Mount Waverley
Margin: Liberal 8.6%
Region: Eastern Metropolitan
Federal: Bruce (52%)/Chisholm (48%)
Candidates in ballot paper order
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PERKY RAJ KHANGURE STEPHEN CHONG ZHENG MICHAEL GIDLEY JENNIFER YANG |
2010 BOOTH RESULTS MAP |
PAST RESULTS
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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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Mount Waverley was Labor’s most marginal seat going into the 2010 election, and was inevitably placed among the casualty list of twelve seats that cost if office. It consists of the suburb of Mount Waverley in the west, excluding that part of it to the south of the Monash Freeway, together with the bulk of Glen Waverley to the east. This area has emerged in recent years as a magnet for Chinese migrants, to the extent of having the highest proportion of Chinese language speakers of any electorate in the state based on 2012 census figures. The redistribution has added a new block of territory in the east encompassing 3500 voters in Glen Waverley, formerly in the abolished seat of Scoresby, increasing the Liberal margin by 1.2%.
The name of Mount Waverley was adopted at the 2002 election for a seat that had previously been called Glen Waverley, which had been safely held for the Liberals by Ross Smith since its creation in 1985. The new electorate had a seemingly secure notional Liberal margin of 9.1%, and Shadow Health Minister Ron Wilson sought it as a refuge when his existing seat of Bennetswood was abolished. But with Smith taking his personal vote into retirement, the swing blew out to 11.3%, and Labor’s Maxine Morand emerged a surprise winner. Morand survived a 2.0% swing to Liberal candidate Michael Gidley in 2006, before Gidley succeeded on his second attempt with a 7.8% swing in 2010.
Michael Gidley was an accountant before entering parliament, and had at one time been president of the Young Liberals. He won preselection in 2006 after agreeing to call off his contentious challenge against Shadow Police Minister Kim Wells in neighbouring Scoresby, in doing so winning support for his Mount Waverley bid from then party leader Robert Doyle and state party president Helen Kroger. Gidley and Doyle came close to suffering a rebuff at the ensuing preselection vote, in which Gidley prevailed only narrowly over Maree Davenport, who as Maree Luckins had held the upper house province of Waverley from 1996 to 2002.
Labor’s candidate for the seat is Jennifer Yang, a councillor and former mayor of Manningham.