Broadmeadows
Margin: Labor 20.0%
Region: Northern Metropolitan
Federal: Calwell (74%)/Wills (26%)
Candidates in ballot paper order
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WAYNE KNIGHT FRANK McGUIRE JAIME DE LOMA-OSORIO RICON MOHAMED HASSAN EVREN ONDER JOHN RINALDI |
2010 BOOTH RESULTS MAP |
PAST RESULTS |
DEMOGRAPHICS |
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RESULTS MAP: Two-party preferred booth results from 2010 state election showing Liberal majority in blue and Labor in red. New boundaries in thicker blue lines, old ones in thinner red lines. Boundary data courtesy of Ben Raue of The Tally Room.
PAST RESULTS: Break at 1999 represents effect of the subsequent redistribution.
DEMOGRAPHICS: Based on 2012 census. School Leavers is percentage of high school graduates divided by persons over 18. LOTE is number identified as speaking language other than English at home, divided by total population.
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The electorate of Broadmeadows is located around 15 kilometres north of central Melbourne, extending from eastern Glenroy in the south through Broadmeadows itself to Meadow Heights and southern Roxburgh Park in the north. The electorate has the state’s lowest median income and third highest proportion of non-English speakers, the later in consequence of large Turkish and Lebanese communities. This makes the seat rock-solid for Labor, which has held it without interruption since 1962. The redistribution has made two changes at the southern end of the electorate, adding 7700 voters at Fawkner from Thomastown and transferring 4600 voters at Glenroy and Padfield to Pascoe Vale, which has cut 1.0% from the still healthy Labor margin.
The previous member for Broadmeadows was Labor’s most recent Premier, John Brumby, who came to the seat at a by-election in September 1993. This was brought about by an arrangement in which stop-gap Labor leader Jim Kennan relinquished the seat so that Brumby could move in from the lower house and assume the leadership. Brumby had hitherto been member for the upper house province of Doutta Galla, which he had won at another by-election the previous March following the retirement of Right faction colleague Bill Landeryou. Before that he had been the federal member for Bendigo from the election of the Hawke government in 1983 until his defeat in 1990.
Brumby promptly quit politics after leading Labor to defeat at the 2010 election, initiating a by-election held the following February 19. The preselection to replace him was awarded to Frank McGuire, a former journalist for a range of media outlets who won Walkley Awards while with the ABC’s Four Corners in 1993 and the Nine Network’s Sunday in 2007. McGuire is the brother of television personality Eddie McGuire, making him part of a family noted for its connection to the area – although as critics were keen to point out, he had come to reside in Brighton. McGuire did not encounter serious opposition at the by-election, winning election with 53.4% of the primary vote.
The preselection of McGuire was fast-tracked by the party’s administrative committee, which also waived the usual requirement that election candidates be party members of over a year’s standing. This was a divisive move, as the claim of a rival candidate, Hume councillor and Turkish community leader Burhan Yirgit, was supported by unions of the Right (chiefly the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association, National Union of Workers and Health Services Union) and Left (the Construction Forestry Mining and Energy Union) who had been frozen out of the “stability pact” between the Socialist Left and the Bill Shorten-Stephen Conroy forces of the Right. McGuire’s supporters argued that intervention was necessary as Yirgit had acquired his local influence through branch-stacking.
In February 2012, McGuire was promoted to parliamentary secretary for opposition scrutiny of government.