Seat of the week: Maribyrnong

Bill Shorten’s electoral home in Melbourne’s inner north-west extends from marginal Essendon and Moonee Ponds in the east to rock-solid Labor St Albans in the west.

Red and blue numbers respectively indicate size of two-party majority for Labor. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room.

Bill Shorten’s electorate of Maribyrnong has covered a shifting area around Essendon in Melbourne’s inner north-west since its creation in 1906. It presently extends westwards from Essendon through Niddrie and Avondale Heights to St Albans. Labor has held the seat without interruption since 1969, prior to which it was held for the Liberals for 14 years by Philip Stokes. Stokes had emerged a beneficiary of the Labor split ahead of the 1955 election, at which preferences from the ALP (Anti-Communist) candidate enabled him to unseat Labor’s Arthur Drakeford by 114 votes, in what was only Labor’s second defeat since 1910. The seat finally returned to the Labor fold at the 1969 election when it was won by Moss Cass, who secured enough of a buffer through successive swings in 1972 and 1974 to survive Labor’s electoral winter of 1975 and 1977. In 1983 he bequeathed a double-digit margin to his successor Alan Griffiths, who enjoyed a 7.4% boost when the 1990 redistribution added St Albans, which remains a particularly strong area for Labor. Griffiths was succeeded in 1996 by Bob Sercombe, who chose to bow out at the 2007 election rather than face preselection defeat at the hands of Australian Workers Union national secretary Bill Shorten.

Shorten came to parliament with a national reputation after positioning himself as the public face of the Beaconsfield mine disaster rescue effort in April-May 2006, and wielded great influence in the Victorian party factional system as a chieftain of the Right. However, Shorten was known to be hostile to Kevin Rudd, and rose no higher than parliamentary secretary for disabilities and children’s services during Rudd’s first term as Prime Minister. Shorten then emerged as one of the initiators of the June 2010 leadership coup, together with Victorian Right colleague David Feeney, and interstate factional allies Mark Arbib in New South Wales and Don Farrell in South Australia. After the 2010 election he was promoted to the outer ministry as Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Financial Services and Superannuation, and he then won promotion to an expanded cabinet by further taking on the employment and workplace relations portfolio in December 2011. Nonetheless, Shorten’s political stocks were generally thought to have been depleted by the political travails of Julia Gillard, whom he crucially abandoned in June 2013 to facilitate Kevin Rudd’s return. For this he was rewarded with a portfolio swap of financial services and superannuation for education.

After the 2013 election defeat, Shorten and Anthony Albanese of the Left emerged as the two candidates for the first leadership ballot held under the party’s new rules, in which the vote was divided evenly between the party membership and caucus. Albanese proved the clear favourite of the membership, in part reflecting the taint Shorten was perceived as carrying from his involvement in successive leadership coups against sitting prime ministers. However, Shorten’s 55-31 victory in the caucus vote was just sufficient to outweigh his 59.92%-40.08% deficit in the ballot of approximately 30,000 party members, the combined result being 52.02% for Shorten and 47.98% for Albanese.

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.

1,141 comments on “Seat of the week: Maribyrnong”

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  4. John Saffron, when he was in that series where contestants travelled around the world and did mini documentaries for the ABC, did one on the benefits of imbibing one’s wee wees.

    I, for one, was not convinced.

  5. [Mike Smith should go into the shock jock hall of fame after being punted by 2ue and 2gb for being too right wing]

    He’ll probably be back behind the microphone by year’s end.

  7. [shellbell
    Posted Sunday, June 29, 2014 at 5:52 pm | PERMALINK
    Mike Smith should go into the shock jock hall of fame after being punted by 2ue and 2gb for being too right wing]

    this may be true, but Mike Smith is still besties with George Brandis (who attended his wedding where he allegedly “dominated the dancefloor”), and he has Julie Bishop’s private mobile number, so he was able to ring her and hand the phone over to alleged Conman, Perjurer and Asian Sex Tourist Ralph Blewitt so he could lie to her).

    So if you are too much of a RWNJ for 2GB, then there is solace for you in the Liberal Party.

  8. Soooo Mike Smith gets booted from filling in on a radio show for saying – just as the Hadith does – that Mohammed married a six year old girl and had sex with her when she was nine?

  10. I think people are getting a bit carried away with Carney’s transgression.

    It’s not like he was hurting or risking anyone else.

    Methinks the outrage is a little over the top.

  11. I’m just catching up on the news…I cannot wait until the government introduces income management for welfare recipients…When rent is almost 100 percent of the payment,will the government then decide to increase the level of benefit? Or will they favour eviction over meals? I look forward to Centrelink employees making decisions like these and others such as medication v transport, rent v food, utilities v work experience/interviews..the options are endless..

  12. Our new Senator is a PewPew sorta guy

    [What personally outraged Leyonhjelm was having to surrender much of his private collection, at first rifles and later some pistols, when the bans were extended. “I had lots of semi-automatic rifles,” he says. “I had an M1 Garand, M1 Carbine, the AR-15, the FN FAL, a Rasheed semi-auto and a Norinco … I had to relinquish them all.”
    Prior to the compulsory federal buyback, he’d kept the cherished weapons in his attic and “every now and then I would take them out and pat them … It was a big thing not being allowed to have them any more. It was no solace to know I was getting paid money [to hand them back]. It was an insult. There I was, being presumed to be unsafe because some nutter had got himself hold of a semi-auto in Tasmania.”]

    Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/national/david-leyonhjelm-trouble-shooter-20140623-3an2u.html#ixzz360xApW00

  13. shell

    [But wtf did Bob Carr go into bat for a union busting fraudster like Conrad Black?]

    Carr explained his reasons eloquently in his plea for clemency. Any scholar of US Presidential history should not be in the slammer for misdemeanors.

  15. [Soooo Mike Smith gets booted from filling in on a radio show for saying – just as the Hadith does – that Mohammed married a six year old girl and had sex with her when she was nine?]

    I don’t think the statement you’re attributing to Smith can readily be equated with what he actually said, namely that “Mohammed was a paedophile” – and, tellingly, a “sexual offender” – given the vast difference between the cultural context in which Mohammed lived, and the one in which the comment was made (not to mention Smith’s plainly racist objective in saying it).

  21. William Bowe

    All I’m saying is that for someone who wasn’t a pedophile, Mohammed had little trouble screwing a 9-year-old.

  22. Perhaps the shock jocks at 2GB should also turn their attention to the English poet and Dean of St Pauls, John Donne: “John Donne, Anne Donne, Undone” etc.

  30. shellbell

    “(b) that loonie senator who wants us to bear arms”……
    who also has the rabid rights favourite pinup as his hero

    John Locke

  36. Princip/Sarajevo,,,and”the pernicious nature of alliances”
    ___________________________________
    The events in Europe in 1914 which followed the murder of the Archduke,led because of the “pernicious alliances”, to all the horrors of WW One .

    There being no real issue ,the war was fought to a terrible climax,with as the UK Foreign minister had foretold”revolutions everywhere”

    But are we in anyway safer
    A US writer looks at the situation where a conflict over some rocky little islanbs on the China Coast,might see Japan and China come to war…and we have,like the US a treaty with Japan which would oblige us to fight with Japan against China

    anyone fancy that war ??
    alliances by their nature are subjects of great danger as 1914 showed

    http://www.theamericanconservative.com/dreher/gavrilo-princip-the-domino-theory/

  38. [Boerwar
    Posted Sunday, June 29, 2014 at 4:53 pm | Permalink

    Port looking deadly.

    Swans and Port the form teams ATM, IMHO.]

    Fantastic timing.

    NOT.

  42. I thought the Sharks’ press release about supporting Carney post his termination was the usual posturing but it is required under the Fair Work Act.

  44. Sprocket

    The definition of misdemeanour must have broadened a little for Conrad

    [He was found guilty in 2007 of conspiring with partner David Radler and other executives to siphon off millions of dollars from the disposal of newspapers.]

  45. I’ve been avoiding the news cycle for a few days but just saw Kevin Andrews on changes to the Disability Support Pension. I read here a comment the other day about this man, WTTE that the poster had once considered him a mild sock puppet but in reality now knew he is as cruel hearted as the worst of them. I have to fully agree with that insight.

  47. Why are some complaining about upset results?

    You just have to get more winners than the others. If you all get 9/9 it means zip.

    Yes rua, Raiders, Roosters before Sharks. What a pity he can sure play – what a goose!

  49. And I want it to be a draw, Swans to be 5 behinds down in extra time before Buddy kicks the golden goal to win the grand final for Sydney 😀

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