Seat of the week: Murray

The northern Victorian seat of Murray is one of a number of seats in rural New South Wales and Victoria which have drifted from the Nationals to the Liberals after long-serving sitting members retired, Sharman Stone having secured the seat once held by Jack McEwen in 1996.

Blue numbers indicate size of two-party majority for the Liberal Party. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room.

Murray covers central northern Victoria including a 200 kilometre stretch of the river that bears its name, from Gunbower east through Echuca to Yarrawonga and Bundalong. From there it extends southwards into the Goulburn Valley region as far as Inglewood in the west and Nagambie and Euroa in the east. Its largest population centre by a considerable margin is Shepparton, home to about a third of its population, followed by Echuca, which accounts for about 10%. The electorate was created with the expansion of parliament in 1949, but its boundaries resembled those of Echuca which existed from federation until its abolition in 1937, when its territory was divided between Bendigo in the west and Indi in the east. Its dimensions have not substantially changed at any time since 1949, apart from a slight reorientation westwards when the electorate of Wimmera was abolished in 1984.

The area in question was the domain of the Country Party from its formation in 1920 until 1996, when Sharman Stone won Murray for the Liberals upon the retirement of Nationals member Bruce Lloyd. John McEwen began his federal parliamentary career as the member for Echuca in 1934 before moving to Indi when it was abolished the following term, then transferred to Murray in 1949 and remained there until his retirement in 1971. McEwen served as leader of the Country Party after 1958 and, for three weeks following Harold Holt’s disappearance at the end of 1967, Prime Minister. McEwen was succeeded on his retirement in 1971 by Bruce Lloyd, who held the seat until 1996. In a sadly typical outcome for the Nationals, the seat fell to the Liberals when Lloyd retired in 1996, Sharman Stone outpolling the Nationals candidate 43.2% to 29.7% and prevailing by 3.7% after the distribution of preferences. The Liberals had intermittently fielded candidates against Lloyd throughout his career, but always finished third behind Labor.

Sharman Stone served as a parliamentary secretary from after the 1998 election until January 2006, when she was promoted to the junior ministry as Workforce Participation Minister. After the 2007 election defeat she assumed environment, heritage, the arts and indigenous affairs, the first named being shared with shadow cabinet member Greg Hunt, before being promoted to shadow cabinet in the immigration and citizenship portfolio when Malcolm Turnbull became leader in September 2008. However, she was demoted to the outer shadow ministry position of early childhood education and childcare when Turnbull was replaced by Tony Abbott in December 2009, having supported Turnbull during Abbott’s leadership challenge, and relegated to the back bench after the 2010 election. In February 2014, Stone accused Abbott of Joe Hockey of lying about union conditions for workers at the SPC Ardmona cannery in Shepparton after the government’s rejection of a bid for $25 million in assistance put the future of its 2700 jobs in doubt. When asked at the time if she intended to remain in the Liberal Party, Stone said only that it was “to be seen how things pan out”.

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.

598 comments on “Seat of the week: Murray”

Comments Page 8 of 12
1 … 7 8 9 … 12

  1. The fact Morgan’s poll shifted so significantly within a week shows how bipolar and unreliable it is.

  2. P

    [Re Syria: In 2011 it would have been possible to remove Assad…]

    Assad was, and is, Russia’s client. Russia’s only naval base in the Mediterranean is in Syria.

    The notion that the West could ignore Russia and do what it wanted in Syria is about as robust as the notion that the West could ignore Russia and do what it wants in the Ukraine.

  3. [The May numbers saw traffic surge on the back of federal budget coverage with the numbers suggesting that more than 10 million Australians accessing a news website with the smh.com.au, ABC and The Guardian, the main beneficiaries of the increases.]

    I like how the surge completely bypassed News Limited. At Poll Bludger, traffic was up 34% on April.

  4. William.

    Ah ok. So much for my educated guess.

    BW

    I did not catch the names of the three beetles Barnaby Joyce mentioned. He released the information under his agriculture ministry

  5. OK, I’ve said what I think about Iraq and Syria and I don’t propose to spend the evening repeating myself. I only commented at all because otherwise I’d be accused of dodging the issue.

  6. Fulvio Sammut@318

    Could someone with the knowledge of how to do so, repost my post from early this morning on the previous thread here? It was post 2196 on page 44 about the Abbott rental scandal.

    Thanks

    Easy to do Fulvio, just copy the permalink from that post and then post it here.
    It will expand to the full post.

  7. [@NewsAustralia: Did Abbott’s office tell @theheraldsun to gets the extremely popular Frances Abbott story off its online front page? #auspol]

    There seems to be some weird fascination with the Lying Friar offspring.

  8. Psephos

    I tried to be kind, you couldn’t even get the number who voted right. It might be time to stop digging.

  9. A super “Good Grief” . PvO just declared that, even if Abbott’s PPL is a crap policy, Coalition members should still vote for it as without Abbott they would not be in power.

  15. @BW/362

    I think I said Iron ore spot price will go down to $70?

    Wonder how long it will take if it’s already at $90?

  16. Regarding PvO’s comment “Yikes”, that’s usually a sign that it’s a bad poll (judging by previous “Yikes” tweets) under Labor government.

    But again, who knows with PvO.

    I wouldn’t be paying much attention.

  17. Z
    The trend is your friend. But not Australia’s. Apparently there was a bit of stockpiling and trading shenanigans in China so all that will have to settle down before we get a market price.

  22. Morgan has gone troppo on us, they had settled into fortnightly release of their aggregated polling and everything was comparable to apples.

    Last week they get an outlier, so they release the phone component, then this week they treat a “normal” poll as a swing back to the Govt.

    Is Gary trying to be foolish?

  23. Psephos

    No, of course the current situation would not exist if there had been no invasion of Iraq in 2003. Saddam or one of his odious sons would still be in power, torturing and murdering thousands of their citizens every year, threatening their neighbours, sponsoring and harbouring terrorists, and acquiring weapons of mass destruction, all in the knowledge that the west was too spineless to stop them.

    What weapons of mass destruction?

  24. To add to 373, why would Saddam stand when Gaddafi have fallen and Bashar Al-Assad is still fighting a civil war?

  25. [Psephos
    …

    Voted in what?
    ]
    Voted in the Iraq election (assuming Bloomburg got it right of cause). You overstated the number and completly missunderstood the politics.

    Just read the post that set everyone off; if you want to blame anyone for Iraq not having a professsional army it would be those that destroyed it in the first place, and it was not Obama.

    I get the strong impession that Obama plans on leaving office with the USA involved in no wars. I doubt Obama is concerned about the views (sorry but I don’t consider your views; facts) of someone who can’t even decide if their political views are extreme left or extreme right.

    You and Abbott are probable going to have to look somewhere else for a nice dose of death and destruction.

  27. Ah yes. The ‘spineless’ West!

    Classic NeoCon wordplay.

    Remember the Axis of Evil?

    For some reason we avoided invading North Korea which DID have weapons of mass destruction and which was wreaking far greater death and destruction on its own people than Hussein, or Iran which WAS developing weapons of mass destruction, and which was DEFINITELY running international terrorist numbers far, far greater than Hussein dreamed of.

    Get it?

    About the only thing NeoCon warmongers are good at is starting wars and then spreading bullshit about the horrific consequences of their utter stupidity.

  28. Psephos/Adam, You are utterly convinced that you are right about everything on which you pontificate, and whenever there is an actual ‘pudding proof’ you are shown to be wrong. When Rudd was knifed, you were on here, all puffed up with your ‘insiders’ self regard and pride, telling us how this obvious ‘solution’ was absolutely essential, and the only politically sound course of action. The net result, ABBOTT, you profound cretin. At the time I posted , and I quote “You’ve lost me, Adam. I’m absolutely sure that you and your mates are dead wrong.” Guess what, Adam, you were dead wrong. You are also dead wrong about the Syria/Iraq situation, and virtually everything else you so seriously blather on about. You are narcissistic and delusional, just like Abbott, and the intelligent ones around here woke up to you long ago.

  29. I think Abbott will get a knock in his preferred rating in the next round of polls. The Daily Show segment has gone everywhere & even if some PB’s think a lot of that is old hat, it might not be to many others. The Texan moment was barf-worthy.

  30. “@latikambourke: Hillary Clinton says the gender based attacks on Former PM Julia Gillard didn’t fit with the Australia she loves and knows. #abc730”

  33. Oh some good breaking news 🙂

    “@abcnews: #BREAKING: @abcgrandstand: Michael #Schmacher is reportedly out of a coma and has left Grenoble hospital”

  34. [Boerwar
    Posted Monday, June 16, 2014 at 7:29 pm | PERMALINK
    ‘Yikes’?

    PvO is Everything is Mod Lib?

    Ah… please doG, Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.]

    Y all this fascination with me?

    :devil:

  35. Boerwar

    While at the same time of “Invade Iraq” about 4 million civilians had been slaughtered in the Congo. Do something there ? Meh.

  38. guytaur@383

    Oh some good breaking news

    “@abcnews: #BREAKING: @abcgrandstand: Michael #Schmacher is reportedly out of a coma and has left Grenoble hospital”

    I recall some here writing him off!

    I am so glad they were wrong.

    He probably still has a hard road in front of him to get back to how he was before the accident or at least as close as he can.

  39. Have to wonder if the current ‘sudden’ trouble in Iraq was somehow instigated by Russia. It is inevitable they would make trouble for the US somewhere, in retaliation for the Ukraine trouble that the US initiated.

  41. Poroti

    [While at the same time of “Invade Iraq” about 4 million civilians had been slaughtered in the Congo. Do something there ? Meh.]

    Exactly!

    Now why do we allow wanton slaughter elsewhere in the world?

  42. Thomas. Paine.@389

    Have to wonder if the current ‘sudden’ trouble in Iraq was somehow instigated by Russia. It is inevitable they would make trouble for the US somewhere, in retaliation for the Ukraine trouble that the US initiated.

    Doubt it TP, the Russians back Assad and those are his opponents. They also have enough trouble of their own with Islamists.

  44. Dee@391

    Poroti

    While at the same time of “Invade Iraq” about 4 million civilians had been slaughtered in the Congo. Do something there ? Meh.


    Exactly!

    Now why do we allow wanton slaughter elsewhere in the world?

    Why do we allow it to continue in the Congo and the next-door Central African Republic?

  47. [Voted in the Iraq election (assuming Bloomburg got it right of cause). You overstated the number and completly missunderstood the politics.]

    I’ve never referred to numbers voting in the Iraq elections here. Or are you referring to figures I give at Psephos? Those come from the Independent High Electoral Commission of Iraq.

    [Just read the post that set everyone off; if you want to blame anyone for Iraq not having a professsional army it would be those that destroyed it in the first place, and it was not Obama.]

    Yes, I acknowledged that was a serious error on the part of the Bush administration.

    [I doubt Obama is concerned about the views (sorry but I don’t consider your views; facts) of someone who can’t even decide if their political views are extreme left or extreme right.]

    My political views are what they’ve been for the past 20 years or so: Labor.

  49. [Everything
    Posted Monday, June 16, 2014 at 7:56 pm | Permalink

    Boerwar
    Posted Monday, June 16, 2014 at 7:29 pm | PERMALINK
    ‘Yikes’?

    PvO is Everything is Mod Lib?

    Ah… please doG, Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

    Y all this fascination with me?]

    True. I should stand aside. You are clearly the best at being fascinated with yourself.

Comments Page 8 of 12
1 … 7 8 9 … 12

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *