Seat of the week: Goldstein

Covering established areas of southern coastal Melbourne, the electorate of Goldstein doesn’t swing much, and has provided a safe base for Andrew Robb’s parliamentary career since 2004.

Created with the expansion of parliament in 1984, Goldstein covers coastal southern Melbourne starting from Brighton, located about 10 kilometres from the city centre, and proceeding southwards through Hampton, Sandringham and Black Rock to Beamaris. The northern part of the electorate extends inland beyond the Nepean Highway to accommodate Caulfield South, Bentleigh and surrounding suburbs. The more inland areas are naturally marginal, but the affluence of the coastal suburbs has kept the seat in Liberal hands by stable margins ranging from 5.5% in 1993 to a new high of 11.0% in 2013.

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

The area now covered by Goldstein was accommodated by the electorate of Balaclava in the years immediately after federation, and then by the new seat of Henty when Balaclava was pushed northwards by a redistribution in 1913. Brighton was put back into Balaclava after 1937, and the new seat of Higinbotham covered the remainder after parliament was expanded in 1949. When Higinbotham was abolished in 1969, the area was divided between Balaclava, Henty and the new seats of Hotham and Isaacs. Beaumaris and Black Rock remained in Isaacs after Goldstein was created in 1984, at which time the new electorate extended northwards to St Kilda East. It assumed a more familiar form when it absorbed Beaumaris in the redistribution of 1996, which greatly reduced the Liberals’ competitiveness in Isaacs.

The various electorates which dominated the modern area of Goldstein were at all times in conservative hands, with the partial exception of Labor’s win in Isaacs at the 1974 election. Don Chipp held Higinbotham for the Liberals from 1960 to 1969, at which time he moved to the new seat of Hotham. Balaclava and then Goldstein were held from 1974 to 1990 by Ian Macphee, who emerged as the figurehead of the party’s moderates. Macphee was ultimately defeated for preselection ahead of the 1990 election by David Kemp, an intellectual leader of the party’s rising neo-liberal tendency, an event that provided a catalyst for Andrew Peacock’s successful challenge to John Howard’s leadership in May 1989. Kemp went on to serve in the Howard cabinet from October 1997 until his retirement at the 2004 election, as Education Minister until 2001 and Environment Minister thereafter.

Goldstein has since been held by Andrew Robb, a former Liberal Party federal director who had long been spoken of as a potential candidate for safe seats in New South Wales, where he had lived for two decades. However, Robb had originally hailed from Victoria, having been raised in a working-class Catholic family that supported the Democratic Labor Party. He came to the Liberal Party via student politics and a job at the newly established National Farmers Federation, which was an assertive voice for labour market deregulation during his period as executive director after 1985. As federal director of the Liberal Party, Robb oversaw the 1990, 1993 and 1996 election campaigns, after which he set up the marketing company Acxiom for Kerry Packer. His first term in parliament was the last of the Howard government, in which he was promoted to parliamentary secretary in January 2006 and thence to the outer ministry as Vocational and Further Education Minister in January 2007.

Robb nominated for the deputy leadership after the 2007 election, but was defeated by Julie Bishop. He instead became Shadow Foreign Affairs Minister, and was briefly discussed as a leadership candidate when Malcolm Turnbull was embroiled in the “Utegate” affair in the middle of 2009. Shortly afterwards he made the surprise announcement that he was moving to the back bench owing to a depressive illness. He returned to the front bench in the finance portfolio in March 2010, from which he was resassigned to trade and investment after the 2013 election victory.

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.

845 comments on “Seat of the week: Goldstein”

Comments Page 13 of 17
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  1. Kezza

    ” So, another question is, did Farrah Tomazin record Ted Bailleau legally?”

    Go back to school and do Reading Comprehension 101.

    For the 4th time, and last time, recording of conversations secretly is not illegal in Victoria.

  2. Last week or so ago, I made the comment that I was waiting for Scott Morrison to make an announcement about an agreement with India to take back the AS, given they’d left from an Indian port, not from Sri Lanka.

    And I wondered what the sugar offered to seal the deal. Like more uranium.

    Never did I think that Scoot would fold like a f*(ked bluffed nothing poker hand and agree to bring the AS to Australian soil, to be processed by an ex-UK colonial country, unlike our own continued subjugation to the realm.

    Operation Sovereign Borders went straight down the toilet.

    Australia’s AS policy, under the Coalition, should be now known as “India will decide who comes to this country and the circumstances in which they come.”

    Scott Morrison should be tried for TREASON, apart from being called a f*)wit hypocrite to his so-called Christian would-be credentials.

  3. psyclaw

    Listen, I’d like to call a truce. Yes, I know I offended you some time ago by saying you had shrivelled balls. And I have apologised. Many times.

    You are the one not letting this go.

    You insult me on so many levels, but according to you that’s okay because once upon a time I said you had shrivelled balls, and despite numerous apologies, you’re determined not to forget it.

    You’re behaving in an almost girly way, in the stereotypical fashion of the way women are accused of never forgetting a slight.

    Did you know that balls are the male equivalent of ovaries, biologically speaking? Yeah, they are.

    When a foetus develops gonads, they’re internal. As a male becomes more differentiated, the gonads descend to become testicles.

    If the process isn’t successful, then a hernia occurs. That is, the possibility of a retraction back into the abdomen area because a hole in tissue that allows testicles to descend hasn’t fused.

    Back in the 60s it was called a groin hernia.

    I had a hernia operation (on the right side) when I was nine. My youngest son had a double hernia.

    So when I make fun of testicles, I’m fully aware of the relationship between ovary and testicle development.

    [” So, another question is, did Farrah Tomazin record Ted Bailleau legally?”

    Go back to school and do Reading Comprehension 101.]

    Listen dick, HeydonJ said the recording was legal in Victoria when it was made. The fact that it was no longer legal, in 2014, according to Agius, was moot.

    Therefore, it’s perfectly legitimate to ask Farrah Tomazin that question.

    Which part don’t you understand? Perhaps you should take your own advice and do yourself a favour and quickly enrol in Reading Comprehension 101.

  4. [‘The state of Palestine should be based on 1976 borders with agreed land swaps and with security guarantees for itself and Israel.’]

    I hope the date is a typo and it is the 1967 border.

  5. psyclaw

    wow, that was some apology — and following it up by calling you a ‘dick’ showed the depth of its sincerity…

  6. zoomster
    [wow, that was some apology — and following it up by calling you a ‘dick’ showed the depth of its sincerity…]
    Trust you to buy into this. I wasn’t apologising again, I had already done so, on numerous occasions. I was asking for a truce.

    Calling psyclaw a ‘dick’ showed exasperation, not insincerity.

    But you have a conflict of interest here. I’m surprised you didn’t declare it.

  7. What a phony Tony. He spoke to Putin overnight and supposedly “emphasized to Putin the need for an independent international investigation.” . Dealing firmly with Vlad the Impaler , putting the hard word on him ?

    Not on your Nellie. Putin called for that from day one , preferably the UN civil aviation authority, because by custom Ukraine would be in charge of the investigation.

  8. I see Julie Bishop has put a coiled black snake on her head and told the Ukraine to recall its parliament, because she was told they would have signed something by Friday.

    But due to the PM resigning, Parliament will not sit until Thursday at the earliest, and they may have more pressing matters to discuss than M17. (Like paying their troops)

    The solution is to send in unarmed AFP and no ADF, but if a stray Kalashnikov on the wrong end of a flagon of vodka gets fired who takes the blame?

  9. Link to latest of the hearings before Hayne J on the High Court case for the soon to be occupants of Curtin.

    http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/other/HCATrans/2014/153.html

    Need to scroll 4/5ths of the way down before anything happens given the number of parties.

    Lot of it is procedural stuff but there is a mini judgment from Hayne J starting with this:

    [The plaintiff was a passenger on an Indian flagged vessel (“the Indian vessel”) which left Pondicherry, India. On or about 29 June 2014, an Australian Border Protection vessel (“the Australian ship”) intercepted the Indian vessel in Australia’s contiguous zone as defined in section 8 of the Maritime Powers Act 2013 (Cth). On 29 June 2014, maritime officers from the Australian ship boarded and detained the Indian vessel, detained those on board the vessel and either took them, or caused them to be taken, onto the Australian ship.

    On 1 July 2014, the National Security Committee of Cabinet decided that those on board the Indian vessel should be taken to a particular place, which is a place outside Australia. On 7 July 2014, passengers from the Indian ship applied to this Court for urgent interim relief preventing their being given into the custody of the Sri Lankan Government.]

  10. My opinion of the IDF and Gaza.

    I reckon Haliburton, or some other industrial military materiel provider, did a stocktake at the end of the financial year and decided that all supply contracts had to be renewed and all the squirrelled munitions had to be expended.

    How to resurrect a war situation to get rid of surplus armaments?

    The IDF conjured a confrontation – the killing of two teenage Palestinians in May, hoping for retaliation.

    And so it came to pass.

    Three Israeli teenagers were kidnapped and killed.

    Another Palestinian teenager was kidnapped, and burned alive, in retaliation.

    Three eyes for three eyes.

    But, that was not enough. There had to be expenditure of armaments. The stockpile in Haliburton’s factories was too much.

    So, off to war for a month. Never-ending terror.

    So, what’s the stocktake now?
    Fancy that, Israel needs more armaments.

    Yeah, the stockholders of Haliburton and co are happy. Factories humming nicely.

  11. Looks like the High Court is becoming a Refugee Tribunal on steroids these days.

    Our founding federation fathers would be spinning in their graves that the constitutional court is so often being used in this way.

    Surely there is a better way? Everyone else has had to tighten their belts.

  12. He is changing position again

    “@ABCNews24: Abbott: AFP officers will be deployed as part of an unarmed Dutch-led international, humanitarian mission #MH17”

  13. “@ABCNews24: Abbott: The advice I have is that the safest way to conduct this mission is with unarmed officers #MH17”

  14. Dear Kezza,

    just relax a little and we’ll all love you a bit more than present.

    This bull-at-a-gate stuff is not good for you or the rest of us in the long run. Life is too short for verbal sprays.

    Zoomster is well respected here and puts her own name and reputation to her posts, and has run for federal office. Show her a little grace, if not for her then for us, your esteemed colleagues here in the PB lounge.

    Regards & hugs,

    Darren

  15. Tony presser . Our chaps going in “unarmed” announced three times in the first couple of minutes. Apart from that utter non surprise the news content = zero.

  16. Kezza, you’re on the right track there in terms of looking at who gains from weapons sales — to me, it seems Hamas is the best friend arms manufactures ever had.

    IDF doesn’t need to invent an enemy, they are surrounded by them!

  17. Ethiopian women in Israel ‘given contraceptive without consent’

    [The phenomenon was uncovered when social workers noticed the birth rate among Ethiopian immigrants halving in a decade. An Israeli documentary investigating the scandal was aired in December and prompted a popular outcry.]

    […More than 50,000 Ethiopian Jews have immigrated to Israel in the past decade. The fast-growing community has struggled against bias. In 1996, thousands rioted when it was discovered that the Israeli health ministry had destroyed all stocks of blood donated by Ethiopians on the grounds that it might be contaminated with HIV.

    Israel’s health ministry has strongly denied allegations that the injections are part of a policy to control the growth of the Ethiopian community.]

  18. Oh no it gets worse

    “@ABCNews24: Abbott: Our teams are going in unarmed. This is a police mission and has absolutely nothing to do with the politics of Eastern Europe #MH17”

  19. Did Abbott hold up the investigation ? The Ukraine parliament only needed to ratify the agreement if they were to be armed.

    Abbott is running a 100 miles an hour from any suggestions the ADF has anything but the slightest part in things now.

  20. [“@ABCNews24: Abbott: Our teams are going in unarmed. This is a police mission and has absolutely nothing to do with the politics of Eastern Europe #MH17”]
    But PLENTY to do with the politics of Australia!

  21. Abbott rebels “on the ground are polite and respectful” . But Tones I thought they were a bunch of baby eating thugs.

  22. [Our founding federation fathers would be spinning in their graves that the constitutional court is so often being used in this way.]

    It has always been much more than a constitutional court.

    Court 3 in the High Court building has provision for a jury although none has sat since WWII.

    Before Sir Nigel Bowen came up with the idea of the Federal Court, High Court judges could hear, as trial judges, disputes involving interstate parties.

    Richard Ackland recently bemoaned the high proportion of appeals from motor accidents, even asbestos claims the High Court heard. He would prefer it to be doing something he considers more mighty such as bill of rights stuff if we had one.

    I think that is crap.

    The High Court should sit in judgment of the decisions of lower courts when the broader justice of the case and the rights of the parties so decide.

  23. Abbott does double backflip with half twist, from bringing the perpetrators to justice he has moved to get in, get the bodies, and get out. (Hopefully without getting shot).

    Will Abbott release the ONA risk assessment, and if more than 4 people are killed will he call a royal commission into his actions?

  24. Sceptic

    Kelly has taken a series of procedural points (including an attempt to go to the High Court) which have failed at significant cost.

    The substantial case appears unresolved and the Federal Court webpage does not suggest an imminent hearing.

  25. Looking at that satellite view of Goldstein in the article, one wonders how those golf courses can possibly be the most economically efficient use of their land area. Surely it must be worth a lazy few billion?

  26. [guytaur
    Posted Sunday, July 27, 2014 at 4:52 pm | PERMALINK
    He is changing position again

    “@ABCNews24: Abbott: AFP officers will be deployed as part of an unarmed Dutch-led international, humanitarian mission #MH17”]

    I could sort of understand why some sections of the community disliked JG as PM. Mainly because her strong “seemingly uneducated” accent mirrored their own sense of inferiority – you know, they’d been laughed at before – and wanted the BBC-type voice of authority.

    But, when we look at Abbott, an idiot by anyone’s measure – charming though he might be one-to-one – we don’t want a stuttering indecisive slogan-bogan as a leader. And we can all tell a pretentious prick a mile away.

    And, we don’t want a war-mongerer either. We’re sick to death of war. And of PTSD. We, on the ground, are still dealing with the aftermath WWII and of the Vietnam War, let alone the psychoses let loose from Afghanistan and Iraq.

    Abbott’s parents did everything they could to shield him from the horrors of war, yet he seems to be quite willing to be the stooge that leads us into another.

    If only Hockey had belted Abbott in the solar plexus during that rugby match so long ago, or sat on him even.

    Instead Hockey allowed a one-punch jaw-punch and has been second-best ever since. Although it seems, he has been secretly harbouring vengeance.

    Pity it’s not for Australia’s sake, but his own petty over-indulged self-entitled nature.

    In another world, I laughed when Hockey said his wife had advised him not to allow an authorised biography, but the twat Hockey ignored her and asked Abbott for advice.

    And Abbott told him to go for an ‘authorised’ biography.

    Jeezus, Hockey trusted the bastard again.

    Is there any other reason not to think Hockey is an idiot of the first degree?

  27. Zoomster

    Thanks.

    If you read today’s post between Kezza and me you will see that I (stupidly) sincerely tried to provide info she requested.

    She got back to me forcefully, then nastily.

    She believes she mortally offended me with a comment about “dried up testicles” some months ago ……. and that I have been offended ever since…. she seems to have no idea that the testicle business was NA to me, and ironically humorous. It was mentally conveyed to the trash can of my mind immediately on receipt. I could’t give a toss about it.

    She will be unable to find one post where I have been nasty to her except to the extent that I have on occasions responded to her crudity and offensiveness and nastiness, perhaps a bit forcefully.

    She has assured PB numerous times that her life has been so tough that she doesn’t give a shit what people think about her so I guess she won’t change. I guess that’s the nature of the tapestry of life, here and in the real world.

  28. Wonder about the implications of the various negative responses since Morriscum announced that foreign officials will interview the ASs at Curtin.

    Will he back down?

    Will the issue be joined tonthe current HC case?

    Will it spawn another HC case?

  29. psyclaw

    [Will the issue be joined to the current HC case?]

    Curtin does raise the spectre of whether case is so materially different to make it one which should be addressed at a lower level, where facts are normally established by evidence, but on the basis that the persons remain at Curtin(or somewhere else in Oz).

  30. Newspoll should be interesting. I suspect all the turd polishing of Abbott will have the desired effect and probably put him in front on PPM.

    Will the LNPGet a poll bounce out of the Malaysian flight situation. Dunno. I suspect so – seems to be conventional wisdom.

  31. psyclaw

    no worries – with me she suffers from the delusion that I feel slighted because she thinks fran is a better teacher than I am (or something)… you get used to it.

  32. The Baillieau tape matter…… What reporters do these days is such a bore it’s hard to keep enough interest to keep track but have I got this right?

    An age reporter found something out and tried to keep it secret but someone let the secret out; and there has been column meters printed on who let the secret run.

    Do reporters do more than pontificate and try and keep secrets these days?

  33. zoomster@639

    psyclaw

    no worries – with me she suffers from the delusion that I feel slighted because she thinks fran is a better teacher than I am (or something)… you get used to it.

    Hahaha… you and Fran would be quite different teachers but both good IMHO.

  34. psyclaw
    [She believes she mortally offended me with a comment about “dried up testicles” some months ago ……. and that I have been offended ever since…. she seems to have no idea that the testicle business was NA to me, and ironically humorous. It was mentally conveyed to the trash can of my mind immediately on receipt. I could’t give a toss about it.]

    That’s why, of course, you dragged it up – from the depths of your consignment to the trash – just recently.

    And why, ever since, I have apologised to you. I’d forgotten about it, but you hadn’t.

    So don’t come the innocent in this.

    If I sincerely didn’t feel bad for saying that to you, I would never have apologised. I would have ignored you.

    I feel quite a dick for laying my life out for all of you. And quite rightly you’re all sick to death of me.

    But, despite everything, all of you, including you psyclaw, have helped me come to terms with what happened to me.

    I had to say it out loud. Just in case it was normal. And I was over-reacting.

    And I know that there were much much worse things that could have happened. So, when it all got too much, I was lucky to have an outlet here.

    So, a general apology to everyone for being a shit.

    Doesn’t mean I’m not going to say what I think.

  35. [Hahaha… you and Fran would be quite different teachers but both good IMHO.]

    Yes, would be happy with both as teachers of my nieces and nephews!

  36. Will the LNPGet a poll bounce out of the Malaysian flight situation?

    Sooner or later before malaysia has no planes left, the libs appearing to be the only beneficiaries and desperate to utilise what is given

  37. Abbott’s virtue — so far — is the sense of control he brings to the crisis. He is measured yet firm, not overwhelmed by events yet adapting and changing as the situation changes. Paul Kelly

    I agree with Mr Kelly’s insightful comment. Now that all danger has gone from the MH17 crash scene, we no longer need to insert armed troops.
    A lesser strategist than Tony Abbott might not have picked up on the need for this tactical shift.

  38. [Posted Sunday, July 27, 2014 at 5:15 pm | PERMALINK
    Shellbell
    Well posted. Our legal system is not some clone of the Americans]

    No-one suggested it should be. Just that it should not be a trumped up refugee claims tribunal.

  39. An age reporter found something out and tried to keep it secret but someone let the secret out; and there has been column meters printed on who let the secret run

    Didnt try too hard one would think, then left the evidence? divulged the evidence? the coincidences!

  40. [Will the LNPGet a poll bounce out of the Malaysian flight situation?]

    They may, but it will really be because other issues have been pushed into the background. The problems are still there and will not go away.

    Abbott has refused to answer any questions bar M17 for a week, lots of issues are festering in his silence.

  41. Who can make anything of this…..?

    AFP on Yahoo 7 news on line…..

    “…..a number of armed personnel will enter the MH17 crash site next week………………….

    ABC on line………….”an unarmed police group……….for humanitarian purposes…..” will be there.

    I wonder just how the rat bag group of separatists will view any uniformed group in large numbers of foreign armed/unarmed people on their patch?

    All the agreement with the Ukranians is useless unless this abive group gives it the go-ahead and I guess that will depend on what Moscow has to say.

    As I get it, the Ukranians cannot guarantee anything in this neck of the woods.

    Surely not even Abbott would be stupid enough to put our guys at risk in this situation?

  42. Bottom line from all of Abbott’s posturing.

    [There will be a total of 49 police on site, 11 of whom will be Australian]

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