreciates his fine efforts.

  28. Player One:

    [Shorter Fran: It doesn’t result in a Green government]

    Accurately: It doesn’t achieve what, in something like an optimal world, what it ought to achieve — a government that closely reflects the public policy wishes and needs of those it serves.

  29. [It is the worst swing against a first term government in two decades. The largest first term swing I can think of was 16% against the Greiner government in the NSW seat of Coffs Harbour at a 1990 by-election.]

    And yet largely ignored by OM?

  30. [feeney
    Posted Sunday, February 17, 2013 at 6:05 pm | PERMALINK
    kezza2 @ 1068

    I have been a member since 1990, and campaigned on every local, State and Federal election since and before that time.

    And your credentials, please?

    I suggest you take your own advice.]
    Feeney, sorry, must have confused you with someone else.

    I was a long-time member of the ALP. Served in many elections, thanks.

    Let my membership lapse during the early 2000s and haven’t been a member since.

    Obviously my memory is going, but it must have been another contributor here who was worrying about whether to join the ALP in Griffith.

    My apologies.

    Given the confusion, does my argument make sense now?

    That is it normal for a deputy to have a statement ready in case of the demise of the captain?

  31. kezza2

    [Let my membership lapse during the early 2000s and haven’t been a member since.]
    Was your non renewal anything to do with Kimbo’s rolling over in the face of Howies BOATS ?

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