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”

Comments Page 19 of 23
1 … 18 19 20 … 23

  1. If only this poll asks about the Carbon Tax repeal, and the ETS. I would like to know if the PUP gain is from the repeal or the ETS.

  2. @897 – I think Palmer’s base is so fluid and so unpredictable that I worry about using 2013 flows as being accurate. Depending on the issue/timing… it’s too confusing. It’s probably one example where I give more credence to respondent-allocated.

  4. Kevin Andrews has just scared the tripe out of 830,000 DSP recipients, add double that in carers and family.

    ~ 2.5 million people pissed off at the weekend rubbish report.

  5. It’s very heartening to see many people giving the major parties the kick up the backside they so richly deserve. 🙂

  6. Restricting the way young unemployed can spend their money?

    Kerist, it’s American Tea Party copybook stuff.

    They’ll teach ’em how to suck up to the boss’ butt big time. Don’t lose your job 😯

  8. @906 – I don’t think the US has enough welfare to compare. The Tea Party would be drooling over this, not the other way around.

  11. Morgan gives us States.

    [The ALP maintains a strong two-party preferred lead in all six Australian States. New South Wales: ALP 57.5% cf. L-NP 42.5%, Victoria: ALP 58.5% cf. L-NP 41.5%, Queensland: ALP 54% cf. L-NP 46%, Western Australia: ALP 54.5% cf. L-NP 45.5%, South Australia: ALP 59.5% cf. L-NP 40.5% and Tasmania: ALP 64% cf. L-NP 36%.]

  12. 900

    To the detriment to some states, I am actually hoping that Labor don’t get a clean sweep on all the states, but force the Libs to form minority government with some minor party just to remind voters how much of a stinker it can be.

    Selfishly, I’m still hoping Napthine to fall though in Victoria.

  16. Those Morgan state figures are vastly different to the NP/Neilsen(?)the other day which had Libs ahead by a big margin in NSW.

  17. Looking at the Morgan TPP chart it’s interesting that since the 2010 Federal Election the last 4 weeks have been the best numbers for the ALP and the worst for the LNP. The latter are polling at similar levels to the ALP at its nadir in 2012 when it introduced the carbon tax and mining tax.

  21. @TonyHWindsor: @latikambourke @C_Pyne_MP All the Chris Pynes are fakes .Anyone who treats the Gonski reforms as the real c Pyne has can’t be for real.

  26. [What sort of government has Abbott spawned…]

    The one he always wanted, the only one he understands and feels comfortable with, the only one he can thrive in: a fascist neo-feudalist theocracy, with him as boss fella.

    Wonder how long before he grasps beyond his current Murdochian propaganda machine and tries to actively censor the likes of PB, one way or another?

  29. [I just listened to Palmer with Lenore.

    Clive is one slippery eel!]

    I doubt Clive knows what his Senators have told him to say. I will wait until next week to see who is pulling the chain.

  31. On my way out this morning I heard on ABC radio, MP’s pleading a case for the Aluminium industry.

    Anyone got the run down on some details?

  32. Tomorrow is the day also that Centerlink starts to kick people off Disability Pension.

    Due to the failer of setting up legislation correctly.

  34. [Anyone got the run down on some details?]

    25 Lib/Nat MPs have written a letter to Chainsaw McFarlane asking for the aluminium industry to be exempted from the RET target.

    Of course the aluminium rent seekers have suddenly found job losses inevitable due to the RET.

  35. guytuar

    “Child abuse commission wants two more years to allow victims to testify”
    Just a thought, maybe the commissioner already has his findings in mind & knows only a Labor Government will follow through, as opposed to coverup Tony

  36. Why has there been a mass back bench out break of concern for Aluminium smelters / A whole lotta lobbying been goin’ on.

    When a smelter closed a couple of years back , met with hysterical screams from the LNP it was the carbon tax wot done it , the manager when interviewed said a 1 cent rise of the Aussie $ v US$ exchange rate had just as much effect as the “carbon tax”.

  37. Zoid

    Thanks! 🙂

    The aluminium industry has been busy.

    Rex

    A noted change in Palmer’s language towards the government.

  39. zoidlord

    Surly time for an ICAC enquiry into Aluminium producers donations to the Liberal / Heritage corruption fund

  40. [Craig Emerson
    .@HillbillySkill Several huge multinationals pay almost no tax in Australia so we throw disabled people off DSP to save money. Disgusting.]

  42. @sceptic/939

    Coalition Party will just say that ICAC will “probably” be too busy to do one.

    Like how Turnbull said the productivity commission is “probably” busy to do a CBA on NBN.

  43. Rex Douglas
    Not wanting to wind up any PBs, Labor don’t have as many Christian Righters to get in the way of just compensation & making sure the perpetrators cough up all their assets

  44. There *may* be a ReachTEL poll about to come out courtesy of the Seven News in a few minutes, if any of you eastern staters feel like tuning in to be first with the news.

  45. I think the next election I may have to vote independent, none of the major parties decided to block the budget.

  46. The problem for the aluminium industry is that its product is almost 100% recyclable. Loss of 1-5% from its reuse.

    Recycling Aluminium uses 5% of the power that refining bauxite does.

    Giving that there is 80kg of aluminium for every person on earth already refined, why refine more?

  47. [I think the next election I may have to vote independent, none of the major parties decided to block the budget.]

    In the UK you could vote for the raving loony party, shame we don’t have one here.

  50. @ruawake/947

    If I was a certain someone that claimed greens were a loony party, then yes, I would probably vote for them.

    But alas, I will be voting independent next election (state & federal).

Comments Page 19 of 23
1 … 18 19 20 … 23

Leave a Reply

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