Seat of the week: Flinders

Presently held for the Liberals by Environment Minister Greg Hunt, the Mornington Peninsula and Phillip Island seat of Flinders was famously lost by Prime Minister Stanley Bruce in 1929, but Labor has only managed to win it on two further occasions since.

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

Environment Minister Greg Hunt’s seat of Flinders encompasses the southern part of Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula, including the mouth of Port Phillip Bay at Portsea, along with the area around Westernport Bay further to the east, including Phillip Island. Its territory along Port Phillip Bay commences at Mount Martha, 60 kilometres to the south of central Melbourne, from which it extends through Dromana, Rosebud and Rye to Sorrento and Portsea, an area popular with retirees. Its other major centres are Somerville in the centre of the Mornington Peninsula and Hastings along the western shore of Westernport Bay. The electorate has existed federation, and has covered almost the entirety of its present area since that time. It originally extended north to Dandenong and east to Drouin, Warragul and Leongatha, before the latter areas were absorbed by the new seat of McMillan when parliament expanded in 1949, and the electorate of Bruce was created to accommodate Melbourne’s south-eastern expansion in 1955.

Flinders has been won by Labor on only three occasions in its history, the most memorable being the defeat of the then Prime Minister, Stanley Bruce, in 1929. Bruce recovered the seat in 1931, and it would next be won by Labor at a by-election in 1952, before returning to the Liberal fold at the next general election in 1954. Phillip Lynch came to the seat in 1966, going on to serve as Treasurer in the first term of the Fraser government, then resigning a month before the December 1977 election over his use of a family trust to minimise tax. Lynch returned to cabinet after the election upon being cleared by an inquiry as Industry and Commerce Minister, the Treasury portfolio remaining with his successor, John Howard. His retirement precipitated a momentous by-election in November 1982, at which Peter Reith retained the seat for the Liberals in the face a surprisingly mild swing of 2.3%. This sealed Bill Hayden’s fate as Labor leader, and he was toppled by Bob Hawke on the day Malcolm Fraser called the 1983 election the following February. It was at that election that Labor won Flinders for the third and so far final time, with Reith losing to Labor’s Robert Chynoweth without having had the opportunity to assume the seat he had won at the by-election.

With the enlargement of parliament at the 1984 election, Chynoweth moved to the slightly safer new seat of Dunkley, and Reith recovered Flinders with a swing of 1.5%. Reith held the seat with fair-to-middling margins until he retired after an eventful five years as a Howard government minister in 2001. He was then succeeded by Greg Hunt, who gained a secure hold on the seat with consecutive swings of 3.9% in 2001 and 3.5% in 2004. Hunt won promotion to parliamentary secretary in January 2007, and then to shadow cabinet in the important climate change and environment portfolio after the 2007 election defeat. He has maintained the environment portfolio ever since, although the climate change portfolio was abolished after the Abbott government came to power. Hunt’s present margin in the seat is 11.9%, following a 2.8% swing in his favour at the 2013 election.

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.

1,285 comments on “Seat of the week: Flinders”

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  1. [1111
    confessions

    dave:

    This Putin vs Abbott crap is exactly the kind of inane, vacuous peripheral beloved by the Canberra press gallery, and just the kind of thing they’d get caught up in when the G20 finally arrives here.]

    Politics is reported as if it were a contact sport – a display of torrid sorties, tackles, replays, red-cards, stoppages, goals and misses, challenges and changing scorelines – that are essentially all completely meaningless and register only as spectacle and in the adrenalin count of those watching and commenting.

    If political news is now a genre within sports journalism, it can be no surprise. Sports reporting is the only thing that keeps newspapers going and sportscasting is the only product line that makes money for free-to-air networks. As well, after decades of refinement, the production values are all well-understood, both by the transmitters and the (essentially passive and transient) receivers. Like sport, political reporting and broadcasting is also very cheap to produce and comes prepacked by the various teams. The inter-mediation of political theatre is easy money for the MSM.

    Yesterday, Abbott took politics-as-sport one step further and attempted (at least imaginatively) to swap diplomacy for brawling, and to introduce the values of the coliseum to the international relations. That is quite a step, and reveals how little regard he has for those (sports fans) who comprise his audience.

  3. zoomster and bw

    My comments on Ebola have only been about the government sending support to the African countries where it is out of control based on professional advise.

    I agree with you both about over hyping it. The media is certainly doing that. eg The US transmission. CNN is reporting the nurse that came down with it received a blood transfusion from a person who had recovered from the virus.

    Lots of speculation in a fact vacuum.

  4. zoomster

    It is complicated. There are good reasons and bad reasons.

    (1) FUD sells media. It shifts priorities.
    (2) WHO was asking for a billion dollars to deal with Ebola.

    IMHO it is close to inevitable that something will come along which breaches the world’s defences. It would have the following characteristics:

    (1) dissimilar from existing organisms
    (2) good at hiding itself from the immune system
    (3) extremely highly infectious via multiple vectors
    (4) no initial symptoms
    (5) long gestation period during all of which it is highly infectious
    (6) very short symptoms period
    (7) extremely high mortality
    (8) viral.

    That said, the positive side is that it is in the nature of epidemics that the bugs attenuate and that the victims develop resistance. So even the truly massive death events in the Americas by way of introduced diseases, like small pox and influenza, did not kill everyone. Just nearly every one: tens of millions of them.

    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_history_of_the_indigenous_peoples_of_the_Americas

    I am not aware of a disease that has eliminated entirely a host population and would be curious to know if it has, in fact, happened.

  6. There is a definite pattern forming –

    Abbott abolishes carbon reduction measures – China moves to introduce them.

    Abbott abolishes Resource Tax – China moves to introduce them.

    Abbott says “The trajectory {of coal} should be up and up and up in the years and decades to come,” and “coal is good for humanity” – China indicates further pressure on coal producers to clean up their act.

    …

    [ The cloud over China’s coal imports

    Beijing stunned Australian coal miners and free trade agreement negotiators last week with a tariff increase on coking and thermal coals….

    …The Abbott government is trying urgently to find the reasons behind the surprise increase and is pinning its hopes on signing the free trade agreement to reverse this damaging policy change

    …However, at the same time as people are indignant over the Chinese protectionist move, Beijing also introduced a long-awaited coal resource tax of between 2 and 10 per cent on the country’s already struggling domestic coal producers.

    Why is Beijing introducing the much debated resource tax on the struggling coal industry while simultaneously lifting tariffs to protect it?

    The introduction of a comprehensive nation-wide resource tax is one of the top fiscal reform priorities for Beijing. The Chinese government has been running several pilot schemes with different resource-rich provinces for the past four years.

    …The biggest and most significant move for the new tax is to shift from volume-based taxation to ad valorem taxation; the move is designed to better reflect fluctuating commodities price.

    Another reason for the introduction of ad valorem tax on coal is to better reflect the environmental costs of coal mining in China. The country is the world’s largest producer and consumer of coal and is in the midst of a worsening environmental crisis.

    Beijing was once again shrouded in grey smog last weekend and we should not underestimate public anger about air quality nor Beijing’s resolve to mitigate the harm.

    In future, it seems that both domestic and foreign coal producers will come under increasing pressure. ]

    http://www.businessspectator.com.au/

  8. A Pravda opinion piece said this about Tony Abbott’s shirtfront comment:

    Tony Abbott displays a degree of insolence, arrogance and incompetence which mirrors the intrusiveness, belligerence and chauvinism inherent in other members of the Anglo Saxon alliance in NATO.

    Once again, we see a country whose political class is divorced from the collective will of its people, yet we see a politician who thinks it is cool to be rude, insolent, insulting, impolite, impertinent, unpolished, gross, unpleasant and downright impudent.

    http://www.msn.com/en-au/news/australia/tony-abbotts-views-on-vladimir-putin-spark-angry-reaction-from-russia/ar-BB99VnZ

  10. [1156
    dave

    There is a definite pattern forming –

    Abbott abolishes carbon reduction measures – China moves to introduce them.

    Abbott abolishes Resource Tax – China moves to introduce them.

    Abbott says “The trajectory {of coal} should be up and up and up in the years and decades to come,” and “coal is good for humanity” – China indicates further pressure on coal producers to clean up their act.]

    The pattern is that Abbott is hunting for votes in Queensland, Victoria and NSW.

  11. Zoomster

    I agree about the overblown SARS and bird flue hype but not so much about Ebola.

    Now I am actually trained in medical micro(long time ago) but I know that if you work in the area you really look forward to finding a disease. Makes your job seem worthwhile. I worked in the Customs labs for a while and when once every two years or so they actually FOUND some salmonella or shigella in an import or export there was cheering. The Sars and bird flu epidemics need to be seen in that context.

    However Ebola is a different case. The virus is as they say “virulent” if only for a short time during the final acute stages but the death rate is high. Unlike the Sars/Flu epidemics it kills everyone, not the old and already sick. The death is painful and unpleasant which makes it much scarier that Sars or the flu.

    We certainly DO have much better control techniques and treatments which should make us cope well. I am however concerned should Ebola establish itself in India, Mexico, or the USA because them it would be very hard to contain.

  12. What tickles me is that you could sub Putin in for Abbott and references to NATO or the West for appropriate references to CIS power and you’d be able to run Pravda’s column in the Herald Sun.

  13. [1158
    Nicholas]

    While many of us will agree with Pravda (how often does that happen?), Abbott and his fan club will take Pravda’s rebuke as an affirmation of their righteousness.

  15. z,

    I see the panic stricken chooks of PB are now trying to screw their heads back on after they have come to realise their hysterics are being mocked for the silliness that they were.

    I agree with you about a number of epidemic scares of recent years. The consistent theme is that high paid people in UN type jobs feel it necessary to declare existential threat each time a virus takes hold. The result over time is that you tend to become cynical about attempts to scare and manipulate the public through fear, uncertainty and doubt.

    No doubt Ebola is a prety nasty virus. However, it is not yet in a position to cut swathes through the population.

    The notion yesterday that we should send doctors and nurses in to infected areas without a proper understanding of the virus pathology, understanding the safety risks and also without proper evacuation procedures in place is pure folly.

    Sure it is romantic but so was the Charge of the Light Brigade, sending Aussie Diggers over the top at Gallipoli and the siege of the Alamo.

    For mine, cool heads need to prevail. I also trust our Government and its efforts far more than I’ll ever trust the rants of the PB talkatariat.

  17. Umm, we do have a very good idea of the virus pathology and the safety risks.

    Arguably we’d be better off spending $500m developing an evacuation plan and contributing to Ebola containment in West Africa than we bombing goats in Iraq.

  18. The racket that is Chinese trade data….

    http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2014-10-13/fake-invoice-doubts-revived-as-china-trade-skyrockets.html

    [Fake Invoice Doubts Revived as China Trade Skyrockets

    Hong Kong unexpectedly overtook the U.S. in September as the top destination for Chinese shipments. Not everyone is convinced those flows were genuine.

    Analysts at banks including Everbright Securities Co., Australia & New Zealand Banking Group Ltd. and Bank of Communications Co. said over-invoicing and over-reporting may explain the 34 percent surge in exports to Hong Kong from a year earlier.

    A discrepancy between Hong Kong data for imports from China and Chinese figures for exports to the city in the past highlighted the practice of over-invoicing that’s used to disguise capital inflows to bet on China’s rising currency. China’s exports increased 15.3 percent from a year earlier, the biggest increase since February 2013 and beating the 12 percent median estimate in a Bloomberg survey of analysts, according to government data released yesterday, prompting deja vu for some.

    “Signs of distortion might have re-emerged in the trade data,” Xu Gao, chief economist at Everbright Securities, said in a note yesterday. “If policy makers overestimate external demand due to these fake trade figures and reduce the efforts to stabilize growth domestically, the outlook for the economy will be very worrying.”

    Xu, who formerly worked at the World Bank, pointed out the surge in exports included shipments of precious metals, which have been at the center of dodgy invoicing in the past. Government policies to support exports “seem to have stimulated fake exports instead,” he said.]

  19. GG

    The silliness was by you. I was making sensible comments based on what professionals were saying. You were saying that was chicken little stuff showing your ignorance.

    That was your fail.

  21. teh,

    Not really. The AMericans are trying to work out how the nurse contracted the disease in Texas. She apparently says she followed correct procedures and protocols, yet still has contracted the disease.

  23. briefly,

    It’s always easy to be a cynic. However, in this situation you have to trust what the Government is saying.

  27. guytaur,

    Being an expert at copy and paste does not make you intelligent, an authority or a trusted source of information.

    Smart people look at all the facts available to them before making decisions that lead to people being put in harms way for any reason.

    You did say earlier that there is a fact vaccuum.

    So you advocating any and every nugget of data as the justification for your hysterical unthought through schemes is pathetic.

    As I said earlier, you have walked it back a bit today. But your embarrassment will live forever on the eralier pages of this thread.

  28. [1173
    Greensborough Growler

    briefly,

    It’s always easy to be a cynic. However, in this situation you have to trust what the Government is saying.]

    Why trust them on this? They are untrustworthy on just about everything else.

    The reluctance of the Government to get involved has little or nothing to do with the pathology, the epidemiology or contingency plans medical personnel. It is because African problems are not ours. They belong to someone else. Abbott is happy to play toy soldiers in Iraq because it fits with his conception of “leadership”; but doing works of medical salvation in Africa is not for him. He is not that kind of leader. He’s a fighter, not a healer.

  29. teh_drewski

    [I don’t know of any virus or bacteria that has a 100% fatality rate so it would seem to be unlikely.]

    There’s always a trade-off. The more lethal the virus the less well it spreads (because it kills off the hosts). While viruses don’t have a point of view, if they had one they’d prefer their hosts to live and pass themselves on. Death of the host is a mistake because that’s really the end of the line for them unless they can find a new transmission vehicle.

    Viruses that are lethal but have long incubation periods do better (especially if they pass through processes typical of the hosts) because the host can pass them on to large numbers of others, but then by definition, the deaths are attenuated.

    Viruses like the flu are far better at propagating precisely because they are less lethal and mutate more easily.

  30. guytaur,

    I see you’ve returned to your fallback position as the diary secretary.

    Lots of posts , but you don’t seem to have anything to offer the dsicussion.

  32. GG

    Umm!! I believe 160 or so medical professors called for us to send medical professionals. If I had to choose between 165 medical Professors and Tony Abbot I think I will go with the professors.

  33. briefly

    Working out the answsers before you collect and report the data is a handy government management attribute.

    OTOH, if you then behave as if your rubbish is right, you really are a dill.

  34. GG

    I have walked nothing back. The professional advise is the same now as it was then. In fact Kate Ellis said similar on QandA last night.

  35. [1173
    Greensborough Growler]

    Abbott lives in a world of heroes and villains. He is the stereotypical hero and wants to be seen that way, which is why he likes the military associations so much; it’s why he likes a bit of fire-fighting and surf-life-saving.

    The hero in a medical emergency is not the soldier-politician. It’s the nurse, the doctor, the orderly and the lab worker. Abbott does not want to be the bloke in the white coat and mask. He wants to remembered as the bloke in the cockpit of the Hornet, dropping humanitarian ordnance.

  36. ABC 24 has been very amateurish this morning, chopping back and forth between the News Desk, Jacqui Lambie and the weather. Too many technical glitches and evidence of poor communication and coordination.

    Jacqui seems to like Vlad.

  38. US GDP is about eleven times Australia’s GDP.

    US contribution to Ebola is fifty one times larger than Australia.

    On Ebola, like on AGW, Australia is punching below its weight.

  39. BW

    I refer you simply to Wikipaedia which has an extensive discussion on the great plagues and the possible causative agents. While there is some evidence for Yersinia Pestis (bubonic plague) it is not especially strong. The pneumonic theory is a bit of an afterthought add on to explain discrepancies rather than clear knowledge (I know we all read the Plague at school but it might not be so). I also was taught and fully believed the Rat theory but I know that since the 1980s there have been many who doubt it.

    By the way I NEVER implied that there was similarity between Yesinia pestis and ebola. Obviously not. There is however a distant association between AIDS and Ebola, and it is from AIDS work that the genetic immunity stuff has stemmed.

  42. There’s an analog between viruses and humans. A virus that kills its host destroys its home. It has to find a way to jump ship to another host. Mutation might help so that it spreads more efficiently or can jump species.

    A virus that wipes out its host population goes extinct, as does a creature that destroys its habitat.

    So I expect that pathogen evolution would tend towards easier transmissability and lower virulence. The analog for humans in the long term would be to develop space travel like the aliens in Independence Day or live sustainably.

  43. [Once again, we see a country whose political class is divorced from the collective will of its people, yet we see a politician who thinks it is cool to be rude, insolent, insulting, impolite, impertinent, unpolished, gross, unpleasant and downright impudent.]

    It’s like watching car racing for the accidents.

  44. [1181
    Greensborough Growler

    briefly,

    I know we should just appoint you King.

    But, too many others in the line at the minute.]

    I am no such claimant, merely a typist, temping. Nice idea though, for some…

    “From Shakespeare’s Twelfth Night, 1602:

    Malvalio:
    In my stars I am above thee; but be not afraid of greatness: some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some have greatness thrust upon ’em.”

  45. dtt

    [Following up on yesterday’s Ebola discussion – and do not accuse me -this is a new book from respected scientists – it now seems probable that the three great plagues of Europe –
    Justinian,The Black Death and The London Plague were probably caused by Ebola or a close relative.]

    Um, ebola is a virus. The Black Death and the London Plague were bacterial.

    the evidence is strong which I summarise as:

    [1. Fact that Scandinavians got the plagues but there are no rat fleas (too cold)_]

    See aerosol spread once the disease moved from bubonic to pneumonic.

    [2. Quarantine actually worked which would not have been the case with a rat transmitted infection]

    This absolute statement would need to be supported with detailed data on the local and regional movement of people, rats, their fleas and Yersinia. This data does not exist. Variables include: the nexus between rats, people, the movement of both, temperature, population density, and speed of movement. These variables would have to take into account that quarantine will slow the spread of aerosol-based pneumonic plague.

    [3. These plagues spread too fast for Bubonic plague.]

    Proof?

    [4. The reported symptoms including bleeding from the nose are very Ebola like]

    Gimme a break. There are dozens of symptoms that are Ebola like. BTW, do Ebola victims develop buboes?

    [5. The presence of a genetic marker in plague affected areas of Europe which emerged after the plague and gives some resistance to many viruses in the same mega family (including AIDS). This is just what to expect in survivors after a huge plague.]

    They would have to demonstrate that the only thing killing people during Plagues was Bubonic Plague. The general breakdowns may well have caused other epidemics, masked by the attention place on Plague.

  46. GG – the Spanish nurse who contracted it claimed she’d followed all required procedures too…until she admitted she probably didn’t.

    It’s vastly more likely that this transmission will turn out to be human or institutional error than some thus far unknown property of Ebola that allows it to pass through containment procedures. Refusing to do anything to help in the meantime is an abdication of morality, frankly.

  47. [1190
    victoria

    briefly

    What say you?]

    I think he’s right.

    There are signs of deceleration in industrial output, especially in the EU and emerging markets, reflecting in declining commodity prices and falling growth rates.

    This is already undermining equity markets and, if it continues, will affect risk-appetite and capital flows, including flows into/away from the AUD.

    Others are more optimistic, but this business cycle has been running a long time and may have peaked. We will soon know one way or another.

    I know that in the industries with which I’m most familiar there have been many years of over-investment, leading to excess production, glutted markets, steeply falling prices and business closures. This is the end-of-boom play that’s been seen so often before and is back again.

  48. guytaur
    Posted Tuesday, October 14, 2014 at 12:08 pm | PERMALINK
    GG

    [I see you are back to abuse as your argument. Lots of posts with no substance]

    It appears to me guytaur that anyone that does not agree on a bended knee to your opinion is either abusive or their posts lack any substance.

  49. My problem with the cry wolf-ers in the financial markets is that most of them have been at it for the best part of a decade now – trying to figure out if this is finally the time they’re right is beyond me.

  50. boomy

    GG was trying smear by saying I only copy and paste after quoting me from a post where I did not copy and paste.

    That’s abuse with no substance or just idiocy.

    You might want to think on that

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