Seat of the week: Menzies

The 2013 election delivered the Liberal Party its biggest margin yet in the eastern Melbourne seat of Menzies, which it had held comfortably since its creation in 1984.

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

Menzies covers eastern Melbourne suburbs from Bulleen at the western end through Templestowe, Doncaster, Donvale and Warrandyte to Wonga Park and Croydon North at the eastern end. It was created with the expansion of parliament in 1984, prior to which the area had been divided between Diamond Valley in the west and Casey in the east. At the time of its creation it extended northwards to Eltham, but this area was exchanged for the Warrandyte end of the electorate in 1996. The entire area is solid or better for the Liberals, who have held the seat at all times by margins of no less than 5.4%. The present margin of 14.5% is the highest in the electorate’s history, following consecutive swings of 2.7% against the statewide trend in 2010 and 5.8% in 2013.

The inaugural member for Menzies was Neil Brown, who had held Diamond Valley from 1969 to 1972 and again from 1975 to 1983, having lost the seat with the defeats of Coalition governments on both occasions. Established in the safe new seat of Menzies from 1985, he served as the party’s deputy leader under John Howard from 1985 to 1987. Brown retired in February 1991 and was succeeded by Kevin Andrews, who won the by-election held the following May without opposition from the Labor Party.

Noted for his religious convictions and social conservatism, Andrews came to prominence when he spearheaded a successful push to overturn Northern Territory euthanasia laws in federal parliament. He was promoted to the outer ministry as Ageing Minister after the 2001 election and then to cabinet in October 2003, serving first as Workplace Relations Minister during the introduction of WorkChoices and then as Immigration Minister from January 2007 until the government’s defeat the following November, in which time he was dogged by the Muhamed Haneef affair.

Andrews was dropped from the Coalition front bench after the November 2007 election defeat, but returned as Shadow Families, Housing and Human Services Minister when Tony Abbott became leader in December 2009. He had played a key role in Abbott’s rise to the leadership, having made a tokenistic challenge to Turnbull’s leadership a week earlier in protest against his support for the Rudd government’s emissions trading scheme. Andrews was back in cabinet following the election of Abbott’s government in September 2013 in the role of Social Services Minister, a newly packaged portfolio encompassing aged care, multicultural affairs and settlement services.

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.

1,188 comments on “Seat of the week: Menzies”

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  4. bemused

    [ e.g. sorting out North Korea.]

    Agree. If the Septics withdrew back to Japan the Chinese would just let North Korea collapse.

    No need for a buffer zone – ‘easy peasy’.

  6. WWP

    [Except there has been no theft of property.]

    No theft of physical property. One can have property in non-physical things.

    [The only property in question is the copyright in the picture – where that copyright owner has suffered an infringement on their statutory rights to exploit the image.]

    Actually, this comes under a much wider set of rules relating to intellectual property, which is not merely about the right to exploit one’s own creative product but to deny its circulation in places that would adversely affect you. During the 2008 and 2012 US Presidential campaign various artists objected to their music being used in GOP promotions.

    [Which of course they weren’t going to use anyway so they’ve suffered no damage.]

    That’s moot. This is about the value of their brand, which is damaged by the circulation of images that invite disrepute and which may put the person at elevated physical risk. You may recall the Ettingshausen case some years back, in which he secured damages (here in defamation) not on the basis of being shown naked in a change room, but on the basis that the publication implied he was the sort of person ho would like to make a disaply of himself.

    Here, we are speaking of a breach of IP since the property remained with the persons in question, and the reasonable belief that the data was secure against unauthorised access and republication. Had they known it was not secure they may have chosen a more secure place to sotre the data, or not created it at all, but that is neither here nor there.

    A person who breaks into your house, sets up a hidden camera and then downloads the most saleable footage to some website for profit is certainly stealing your privacy and for others to enable that person paying to view it is an accessory (possibly unwitting) after the fact to a crime.

    In practice, it is hard to stop stuff like this happening, and once something is on the internet, then it’s out there forever. This is the world we now live in. That doesn’t make it right though, and if I could (figuratively) put my hands on those involved in such conduct, then I’d be imposing some pretty onerous restitution procedures.

  9. [ In practice, it is hard to stop stuff like this happening, and once something is on the internet, then it’s out there forever. ]

    Absolutely. Trying to drum into kids that selfies and messages that seemed like such a cool idea at the time can be out there, out of their control, and come back to bite them later, is really hard.

    Posting these people private pics isnt right, and at least from the unauthorised access perspective i think there is criminality involved. But its still pretty stupid for high profile people to put their private info in such insecure storage.

  10. Re China and Nth Korea
    ____________
    The Chinese will never let N.K “Go” as the presence of US forces in Sth Korea are regarded with great disfavour in Beijing..which also has a great dislike of the US ally Japan
    They fear a reunified Korea would allow US forces to come up to the chinese bordewrt
    They might accept a Korea which gives undertakings re such matters
    In fact Nth Korea depends on China for vital supplies of oil to keep it disasterous economy going

    Any war in the region as Hugh White has said,will involve China and our” best friend “Japan…to quote Abbott

    any takers on PB who would go off to fight for Japan ???????????

  16. Kouk —

    ]The cumulative position was a deficit of $107.3 billion, double the deficit inherited from the previous government and that included the raft of policy measures designed to cut spending and hike taxes. There was no surplus in the forward estimates.]

    […Since the budget in May, things on the budget bottom line have undoubtedly got worse. The government has floundered to get its measures through the Senate and just a short while ago, it had to capitulate to the Palmer United Party over the repeal of the mining tax. That humiliation for the government alone has added a further $6.5 billion to the cumulative budget deficit..]

    [..Budget policy under this government is floundering. They are not delivering. The deficits are getting larger even though they gave commitment after commitment to return to surplus and eliminate government debt.

    They are failing dismally and unfortunately, Australia will be worse for it. Let’s just hope the credit ratings agencies haven’t noticed how poor the policy settings actually are.]

    http://thekouk.com/blog/budget-humiliation-for-joe-hockey.html#.VAVIgTK1ZcR

  17. CTar1@1154

    bemused

    e.g. sorting out North Korea.


    Agree. If the Septics withdrew back to Japan the Chinese would just let North Korea collapse.

    No need for a buffer zone – ‘easy peasy’.

    Pretty much what I had in mind.
    With perhaps, a joint Chinese / US guarantee of the integrity of a united Korea when it comes about.

  23. True one can have property rights not linked to physical things but use of the word ‘theft’ in this context isn’t particularly useful and indeed is deliberately misleading in many of its uses.

    No it doesn’t actually come under a wider set of rules, each jurisdiction will have legislation setting out the rights one has and someone else wrongly exercising or breaching any of those rights contrary to what the rights holder wants is unlawful but I still think theft is the wrong word to use.

    The issues of damages I think is secondary – presumably there are a number of grounds or heads of damage the poor darlings can pursue if indeed they can pin the damage on an entity with cash.

    Although I think we are largely agreed on the privacy angle notwithstanding my intolerance of concept of theft or stealing being misapplied. My biggest gripe which perhaps is the one I’ve expressed poorly and that is that privacy is generally protected, often badly, by laws being stretched and pushed into the privacy field. What we really need in the internet age is a properly considered privacy doctrine – that would almost certainly need criminal sanctions – rather than what we have.

  24. How did I know that centre would be along to celebrate the end of the mining tax?

    BTW, that had nothing to do with the Greens, but never mind.

    Your beloved Tory mates have got what they wanted, so it’s all good in your eyes I suppose.

  27. Surely there is already a law about hacking into someone’s iCloud account and distributing the contents. That’s just got to be illegal.

    Very poor effort by Apple, esp as the hacker got into lots of accounts.

    Apple iCloud just isnt secure enough to trust.

    If I had medical records stored there, I’d be very unhappy.

  31. Diog,

    Apparently MicroSoft’s next OS will see the death of PC’s as we know them. They’ll just become dumb terminals with all programs and data stored in the cloud.

    What could possibly go wrong?

  32. WeWantPaul

    [ True one can have property rights not linked to physical things but use of the word ‘theft’ in this context isn’t particularly useful and indeed is deliberately misleading in many of its uses. ]

    The rules of Copyright are as old as the Printing Press. Nothing has changed because the means of distribution are now electronic rather than mechanical.

    Theft is still theft.

  33. Diog

    This guy got sent down at least.

    [
    In late 2010, the FBI launched the colourfully-named “Operation Hackerazzi” to hunt down a hacker who stole naked pictures from the iPhones and computers of Scarlett Johansson, Mila Kunis and other celebrities.

    The investigation, led by the FBI’s field bureau in Los Angeles, took 11 months but eventually led to the arrest and prosecution of Christopher Chaney, a Florida hacker.

    Johansson taped a tearful statement that was played in court, where she described being “truly humiliated and embarrassed” as her photographs circulated on the internet.

    Chaney was sentenced to ten years in prison.
    ]

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/11068823/FBI-leads-hunt-for-hacker-behind-Jennifer-Lawrence-naked-pictures.html

  34. centre

    [Let’s have a look at the score sheet:

    – Carbon Tax R.I.P.

    – Mining Tax R.I.P.

    Who is next?

    The Greens (not long now) R.I.P.]

    I’ll bite….

    you’re dreaming. for every reaction(ary?) there is an equal and opposite action. climate philistinism and inequitable taxation will bolster the progressive vote. If it is apparent the ALP will win comfortably and the ALP leader is not impressive, then the greens vote will rise. In the senate, the only way to counter PUP and right wing loons is to vote greens to give them balance of power (a big ask if PUP can get a few more up, but hopefully he/they will have imploded by then). Greens have a welded on 10% or so of the vote and this will grow because the 18-30 year olds’ greens vote is higher. the greens vote will fall if the libs moved back to the centre (& you are not the centre), but I can’t see that happening.

  35. [Surely there is already a law about hacking into someone’s iCloud account and distributing the contents. That’s just got to be illegal.
    ]

    there will be – in WA there is a crime, s 440A unauthorized use of a computer system. Many jurisdictions will have similar. The real damage here though isn’t that crime, although it could be punished through that provision, and it isn’t financial damage although you might be able get damages using copyright or defamation or some tort. The real damage seems to be a breach of privacy and the law should protect us all, not just those with public brands that can be damaged.

  37. Ctar

    [swamp

    Don’t send me your money as it will not be worth anything.]

    🙂

    The Scottish Groat will be very strong:

    [The pro-Union economist Professor Brian Ashcroft (husband of former Scottish Labour leader Wendy Alexander) calculated in July 2013 that had Scotland been independent since 1981, it would by now have an accumulated basic budget surplus of at least £68 billion [9]. The real figure, including interest and other benefits, would likely be an “oil fund” of well over £100 billion.
    But instead of that huge surplus, Scotland is part of a UK with a massive £1.4 trillion debt [10] – our population share of the debt is approximately £118 billion.
    In short, membership of the UK for the last 32 years has left Scotland anywhere from £180 billion to £250 billion worse off than it would have been as an independent country.]

  38. [That doesn’t make it right though, and if I could (figuratively) put my hands on those involved in such conduct, then I’d be imposing some pretty onerous restitution procedures.]

    I think imposing some pretty onerous restitution procedures is how Fran Barlow says “beaten with a clue-by-four”.

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