Seats of the week: Kooyong and Higgins

A double dose of the Liberal Party’s inner eastern Melbourne heartland, encompassing the seats held by Josh Frydenberg and Kelly O’Dwyer.

Kooyong

Blue and red numbers respectively indicate booths with two-party majorities for Liberal and Labor. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room.

Presently covering Melbourne’s affluent inner east from Kew and Hawthorn eastwards to Balwyn North and Camberwell, Kooyong has been held by the prevailing conservative forces of the day without interruption since its creation at federation, including by Robert Menzies throughout his 31-year career in federal parliament. The seat has had only seven members in its long history, of whom the first two were William Knox and Robert Best, the latter succeeding the former in 1910. Best was defeated as Nationalist candidate at the 1922 election by conservative independent John Latham, who ran in opposition to the prime ministership of Billy Hughes. With that end accomplished by an election that left the anti-Hughes Country Party holding the balance of power, Latham in time joined the Nationalists and served as Attorney-General in Stanley Bruce’s government from 1925 until its defeat in 1929. Bruce’s loss of his seat of Flinders at that election saw Latham emerge as Opposition Leader, but the defeat of the Labor government two years later was effected when Joseph Lyons led Labor defectors into a merger with conservative forces as the United Australia Party, with Latham agreeing to serve as Lyons’s deputy. Latham served as Attorney-General and External Affairs Minister in the Lyons government from 1931 until his retirement at the 1934 election, and a year later was appointed Chief Justice of the High Court.

Latham’s successor as both member for Kooyong and Attorney-General was Robert Menzies, who had been a state parliamentarian since 1928 and Deputy Premier since 1932. Menzies ascended to the prime minister after Joseph Lyons’ death in April 1939, serving for two years as the nation’s wartime leader before resigning in August 1941 after losing the support of his cabinet colleagues. Following Labor’s landslide win at the 1943 election, Menzies returned to the leadership of the United Australia Party which had been held in the interim by Billy Hughes, and brought fragmented conservative forces together a year later under the new banner of the Liberal Party. Two elections later he led the party to a resounding victory, commencing an epic 16-year tenure as prime minister from December 1949 until his retirement in January 1966.

Menzies was succeeded in Kooyong at an April 1966 by-election by Andrew Peacock, who went on to serve as a senior minister in Malcolm Fraser’s government from 1975 until April 1981, when he unsuccessfully challenged Fraser for the leadership. He briefly returned to the ministry from November 1982 until the election defeat the following March, after which he defeated John Howard in the ballot for the party leadership. Despite leading the party to an honourable defeat at the December 1984 election, he was obliged to surrender the leadership the following September after a bungled attempt to force Howard out as deputy. A party room coup returned him to the leadership in May 1989, but he failed to win the March 1990 election despite securing for the Coalition a narrow majority of the two-party preferred vote. He then relinquished the leadership to John Hewson, and served in the shadow ministry until his retirement from politics in November 1994.

The seat’s next member for Petro Georgiou, who as member for so prestigious a seat was generally assumed to have a career as a heavy-hitter ahead of him. However, he instead emerged as a permanent back-bencher and a thorn in the side of the Howard government, particularly in relation to his liberal views on asylum seekers. Georgiou retired at the 2010 election and was succeeded by Josh Frydenberg, a banker and former adviser to Alexander Downer and John Howard who had earlier challenged Georgiou for preselection in 2007. Frydenberg won the 2010 preselection with the backing of the Michael Kroger faction, while rivals associated with the then state Opposition Leader Ted Baillieu initially backed John Roskam, the director of the Institute of Public Affairs. However, Roskam declined to run and instead threw his weight behind industrial relations lawyer John Pesutto, whom Frydenberg defeated in the final round by 283 votes to 239. Frydenberg was promoted to parliamentary secretary to the Prime Minister after the September 2013 election victory.

Higgins

Blue and red numbers respectively indicate booths with two-party majorities for Liberal and Labor. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room.

Held by the Liberals since its creation in 1949, Higgins owes its blue-ribbon status to the affluence of Toorak and suburbs further to the east, including Glen Iris and Malvern. Prahran in the electorate’s west provides a strong basis of support for Labor and the Greens, while Carnegie and Ashburton in the south-east are naturally marginal. At the time of the electorate’s creation the Toorak end was accommodated by Fawkner, which prior to 1949 had boundaries resembling those of Higgins today. Higgins assumed its present character when Fawkner was abolished at the 1969 election. The seat’s inaugural member was Harold Holt, who had previously been member for Fawkner since 1935. Holt remained in the seat until his disappearance in December 1967, at which point it was used to parachute Senator John Gorton into the the lower house to enable him to assume the prime ministership. Gorton stayed on for two elections after being deposed as Prime Minister in March 1971, before indulging in a quixotic bid to win one of the Australian Capital Territory’s newly acquired Senate seats as an independent in 1975. Roger Shipton subsequently held the seat until 1990, achieving prominence only in 1988 when he stood firm against maverick businessman John Elliott’s designs on his seat. Shipton stared down Elliott only to lose preselection to Peter Costello, who was at no stage troubled in Higgins through his 11 frustrating years as Treasurer and Liberal deputy.

On the morning after the November 2007 election defeat, Costello made the surprise announcement that he would not assume the leadership. Speculation that he might later do so lingered until October 2009, when he announced his resignation from parliament. The Liberals had at this time just completed their preselection for the following election, which was won by Kelly O’Dwyer, a National Australia Bank executive who had earlier spent four years as an adviser to Costello. O’Dwyer was chosen ahead of Toorak businessman Andrew Abercrombie by 222 votes to 112, with candidates earlier falling by the wayside including Tim Wilson, then a policy director at the Institute of Public Affairs and now a Human Rights Commissioner, and the IPA’s executive director John Roskam, whose bid reportedly suffered from an article he wrote for The Punch which had put Costello’s nose out of joint. Tony Abbott said in April 2011 that O’Dwyer was “knocking hard on the door of that Shadow Cabinet”, but she is nonetheless yet to have won promotion.

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.

1,620 comments on “Seats of the week: Kooyong and Higgins”

Comments Page 28 of 33
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  1. [ The ABC should have the GUTS to go 1hr with a panel to question Smoking Joe … ]

    Well so much is riding on what reaction the likes of the ABC take on the Budget – that in turn will be heavily influenced by reaction of the likes of Chris Richardson and other economists.

    I still believe Richardson’s conflict of interests should be declared in such discussion as his parent employer, Deloitte have made large donations to the tories.

    Hopefully someone like the Kouk or Peter Martin will get a look in as well. Kohler has in previous years but that was when he was also doing Business Insider – so who knows this year.

    If the ABC or other media outlets let the “Broken Promises” theme go through to the keeper or just touch on it lightly and then move on, the tories have their chance to get their BS across.

    Ordinary voters will get their Budget info more from commercial TV and they aren’t exactly behind abbott in all of this – so far anyway.

    Just getting very sick of seeing hockey’s smirking face when he is really a clueless buffoon.

  2. The last thing Labor should be talking about are tax cuts of any form in this current budget environment.

    As for carbon pricing…it is gone, kaput, finished!

  4. Centre

    😆

    Carbon Pricing is here to stay. Just like Medicare it will back just as soon as the Tories are chucked out.

  5. Blewitt is crying again.

    He was giving a recitation of his hard life, that of an uneducated working man, an Army volunteer who did his bit for his country. He took up with the AWU as an organizer, but knew that if the nasty Mr. Wilson told him to do something he’d have to do it, or else get the sack. And THEN what would he do for a living?

    … a short interlude where Blewitt asks the Commissioner whether this is relevant.

    Heydon replies that he has been asked a reasonable question, and must answer it as he sees fit (which doesn’t seem quite right to me)….

    Blewitt goes on, and his voice starts to break.

    “I’m sorry sir, can we have a five minute break?”

    Heydon immediately complies with the request. Short adjournment.

    —————-

    If Blewitt is going to start bursting into tears every time he’s asked a tricky question, this is going to take all day.

  6. [ guytaur
    Posted Tuesday, May 13, 2014 at 9:27 am | Permalink

    I am looking forward to the budget reply. I expect a good if not great performance from Mr Shorten. ]

    Yes he needs to be in top form – he can give very good speeches and this needs to be one such occasion.

  7. Centre

    Unlike you Albo knows who the enemy is. Thats why I don’t need to look to know he would have been attacking Abbott and his budget

  10. The best thing that could happen is for the Libs to scrap carbon pricing. The voters can clearly see for themselves the miniscule impact it has on their cost of living.

    As for electricity prices, the Coalition are digging themselves in a hole.

    Any reduction in prices will soon be evaporated by any increase.

    Let them get rid of it – better for votes (to Labor) 😎

  12. Guytaur

    Don’t stay permanently loony, get in to the real world for a few minutes and have a look at Albo’s presser.

  13. “@COBrienBris: .@theqldpremier calls on @CliveFPalmer to withdraw his legal action to save taxpayers’ money. @NewsTalk4BC”

    Wow

  17. Does anybody here deny there is a housing bubble that is about to burst?

    There are so many articles out there reassuring us there’s no bubble. For many years the average house cost 3 times the average wage. Now it is more like 9 or 10 times the average wage in our cities, yet writers like this one claim there’s no bubble. By all measures, Australian housing is deemed unaffordable. Demographia rates our price as “severely unaffordable” and “seriously unaffordable.” Nowhere in Australia is ranked “affordable” or “moderately affordable”.

    So, if we are in a massive housing bubble, why hasn’t it popped yet? Because government policies have been put in place specifically to keep it propped up. Our housing bubble is a government-sponsored Ponzi scheme relying on a supply of “greater fools” to keep paying ever-increasing prices for dwellings.

    Nila talks about a chronic undersupply. Well of course we have an undersupply – land is dripfed and supply is choked to create this undersupply. Then, we have the highest rate of immigration in the western world, a deliberate measure to increase demand on housing.

    And we have unrestricted foreign investment. Contrary to Sweeney’s statement about the strict rules on foreign ownership, these laws are not only easy to get around, and are flouted constantly, many purchases are not reported to the FIRB in the first place, and the FIRB has stated as much. The FIRB is in place to simply rubber-stamp almost every application and turn a blind eye to any shonky business. There are many, many anecdotal reports of foreign, especially Chinese purchases of established dwellings, and there is no doubt that the Chinese are having a massive impact on price rises in certain areas. There are no true official figures, and if there are, the government and FIRB refuse to disclose them, presumably because there is plenty to hide.

    There is plenty to fear in this bubble. The Chinese are restricted to one property each in China, but can buy as many properties as they want here. They were also buying up big in Canada, but now that Canada has clamped down due to the impact of Chinese investment in Canada, that means even more money is headed our way. And as the amount of wealthy Chinese grows, there are more Chinese who can afford to buy Australian real estate (and intend to do so) than there are Australians. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am not China-bashing. They are acting within the law (and what they can get away with) in a desperate bid to get their money out of China and out of the reaches of the corrupt Chinese government. But many of these Chinese investors have made their money by corrupt means and can easily outbid Australians in an uneven playing field. Our government is well aware of this, and is allowing Australia to be sold out to the highest bidder in order to keep property prices high.

    I know I have rambled on here but I am quite passionate about informing people of this housing bubble that we have had for so long that many people think our exorbitant prices are normal. They are not, and have nothing to do with affordability, nor with fundamentals. They are propped up artificially, and both sides of government are to blame. Of course, those with property have vested interests in seeing their values rise, so the government are pandering to the majority. But there is no question that we have a housing bubble. How long it lasts depends on how much the government is prepared to throw at it to keep it going, unless it eventually bursts under its own weight.

  18. Centre

    I am not being distracted into defending Greens when Abbott is bringing down a horror budget. Thats my focus.

    Thats Labor’s focus. It should be yours.

    @billshortenmp: RT to remind Tony Abbott of his own words when it comes to breaking election promises #budgetofbrokenpromises http://t.co/8SuNiyP3KL

  19. http://www.burning-bison.com/blog/uncategorized/government-to-further-impinge-on-the-rights-of-pensioners-to-travel-or-live-overseas/

    “The only way the tightened residence restrictions can result in savings is if welfare recipients give up, stayed overseas and conveniently dropped out of the welfare system. I believe that this is in fact the true goaI of the policy. Even if only (say) half of those affected moved back and it became a zero-sum game in a monetary sense, then the government still gains electoral bonus points just by being seen to be strong on welfare rorting.”

    “Just to recap, welfare recipients who stay away from the country are SAVING the taxpayer money both directly and indirectly. This has been established in research undertaken by the Government. Research that got quietly shelved because it went against what the radio shock-jocks were telling us, and what the man-in-the-street chose to believe.”

    This gov a bunch of loosers.
    “It really is very sad that Australian Government policy formulation has descended to this low level of rigour and vision, and that it has reflects poorly on the potential of the country we are creating for the next generation.”

  20. Go the Fat One.

    Clive is far more valuable to Labor than the Greens. Palmer can land blows against the enemy without being a nuisance and a hindrance like the big sexy L-OO-NS.

    *knock yourselves out 😀

  24. US

    I agree there’s a housing bubble that’s about to burst — and would have agreed with you about that any time in the last ten years.

  25. guitar 1363

    Wow indeed!!, The solution to saving taxpayers money is easy… plead guilty as charged & pay the Palmer fine to charity as asked.

    Naturally the QLD Gov.request is tantamount to pleading guilty, because if Palmer lost he would pay costs.. The Nats are assuming they will lose?

  26. “@beneltham: My Canberra cabbie is pretty worried about the budget. “A lotta people going to lose their jobs. It’s gonna be bad for business.””

  27. BB

    Sack cloth and ashes for you. At 2pm, Ralph Blewitt is to be cross examined by Bruce Wilson’s barrister.

    She may test his credibility as a witness

  28. Zoomster #1337

    “But arguing that it shouldn’t be implemented because it doesn’t raise much money echoes the Liberals argument on the mining tax.”

    So what? That was their pretend reason.

    1) The Liberals oppose the MRRT because they oppose the MRRT per se. The fact that the super profits declined and revenue was so poor is their sham argument.

    This is easily proved by the fact that they’re dumping it, not fixing it.

    2) The petrol excise is regressive. It has SFA impact on the upper stratas, especially those who enjoy the tax perk of fully fuelled and maintained leased luxury cars.

    The MRRT was altogether different.

    3) The petrol excise is an indirect, secretive and exploitative tax, the type that the GST was meant to replace.

  30. [I hope Labor have the mettle to defend its record and expose the Fibs for their lies and deceit]

    This is precisely what an economist, Paul Bloxham, did on ABC24 interview with Virginia Trioli this morning, making it clear why there’s no debt emergency. Naturally, Trioli’s only way to stop this damage to Hockey’s cred was to submarine him with a “facetious” remark about his views being heretical. Bloxham then gave Trioli the treatment which all Labor’s spokesfolk need to do, which was not to answer her next question and insist on “right of reply” because his information was not “heresy”, it was real statistics.

    Trioli still insisting it was just a joke, her mouth sucking a lemon, ended the conversation quickly. People finding it ever tougher to make ends meet, even losing jobs due to this budget, will fail to find as much mirth as a well-paid ABC celebrity in this economist’s proving the seriousness Abbott’s mendacity. Of course, Trioli knows that big bucks await her in some cushy job on Murdoch’s Manure Mountain. Sky would have a real thigh-slapping sit-com by “Co-starring” Trioli with Peter Van Onselen.

  31. BB

    Don’t think Blewitt is back till 2pm.

    If you leave the site and return, it doesn’t default to the live feed and starts replaying. On my machine I just drag the red line at the bottom as far right as it will go, and then it’s live.

  32. In the spirit of Joe Hockey’s National Struggle, and because it’s better to seek forgiveness than ask permission, I will commence flogging myself forthwith.

  34. ASX said to be set for a strong start after same in the US overnight with renewed buying in the beaten down US tech sector.
    Importantly smaller tech stocks were being bought again.

    Also China was up over 2% yesterday after being in a down trend for most of 2014 (and longer as well).

    So will the tories be able to point to the ASX reaction as confidence in the budget ?

    Maybe – but if the budget results in contracted local spending, business will be no better off ?

  35. “@andrew_lund: Paec getting quite heated as opposition MPs press @martindixonmp to specifically identify gonski money in education budget #springst”

  36. Is Wilson having to pay for his own barrister? Or has this kind govt given him representation (like it gave representation to all four families in the pink batts RC)

  37. sortius ‏@sortius 3m

    NBN Co releases symmetrical business products http://www.smh.com.au/it-pro/government-it/nbn-co-releases-symmetrical-business-products-20140512-zra1k.html … Why the fuck is #NBN Co deploying FTTN: pic.twitter.com/y9JMJh44DC

    @dave/1384

    ASX been up and down on the bases of both local and overseas data, especially the past week when talking about the budget.

    i.e, yesterday.

    ASX ‏@ASX 17h

    #ASXclose. Today the #ASX200 closed at 5448.4, down 12.4 points or 0.2%.

  38. Atticus – thats very interesting at 1380.

    Bloxham dishes it out to both sides when he has the ammo.

    Nothing wrong with that – you cannot ask for fairer than that – should be more of it.

  40. Bushfire Bill@1382

    In the spirit of Joe Hockey’s National Struggle, and because it’s better to seek forgiveness than ask permission, I will commence flogging myself forthwith.

    Even better save your energy for hissing hockey tonight – or even better putting your reaction into another corker post ?

  41. In my defence, I was out all yesterday afternoon and did not appreciate the scale or nature of yesterday’s second session of evidence.

    We have an Evidence Emergency, and stern measures must be taken to fix up the Royal Commission’s mess.

    Due to his neat little trick of being a surprise witness, thus pretty-well neutering any possibility of comprehensive cross examination, Blewitt thought he was away scot free.

    The Murdoch papers could run headlines like, “Gillard took union money” (then print at the bottom of the article, “…the Royal Commission heard today”). They could rehash all the scuttlebutt multi-award winning journalist etc. etc. Hedley Thomas has been been printing for years, recycling it now as “sensational sworn evidence”, as if it had never seen the light of day before (who knew?) and then, for bonus points, harass Wilson in the street (at Ben Fordham’s instigation, as he bragged yesterday on 2GB) so obnoxiously that Wilson lashed out at one of their photographers who had stuck a camera in his face with the headline, “Ghost Of Gillard”.

    It was all so neat and sweet.

    Blewitt thought he could recite his testimony into the record and be off back to his hidey-hole in Malaysia licketty-split by today.

    He’d had an entire Royal Commission rearrange its schedule so that he could testify on Budget eve, and then skip.

    So, imagine his despair when Heydon, in an unexpected flash of non-partisan legal judgement, said – in the nicest possible way – that he thought Blewitt might fly the coop if allowed to leave Australia.

    Blewitt is doing it tough too.

    It’s only fair that I should share his pain by punishing myself for giving Bludgers a bum steer.

    How many lashes should I self-administer?

    100?

    200?

  42. Re The Australian, I think their circulation is now so small, take out all the free copies at the airport lounges it is almost non existant , I only know of one person who subscribed to it, and thy have now stopped. Now The terror is a different kettle of fish.

    BTW THe troll who was annoying Cathy Wilcox and I yesterday, I blocked him but then went in and had a look afrerwards I see he retweeted mike Smith’s tweet that”Under Oath Blewitt?? has testified that Julia Gillard was complicit in fraud at the RC”

    Possibly my last post from Australia as fly out in a couple of days, keep up the good fight PBers(leave out a couple of course} on that comment. Will do some comments from O/S when I can

  43. Lots of taxes don’t raise much money. That’s not necessarily a reason for not bringing them in in the first place, or not repealing them now.

    I happen to think that it’s in the interest of our polity long term for Labor to adopt a nuanced approach to the Budget, accepting some measures and rejecting others, and arguing each decision on its merits, rather than rejecting measures just because the government’s proposing them.

    The indexation of the fuel excise is good policy, full stop. Yes, we should totally blame Abbott for it and do lots of stunts at petrol stations pointing anguishedly at the price and talking about the pain of the family of six with the disabled kid in the Tarago (hey, that worked so well for Brendan Nelson, after all..) but Labor would be batsh*t crazy if it proposed repealing it at the next election. (They may be. Occasionally, they are).

    I’m more agnostic about the income tax rise. Certainly the Greens should support it, as it’s a step towards one of their policy goals, but apparently they’re going to throw a hissy fit instead.

    Certainly Labor should argue against the necessity for cuts and tax rises and against the idea that there’s a budget crisis, and push the case for ‘a government elected on a lie’ (or even multiple lies). But – just as Victoria Labor greeted some of Kennett’s changes with a sigh of relief and never repealed them or even suggested repealing them – Labor should keep some of the changes the Liberals are about to make.

  44. BB

    Jon faine ABC radio host in Melbourne said today that Blewitt was to be cross examined and we can see whether his statements hold water

  49. [Simon Banks
    When @JoeHockey says taxes always lower under LNP remember (1) LNP said same on interest rates (2) Howard Govt highest taxing in Oz history]

  50. mari – everywhere I go I see piles of free Ozs. I’m sure they scrupulously account for them in their circulation figures.
    I wonder how the AFR is going. Lots of its stuff is quite stomach churning these days.

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