Category: Federal Election 2016

Brand is one of three Western Australian seats retained by Labor at the 2010 and 2013 elections, all of which are about to be vacated by their sitting members. The electorate covers Perth’s outer southern coastal suburbs, from the Kwinana heavy industrial zone through the Rockingham town centre to the edge of the metropolitan area at Singleton. It had hitherto extended south into the northern suburbs of Mandurah, but the redistribution has ceded this area and its 17,000 voters to Canning. This has been slightly to the advantage of Labor in Brand, boosting the margin by 0.9% to 3.8%.

2013 ELECTION RESULTS (ADJUSTED FOR REDISTRIBUTION)

PAST RESULTS

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Brand was created with the expansion of parliament in 1984, from territory that had historically been accommodated by Canning and Forrest. It has been in Labor hands at all times, thanks to the party’s strength in Rockingham and especially around Kwinana. However, the Liberals are strong in growing suburbs south of Port Kennedy, and inland of Rockingham at Baldivis. Wendy Fatin held the seat from its creation until 1996, when it provided an escape hatch for Kim Beazley after one close scrape too many in Swan. Beazley’s move only just delivered the desired result, as the anti-Labor backlash of 1996 reduced his winning margin to just 387 votes, with Labor spending the week after its election defeat unsure if he would be available to assume the leadership. Having been established as leader, Beazley picked up an 11.1% swing in 1998 to record a comfortable win in his own seat for the first time since 1987, and his hold on Brand was secure thereafter.

Beazley bowed out of politics at the November 2007 election, held nearly a year after he lost the Labor leadership to Kevin Rudd. His successor in Brand was Gary Gray, the party’s national secretary at the 1996 and 1998 elections, and later an executive with mining giant Woodside. Labor’s margin changed little on Gray’s watch, with a 1.0% swing in his favour in 2007 followed by successive swings to the Liberals of 2.3% and 0.5% in 2010 and 2013. Gray served in cabinet as Minister for Resources and Energy, Tourism and Small Business from March 2013 until Labor’s defeat the following September. He announced his intention to retire from politics in February, saying at the time it was “highly unlikely” that Bill Shorten would win the election. Shorten refused to accept Gray’s resignation from the front bench, but removed Shadow Special Minister of State from his portfolio responsibilities a fortnight later, after he criticised Labor’s position on Senate reform in parliament.

The vacancy created by Gray’s resignation in Brand resolved an affirmative action headache for Labor, which had a male candidate lined up to succeed Alannah MacTiernan in Perth and two male contestants for preselection to replace Melissa Parke in Fremantle. The new candidate is Madeleine King, chief operating officer of the international policy think tank Perth USAsia Centre, who won preselection without opposition. The Liberal candidate is Craig Buchanan, community relations officer at the Peter Carnley Anglican Community School.

Fremantle encompasses coastal southern Perth from North Fremantle to Henderson, and extends inland at its southern end to encompass Jandakot and Banjup. The redistribution has truncated an area of Liberal strength on the southern bank of the Swan River, with 10,000 voters in Bicton, Willagee and Kardinya transferred to Tangney, boosting the Labor margin from 4.8% to 5.8%. A concentration of Greens support around the town of Fremantle allowed the party to win the state seat at a by-election in 2009, but the party is considerably weaker in the southern areas included in the larger federal electorate. Fremantle is one of three seats left to Labor in Western Australia after consecutive electoral disasters in 2010 and 2013, and was the only seat retained at Labor’s historic low-water mark of 1975 and 1977. All three of the Labor-held seats are to be vacated at the election, the retiring member in this case being Melissa Parke, the member since 2007.

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Metropolitan Perth was divided between the divisions of Fremantle and Perth when electoral boundaries were first drawn at federation, with both covering considerably larger areas than their namesake electorates today. Only with the expansion of parliament in 1949 did the port city dominate the Fremantle electorate to the extent of making it safe for Labor. John Curtin came to the seat in 1928 when he unseated an independent, William Watson, who recovered it in the anti-Labor landslide of 1931 as the candidate of the United Australia Party. Curtin won the seat back in 1934 and succeeded Jim Scullin as Labor leader the following year, although he was again run close in Fremantle in 1940.

After leading the country through the sharp end of the war years, and picking up a 19% swing in Fremantle in 1943, Curtin became only the second prime minister to die in office in July 1945. Fremantle was retained for Labor at the ensuing by-election by Kim Beazley, Sr, who would eventually serve as Education Minister in the Whitlam government. Later members for Fremantle were Keating government Treasurer John Dawkins, from 1977 to 1994, and former Premier Carmen Lawrence, who picked up a rare pro-government swing in the by-election that followed Dawkins’ resignation. Lawrence was succeeded on her retirement at the 2007 election by Melissa Parke, a Left-aligned former United Nations human rights lawyer who rose to the outer ministry when Kevin Rudd returned to the leadership in June 2013. Parke resigned from the shadow outer ministry in 2014 citing personal and family reasons, and become more assertive in her criticisms of party policy on national security and asylum seeker issues from her position on the back bench.

Parke’s retirement announcement in January 2016 initiated a preselection contest that was won by Chris Brown, a former waterfront worker who has had a rapid rise in politics since taking on a job as an organiser with the Maritime Union of Australia a year ago. The union leveraged its growing strength in the WA branch into a deal that gave Brown overwhelming support from the union delegates who determined half the preselection vote. The local branch membership ballot, contributing a quarter of the overall result, was won 155-110 by Josh Wilson, chief-of-staff to Melissa Parke and deputy mayor of Fremantle. The Liberals have endorsed Sherry Sufi, former staffer to state MP Michael Sutherland and chair of the state party’s policy committee, who has gained a reputation as an arch-conservative. Sufi was preselected ahead of Pierrette Kelly, a staffer to Senator Chris Back, and Philip Mercer, owner of a local solar business. The Greens candidate is Kate Davis, solicitor for tenants’ rights organisation Tenancy WA.

Held for Labor by Shadow Treasurer Chris Bowen, the electorate of McMahon covers two distinct suburban areas separated by Prospect Reservoir and adjoining semi-rural areas. At the eastern end, about 30 kilometres from central Sydney, are the town centre of Fairfield, the Smithfield-Weatherill Park industrial zone and surrounding suburbs, accounting for around three-quarters of the electorate’s voters; and in the north-west are the City of Penrith suburbs of St Clair and Erskine Park. The redistribution has cut territory south of Wetherill Park, sending 22,000 voters around Bossley Park to Fowler, and pushed it eastwards into Merrylands and Guildford, adding 15,000 from Blaxland and 8000 from Parramatta. A further transfer adds Minchinbury at the north-western end of the electorate, adding 4000 voters north of the Western Motorway who were formerly in Chifley. The electorate was called Prospect prior to 2013, when it was renamed in honour of the late former Prime Minister, Sir William McMahon.

2013 ELECTION RESULTS (ADJUSTED FOR REDISTRIBUTION)

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Prospect came into existence at the 1969 election, covering territory that had previously been divided between Mitchell and Werriwa in the east, and Macarthur in the west. The area is today distinguished by wide variation in ethnic diversity, with English speakers accounting for over three-quarters of the population in St Clair and Erskine Park compared with barely a fifth around Fairfield, home to large Arabic and Vietnamese populations. This is broadly reflected in income levels, with family income in the former areas roughly double those of the latter. Labor has held the seat without interruption since its creation in 1969, Chris Bowen’s predecessors having been Richard Klugman until 1990, and Janice Crosio thereafater. However, the Labor margin has been pared back by swings to the Liberals of 5.8% in 2004, 6.0% in 2010 and 2.5% in 2013, punctuated by a 7.1% swing to Labor in 2007. Labor’s hold appeared to be further imperilled with the draft redistribution boundaries were published last year, proposing that Fairfield be removed to Fowler by setting Smithfield Road as the south-eastern boundary. This would have pared the margin back to 2.1%, which reportedly had Bowen eyeing a move to Fowler, whose member Chris Hayes could have been accommodated in Werriwa with the retirement of Laurie Ferguson.

Chris Bowen served his political apprenticeship as chief-of-staff to state government minister Carl Scully, and with the backing of the Right won preselection to Prospect in 2004. He was promoted to the opposition front bench in 2006, became Assistant Treasurer and Minister for Competition Policy and Consumer Affairs with the election of the Rudd government in 2007, and was elevated to cabinet in June 2009 in the human services, financial services, superannuation and corporate law portfolios. After the 2010 election he was delivered the hospital pass of immigration and citizenship, before briefly reassigned to tertiary education, skills, science and research in February 2013. A month later he formed part of an exodus from cabinet resulting from the collapse of a bid to draft Kevin Rudd to the leadership, together with Martin Ferguson and Kim Carr. When Rudd finally toppled Gillard in June, Bowen was appointed Treasurer. He has retained the Treasury portfolio in the shadow cabinet, and spent nearly a month after the 2013 election as acting Opposition Leader pending the outcome of Labor’s leadership election between Bill Shorten and Anthony Albanese.

Held by senior Labor front-bencher Tony Burke, the electorate of Watson covers inner suburban territory roughly 15 kilometres south-west of central Sydney, from Strathfield and Burwood Heights at the city end to Punchbowl and Lakemba further afield. The electorate was called St George from its creation in 1949 until 1993, reflecting the unofficial name of the Hurstville, Rockdale and Kogarah area of Sydney on which it was then centred. Watson was drawn further away from its traditional base when the 2010 redistribution abolished its northern neighbour, Lowe, from which it absorbed southern Strathfield and Burwood Heights, while losing Earlwood and Kingsgrove in the south. The current redistribution adds 12,000 voters in Ashbury and southern Ashfield from Grayndler in the east, 3500 in southern Punchbowl from Banks in the south-west, 3000 in northern Kingsgrove and Beverly Hills from Barton in the south-east, and 3000 in part of Lidcombe from Reid in the north. This is balanced by transfers of 13,000 in southern Strathfield and Burwood to Reid, and 5000 in southern Campsie and Canterbury to Barton. The changes have boosted the Labor margin from 6.8% to 9.2%.

2013 ELECTION RESULTS (ADJUSTED FOR REDISTRIBUTION)

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The St George electorate was the classic middle suburban seat for much of its history, and it frequently changed hands up to 1980, when Whitlam government minister Bill Morrison recovered the seat two terms after his defeat in 1975. The unsuccessful candidate at the intervening election in 1977 was Antony Whitlam, son of Gough, who had held Grayndler in the previous term. Morrison was succeeded in 1984 by Stephen Dubois, whose retirement in 1993 coincided with an electoral rearrangement that abolished both St George and the Bondi-area electorate of Phillip, and created the seat of Watson. Labor’s member for Phillip, Jeannette McHugh, was accommodated in Grayndler, and Right faction heavyweight Leo McLeay moved from Grayndler to Watson. By this time, Labor’s grip on the seat had tightened due to demographic change that has left Watson with the nation’s third highest proportion of non-English speakers, most notably through the concentration of Lebanese around Punchbowl. There was nonetheless a particularly big swing against Labor amid the Sydney-wide backlash of 2010, which cut the existing 18.2% margin exactly in half, followed by a further 2.3% swing to the Liberals in 2013.

Tony Burke has held Watson since the retirement of Leo McLeay in 2004, having entered politics the previous year in the state upper house. Burke won swift promotion to the shadow ministry in 2005, and went on to serve in cabinet as Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries Minister in the Rudd-Gillard government’s first term, and as Sustainability, Environment, Water, Populations and Communities Minister (further gaining arts in March 2013) in its second. Burke was a resolute supporter of Julia Gillard’s leadership, and spoke publicly of the “chaos” of Kevin Rudd’s prime ministership when he launched his unsuccessful challenge in February 2012. Rudd nonetheless refused to accept Burke’s resignation after the success of his leadership challenge in June 2013, instead persuading him to accept the challenging immigration, multicultural affairs and citizenship portfolio. Since the 2013 election defeat he has served as Shadow Finance Minister.

Fowler covers an area of western Sydney centred on Cabramatta, whose Vietnamese community causes the electorate to rank number one in the country for residents speaking languages other than English. While the seat’s safe Labor status causes it to be overlooked on election night, it offered remarkable results in both 2010 and 2013 for those who cared to look, swinging 13.8% to the Liberals on the former occasion and 8.0% back to Labor on the latter. The 2013 result caused the Liberal candidate, Andrew Nguyen, to complain the party had disrepected the electorate by refusing to allow him to talk to the media. The latest redistribution has dramatically changed the shape of the electorate, while still leaving it centred upon Cabramatta. In the west, all its territory beyond Elizabeth Drive has been transferred to Werriwa, accounting for 45,000 voters, or 43% of the total. The loss has been made up for with gains in the south, where it absorbs Liverpool, Chipping Norton and Warwick Farm, adding around 13,000 voters from Hughes and 5000 from Werriwa; in the north-west, where 22,000 voters around Bossley Park are gained from McMahon; and in the north-east, where 7000 voters around Fairfield East are gained from Blaxland. The changes cause the Labor margin to drop from 16.8% to 13.9%, mostly due to the gain of Liberal-voting Chipping Norton from Hughes.

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Labor has had a secure hold on Fowler since it was created with the expansion of parliament in 1984, being held first by Ted Grace until 1998, and then by Julia Irwin until 2010. Irwin was backed by the old guard of the NSW Right, notably Laurie Brereton and Leo McLeay, but became chiefly noted as a critic of Israel. Her decision to retire in 2010 resolved a headache for the party, which had been absorbed by a game of musical chairs resulting from the effective abolition of Laurie Ferguson’s seat of Reid. Ferguson was at first determined to be accommodated in Fowler, but a deal was in force reserving the seat for a Right faction that also dominated local branches. He was instead made to settle for Werriwa, which at first displaced its member Chris Hayes to highly marginal Macarthur. Irwin’s departure created an immensely more attractive opening for Hayes in Fowler, also allowing local favourite Nick Bleasdale to contest Macarthur for a second time (albeit unsuccessfully).

Chris Hayes entered parliament at the February 2005 by-election in Werriwa after the resignation of Mark Latham, having previously been an official with the Right faction Australian Workers Union. He has been a fairly low-profile figure through his parliamentary career, although he has held the position of chief party whip since May 2013. When the draft redistribution boundaries were unveiled in October last year, there were suggestions Hayes might have to make way in Fowler for Chris Bowen, since the originally proposed boundaries had his rock-solid Labor base of Fairfield transferred from his existing seat of McMahon into Fowler. This could potentially have sent Hayes back to Werriwa, which is to be vacated at the election by the retirement of Laurie Ferguson. However, the final boundaries reversed the Fairfield transfer, instead bringing Fowler up to its required enrolment level through the gain of Bossley Park.

Together with Bruce, Chisholm is one of two neighbouring seats in south-eastern Melbourne where Labor’s task in defending tight margins is complicated by the retirement of sitting members. Held since 1998 by Anna Burke, Chisholm covers a band of suburbs about 15 kilometres from central Melbourne, including Box Hill and Mont Albert in the north, Burwood and Mount Waverley in the centre, and Oakleigh and Clayton in the south. Labor is strongest south of the Monash Freeway, with the Mont Albert area leaning to the Liberals, and most of the remainder being naturally marginal.

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Chisholm has existed in name since the enlargement of parliament in 1949, but was initially based further west, around Camberwell and Glen Iris further to the west. The entirety of this area now serves to bolster the Liberals in Higgins and Kooyong. The area now covered by Chisholm was divided between Deakin, La Trobe and (from 1955) Bruce during the period of post-war growth, until Chisholm drifted eastwards in stages between 1969 and 2013. This process made a Labor-leaning seat of what had long been a safe one for the Liberals, being held in turn by Wilfred Kent Hughes until 1970 and Tony Staley in 1980. The Liberal grip was then loosened by successive swings to Labor in 1977 and 1980. Labor’s candidate on both occasions, Helen Meyer, succeeded on the third attempt in 1983, when she unseated Staley’s one-term successor, Graham Harris.

The seat was recovered for the Liberals in 1987 by Michael Wooldridge, who went on to serve as Health Minister in the early years of the Howard government. Wooldridge maintained a precarious grip on the seat until 1998, when he jumped ship for the more secure seat of Casey. Anna Burke then gained the seat for Labor and retained it on narrow margins in 2001 and 2004, before a 4.7% swing in 2007 boosted her margin to 7.4%. This was followed by consecutive swings to the Liberals of 1.3% and 4.2%, the former being against the trend of a strong statewide result for Labor. Burke’s national profile received a considerable boost when she replaced Peter Slipper in the Speaker’s chair after he stood aside in April 2012, initially on an acting basis and then officially when Slipper resigned the following November.

A Labor preselection that followed Burke’s retirement announcement in December was won by Monash mayor Stefanie Perri, who was reported the beneficiary of a deal in which the National Union of Workers was readmitted to the dominant sub-faction of the Victorian Right, thereby placing it under the umbrella of its “stability pact” with the Socialist Left. Perri had faced competition from Manningham mayor Jennifer Yang, who ran in the seat of Mount Waverley at the November 2014 state election, and had offered to raise $500,000 of her own money for the party’s campaign if preselected. The Liberal candidate is Julia Banks, who works as a lawyer for George Weston Foods.

The electorate of Bruce covers an area of south-eastern Melbourne about 20 kilometres from the city centre, and is to be vacated at the election by the retirement of Alan Griffin, who has held it for Labor since 1996. It encompasses Glen Waverley and Wheelers Hill in the north, Mulgrave and most of Springvale in the centre, and most of Dandenong in the south. Distinguishing demographic features include concentrations of Vietnamese in Springvale and Italians and Greeks in Dandenong, along with a rapidly growing Chinese presence in Glen Waverley. The Monash Freeway neatly cleaves the electorate into a Labor-voting south-west and a Liberal-voting north-east. The former has consistently outweighed the latter on Griffin’s watch, but he leaves the seat with a tenuous margin of 1.8%.

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Bruce was created in 1955 to accommodate rapid post-war growth, from territory that had been covered by La Trobe since 1949 and Flinders beforehand. Initially it extended north to Burwood and south to Cranbourne and Berwick, but the 1969 redistribution drew it westwards into middle suburbia. With Mount Waverley as its focal point, the seat was secure for the Liberals through to the redistribution of 1996, when Mount Waverley was exchanged for Noble Park and Dandenong North. The member from 1955 to 1983 was Billy Snedden, who led the Liberals in opposition from the 1972 election defeat until Malcolm Fraser deposed him in March 1975, and went on to serve as Speaker throughout the period of Fraser’s government. Snedden retired after the 1983 election defeat and was succeeded at a by-election by Kenneth Aldred, who had held the since-abolished eastern suburbs seat of Henty for the Liberals from 1975 until his defeat in 1980. Aldred was defeated for Liberal preselection in 1990 by Julian Beale, whose seat of Deakin had been made notionally Labor by redistribution. Aldred then ran for Deakin himself, and was able to retain it for the Liberals on the back of a statewide backlash against Labor.

The 1996 redistribution was a watershed for the seat, which was held at all times beforehand by the Liberals, and all times thereafter by Labor. Julian Beale needed a swing in favour of 1.6% to retain his seat at the 1996 election, but he was able to manage only half that as Victoria largely resisted the national tide to the Coalition. Labor’s successful candidate was Alan Griffin, who was seeking refuge in the seat after the abolition of Corinella, which extended from southern Dandenong to Westernport Bay and around to Phillip Island. Griffin had gained Corinella for Labor in 1993 from Russell Broadbent, later to return as member for McMillan. A figure of influence in the Socialist Left faction, Griffin served as Veterans Affairs Minister for a term after the 2007 election victory, then stood aside citing personal leaders. From the back bench, he emerged as one of the most energetic backers of Kevin Rudd’s return to the leadership.

Griffin first announced his intention to bow out of politics in August 2011, then he changed his mind again a year later and ran again in 2013. A second retirement announcement, made in February 2015, has proved more durable. Labor’s candidate to succeed him is Julian Hill, an executive with the Victorian government’s Department of Economic Development and former mayor of Port Phillip, who won preselection without opposition. Hill faces an experienced Liberal opponent in Helen Kroger, who was elected to the Senate in 2007 but lost out after being demoted from second to third on the party’s Victorian ticket in 2013. Kroger won the Bruce preselection ahead of Emanuele Cicchiello, Lighthouse Christian College deputy principal and the party’s candidate in 2013. She is the ex-wife of Michael Kroger, the president of the party’s Victorian branch and a factional figurehead of long standing.

Isaacs covers south-eastern bayside Melbourne from Mordialloc south to Carrum, and extends inland as far as Western Port Highway to encompass Keysborough in the north and Carrum Downs in the south. Labor draws its strength from Keysborough and other suburbs around Dandenong, with the remainder accounting for much of the marginal “sandbelt” that traditionally decides state elections. The seat was effectively created in 1969, prior to which the name of Isaacs was attached to a seat covering the unrelated Caulfield area. Previously, what were then Melbourne’s bayside outskirts were accommodated by Flinders, with Dandenong and its surrounds going to the new seat of Bruce in 1955.

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Redistributions have made a strong mark on Isaacs’ electoral history, with the presence or absence of Beaumaris at the northern end being the decisive factor in the Liberals’ competitiveness. With Beaumaris in the electorate from 1969 to 1977, Labor’s only win was in 1974, when it provided a crucial gain for a beleaguered Whitlam government. David Charles held the seat for Labor from 1980 to 1990, despite the return of Beaumaris in 1984. Isaacs then became one of nine Victorian gains for the Liberals at the 1990 election, after which it was held for two terms by Rod Atkinson. The next redistribution in 1996 saw Isaacs trade Beaumaris for southern bayside Chelsea and semi-rural Cranbourne, turning a 3.0% Liberal margin into a Labor margin of 3.9%. Greg Wilton was thereby able to gain the seat for Labor against the trend of the 1996 election, with the Liberals picking up an insufficient swing of 2.3%, and he added a further 4.8% to his margin in 1998.

Greg Wilton’s career ended in tragic circumstances when he committed suicide amid widely publicised domestic troubles in 2000, which did much to embitter his friend Mark Latham towards his then leader Kim Beazley, whom Latham accused of failing to support Wilton through his personal crisis. The resulting by-election was won for Labor without contest from the Liberals by Ann Corcoran, who had won preselection as a factionally unaligned compromise candidate. Corcoran went on to suffer swings of 3.6% and 5.1% in 2001 and 2004, but was saved by another significant redistribution between the two elections, this one boosting the Labor margin by 3.8% by removing Cranbourne and adding Noble Park. Corcoran’s factional non-alignment, together with her weak electoral performance, contributed to her preselection defeat ahead of the 2007 election by Mark Dreyfus, a prominent barrister and Queen’s Counsel who won decisive backing from the Right.

Dreyfus won promotion firstly to parliamentary secretary after the 2010 election and then to cabinet in February 2013 as Attorney-General, a portfolio he has maintained in opposition. His margin in Isaacs was strengthened by Labor’s strong performances in Victoria in 2007 and 2010, when he picked up successive swings of 5.9% and 3.3%, before being pared by back by a 6.6% swing to the Liberals in 2013. The Liberals have again preselected their candidate from 2013, Garry Spencer, who obtained the rank of lieutenant-colonel in a 20-year career with the Australian Defence Force before working as a management consultant and engineering lecturer.