Seat of the week: Jagajaga

Covering the eastern reaches of Melbourne, the electorate of Jagajaga has provided a reasonably secure electoral base for Jenny Macklin’s parliamentary career since 1996.

Jenny Macklin’s electorate of Jagajaga was created with the expansion of parliament in 1984, and covers suburbs in north-eastern Melbourne from Heidelberg and Ivanhoe out to North Warrandyte in the east. Its present area was mostly in the electorate of Bourke from federation until 1926, which accounted for northern Melbourne including Brunswick and Reservoir; Flinders and Indi from 1922 to 1937, which respectively covered its western suburban and eastern interior regions; Deakin from its recreation in 1937 until 1955, at which time Ivanhoe was absorbed by Batman; and Diamond Valley in its eastern parts from 1969 to 1984. When created in 1984, Jagajaga extended north to Bundoora and had the Yarra River as its eastern boundary, with Eltham and its surrounds accommodated by Casey and Menzies. Its present configuration was largely adopted at the redistribution which took effect at the 1996 election.

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

Jagajaga was in part the successor to abolished Diamond Valley, although that seat’s extension into rural areas further to the north made it a marginal seat that went with the government of the day at each election during an existence that ran from 1969 to 1984. Diamond Valley was won narrowly for Labor in 1983 by Peter Staples at the expense of Liberal incumbent Neil Brown, who would return to parliament in 1984 as member for Menzies and later became deputy Liberal leader (and was more recently a contentious appointment to the panel that appoints ABC board directors). Staples secured the considerably more accommodating electoral territory of Jagajaga in 1984, which had a notional Labor margin of 8.4%, and retained the seat until his retirement in 1996, in which time his closest shave was a 2.6% winning margin amid the Victorian anti-Labor backlash of 1990.

Staples was succeeded by Jenny Macklin, a former researcher and state ministerial staffer and member of the Socialist Left. Macklin retained the seat by 2.7% on her electoral debut and secured slightly stronger margins over the the next three elections. After the 2001 election she rose to the position of deputy leader, a position she maintained until Kim Beazley was deposed by Kevin Rudd in December 2006, at which point she made way for Julia Gillard. Macklin also exchanged her education portfolio for family and community services and indigenous affairs, which retained without interruption throughout the six-year saga of the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government. The only change to her workload in government was an exchange of housing for disability reform in December 2011. This continuity has been maintained in opposition, albeit that she relinquished indigenous affairs and families and community services was rebadged as families and payments. In the meantime, Macklin secured her hold on Jagajaga with strong successive swings in 2007 and 2010, respectively pushing her margin out to 9.0% and 11.5%, before a forceful 8.1% swing to the Liberals in 2013 pared it back to 3.1%.

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.

1,057 comments on “Seat of the week: Jagajaga”

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  3. [“We’re not ruling out providing some backup assistance to the Americans as they go in and deal kinetically with this terrorist organisation,” Senator Johnston said.]

    How does one deal kinetically with a terra org? Move I suppose?

  4. WB @ 717

    “Yes Bemused, it represents the views of a government with no scruples whatsoever about telling the most brazen lies…”

    I was certain this was going to be about the Abbott government. Shows how easy it is to jump to conclusions without knowing ALL the facts!

  5. [poroti
    Posted Monday, August 11, 2014 at 4:56 pm | Permalink

    Boerwar

    Get yourself over there with a couple of trucks. Easy money to be had.

    To hire a truck to come the 200 miles from the Kurdish capital Erbil to Baghdad now cost $10,000 for a single journey, compared to $500 a month earlier.]

    Yeah… but think of the overheads: a squadron of Apaches for starters.

  8. confessions

    The sanctions imposed on Carlton for salary cap breaches set the club back 10 years. Add to the fact that there are now 18 teams in the competition, Premierships are hard to win

  9. Hmmm – I’m not sure what to make of Newspoll. They kind of bucked the trend to a large extent by staying 54-46, when others shifted closer to 52-48.

    I think a further deterioration would send them to total panic stations. Although the snippet about expectations of personal circumstances falling so sharply could suggest that.

    I just find it odd… I’ll going to err on the side of caution and go 53-47 …

  10. [ CTar1

    Posted Monday, August 11, 2014 at 4:37 pm | Permalink

    William

    I am, of course, completely innocent in this outburst of page wasting and wish to strongly disassociate myself with the frivolous behaviour of ‘others’ commenting here.

    BCat’s – ‘SUPER­CALI­FRAGI­LISTIC­EXPI­ALI­DOCIOUS’ – how f’ing obvious, a real ‘wanta – be’. FFS, spare me some small mercies.]

    —————————————–

    OK Ctar1 – hang shit on me for contributing …. and calling me a wannabe ….

    To be honest I hate it when people use bigwords to make themselves sound more intelligent, I’m just of the persuasion it’s exorbitantly egregious.

    I’ll retaliate by shortening :

    UP U’RS ………………………….. 😉

  11. Kinetically, eh?

    Johnston was probably thinking of something like:

    ‘…a thermodynamically favoured reaction is one where the change of Gibbs free energy i.e. delta G is highly negative. ‘kinetically inert’ means that the activation energy required for product formation is very high.
    have a look at this: it may be helpful
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermodynam.’

    I guess that when the US bombs the bejesus out of a jihadi they need high activation energy for product formation and that Johnston has offered to provide some activation energy.

    I don’t know why everyone thinks that no-one in the Government could sell electric blankets to eskimos.

  12. [Why did Abbott go to the Netherlands when the the US State and Defense secretaries arrived in Australia?
    ]

    One thing is certain, the Secretaries of State and Defense will be wanting a commitment that Australia provide substantial support to the US action in Iraq.

  13. Qanda panel

    Greg Combet – Former Labor Minister
    Sussan Ley – Assistant Minister for Education
    Jennifer Robinson – Human Rights Lawyer
    John Stackhouse – Visiting Christian Scholar
    Simon Breheny – Editor of FreedomWatch

  15. [ citizen

    Posted Monday, August 11, 2014 at 5:11 pm | Permalink

    One thing is certain, the Secretaries of State and Defense will be wanting a commitment that Australia provide substantial support to the US action in Iraq.
    ]

    —————————————

    Maybe we can have a stickybeak and see if we can find them peskie WMDs that the septics can’t seem to ????

  24. That Morgan seems to back up the earlier article about disillusion with democracy mainly the major parties.

    No loss of votes for the Minors

  25. The ALP maintains a two-party preferred lead in all Australian States. New South Wales: ALP 53.5%
    cf. L-NP 46.5%, Victoria: ALP 58% cf. L-NP 42%, Queensland: ALP 55% cf. L-NP 45%, Western
    Australia: ALP 53% cf. L-NP 47%, South Australia: ALP 57.5% cf. L-NP 42.5% and Tasmania: ALP
    61.5% cf. L-NP 38.5%.]

    Not pretty reading for Liberals.

  26. Seems Pyne has a lot to answer for.

    [Analysis by Age group shows the ALP with its strongest advantage among younger Australians
    most affected by the Abbott Government’s proposed requirements on Australians collecting
    unemployment benefits. 18-24yr olds favour the ALP (67.5%, up 7%) cf. L-NP (32.5%, down 7%);
    25-34yr olds favour the ALP (66.5%, up 2%) cf. L-NP (33.5%, down 2%); 35-49yr olds favour the ALP
    (58%, up 2%) cf. L-NP (42%, down 2%); ]

  31. If our politicians are responsible for the drawing our boundaries, this would would have been called Mackamander. Or is it Jennimander?

  32. [ISIS has always been good at generating scary stories about itself, like the notion that it was kicked out of Al Qaeda for being “too extreme.”]

    It’s hard to tell if it’s a deliberate ploy but all those decapitated heads on fence posts looked pretty convincing evidence that they really are totally nuts to me.

  35. [Having said that, I must confess that I cannot credit anyone who doubts the plane was shot down by separatists with much intelligence.]

    Not having been to the site, I don’t hold an opinion.

    I know what’s been in the newspapers and on-line mainstream news sites. I know that most everyone’s jumped to the conclusion that it was a Russian rocket manned by either Russians or their Separatist pals.

    But I also know that the Russians have put out alternative theories, and that there are other perhaps less reputable theories going around.

    What I also know is that I’ve hardly ever heard a word of truth out of Abbott’s mouth, or one that he later doesn’t contradict, so he’s already behind the 8-ball with me in the “credibility” stakes.

    Ditto for neat, convenient solutions from US military sources, that in the past have turned out to be utterly and completely wrong, if not deliberate lies.

    So in the end I don’t really know what theory to lean towards. But I wouldn’t call anyone who remains a skeptic as necessarily lacking credit in the intelligence area.

    I’ve seen too many neatly packaged stories and heard too many neatly packaged lies from “official” sources to just automatically suspend well earned disbelief and just automatically trust them this time.

  37. Note, that earlier Newspoll article today about expectations of personal circumstances was actually asked at the end of June. check the cahrt below. Probably not part of their polling group at that time (remember they do lots of non political surveys every week), and certainly not the same group of people for tonight,s main political poll. Its no indication of tonight’s result.

  38. vic

    [It is being reported that Chris Judd is playing on next year]

    All is then sunny and good. I’ll buy a very expensive bottle of Shirah in the early morning and drop it in the driveway to celebrate this most fortuitous thing/happening (?).

    Happy ( 👿 )

  42. [Analysis by Age group shows the ALP with its strongest advantage among younger Australians]

    Great. If only they voted…

  44. Those poll numbers explain why Abetz should have avoided The Project. The audience is hostile as its supposed to be a younger audience.

  47. [Who’s Chris Judd?
    ]

    Rebecca Twigleys husband. He has a penchant for bringing the strappado method of torture to the AFL.

  50. lol

    Josh Taylor ‏@joshgnosis 2m

    Maybe the ABC could commission a TV series where John Howard shows us his favourite types of coal.

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