LIB 2.9%
Incumbent MP
Julia Banks, since 2016.
Geography
Eastern suburbs of Melbourne. Chisholm covers most of the western half of Monash council area and the western half of Whitehorse council area, along with a small part of Kingston council area. Suburbs include Burwood, Burwood East, Oakleigh, Chadstone, Mount Waverley, Box Hill and Mont Albert.
Redistribution
Chisholm shifted north, losing Chadstone, Oakleigh, Clayton and Huntingdale to Hotham, and also losing Mont Albert on its north-western corner to Kooyong. Chisholm then gained Blackburn, Blackburn North and part of Nunawading on its north-eastern corner from Deakin. These changes increased the Liberal margin from 1.2% to 2.9%.
History
Chisholm was created for the expansion of the House of Representatives at the 1949 election. For the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s, the seat was relatively safe for the Liberal Party. Boundary changes saw the seat become a marginal seat in the early 1980s. It became stronger for Labor in the 2000s but was lost to the Liberal Party in 2016.
The seat was first won in Kent Hughes for the Liberal Party. Hughes was a former Deputy Premier of Victoria who had enlisted in the military at the outbreak of the Second World War, and ended up captured as part of the fall of Singapore and spent four years as a prisoner of war before returning to state politics, and moving to Canberra in 1949.
Hughes was chairman of the organising committee for the Melbourne Olympics in 1956, but after the Olympics was dropped from the ministry, and sat on the backbenches until his death in 1970.
Tony Staley won the 1970 by-election for the Liberal Party. He served as a junior minister in the Fraser government from 1976 until his retirement from politics in 1980. He went on to serve as Federal President of the Liberal Party.
The Liberal Party’s Graham Harris held on to Chisholm in 1980, but with a much smaller margin then those won by Hughes or Staley. He was defeated in 1983 by the ALP’s Helen Mayer.
Mayer was re-elected in 1984, but lost the seat in 1987 to the Liberal Party’s Michael Wooldridge. Wooldridge quickly became a senior Liberal frontbencher, and served as Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party from 1993 to 1994. Wooldridge was appointed Minister for Health upon the election of the Howard government in 1996. Wooldridge moved to the safer seat of Casey in 1998, and retired in 2001.
Chisholm was won in 1998 by the ALP’s Anna Burke, who held the seat for six terms. Anna Burke served as Speaker from 2012 to 2013. Burke retired in 2016, and Liberal candidate Julia Banks was the only Liberal in the country to gain a seat off Labor in winning Chisholm.
Julia Banks announced she would not run for re-election as a Liberal following the removal of Malcolm Turnbull as prime minister in 2018, and a few months later resigned from the party to sit as an independent.
Candidates
Sitting independent MP Julia Banks is instead running for the seat of Flinders.
- Ian Dobby (Independent)
- Angela Mary Dorian (Rise Up Australia)
- Luke Arthur (Greens)
- Gladys Liu (Liberal)
- Rosemary Lavin (Animal Justice)
- Anne Wicks (Derryn Hinch’s Justice)
- George Zoraya (United Australia)
- Jennifer Yang (Labor)
- Philip Jenkins (Democratic Labour)
Assessment
Chisholm is a marginal seat which Labor would be hoping to regain, after the party did poorly in Victoria in 2016. Banks’ departure from the seat will make it particularly hard for the Liberal Party to hold on.
2016 result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Julia Banks | Liberal | 39,265 | 45.3 | +1.2 | 47.1 |
| Stefanie Perri | Labor | 31,160 | 35.9 | -3.6 | 34.7 |
| Josh Fergeus | Greens | 10,647 | 12.3 | +2.8 | 11.5 |
| Craig Mccracken | Family First | 2,137 | 2.5 | +1.4 | 2.5 |
| Nyree Walshe | Animal Justice | 1,799 | 2.1 | +2.1 | 2.1 |
| Melanie Vassiliou | Rise Up Australia | 1,712 | 2.0 | +1.2 | 1.2 |
| Others | 0.8 | ||||
| Informal | 2,439 | 2.7 |
2016 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Julia Banks | Liberal | 44,437 | 51.2 | +2.8 | 52.9 |
| Stefanie Perri | Labor | 42,283 | 48.8 | -2.8 | 47.1 |
Booth breakdown
Polling places in Chisholm have been divided into three areas: central, north and south.
The Liberal Party won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 51.1% in the north to 53.5% in the south.
The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 10.2% in the south to 14% in the north.
| Voter group | GRN prim % | LIB 2PP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| South | 10.2 | 53.5 | 22,843 | 24.0 |
| Central | 11.8 | 51.3 | 17,486 | 18.3 |
| North | 14.0 | 51.1 | 16,020 | 16.8 |
| Other votes | 10.4 | 55.1 | 21,127 | 22.2 |
| Pre-poll | 12.1 | 52.8 | 17,825 | 18.7 |
Election results in Chisholm at the 2016 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and Greens primary votes.
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I think it depends on the subset of the Chinese demographic. First generation migrant Chinese are much more likely to be conservative than their Australian born and or raised in Australia children, and are also the subset much more likely to be using WeChat.
The revelations about Gladys Liu will probably just reinforce existing opinions about her – those who strongly support the LGBT community, including on same sex marriage were unlikely to have supported her in the first place.
Agree the issue is non-starter. The Libs are still in the race here.
On these boundaries this seat should be a Liberal win but the fact they look gone shows the deep seated problems facing the Liberal Party.
Expat – agree completely with your point about different individuals within a community having different views but as a whole the community is “conservative”. Not everyone in Fitzroy votes green. But nobody would dispute Fitzroy being described as “green” as a general characterisation. Similarly, not everyone in Toorak votes liberal.
WL – also completely agree with a generational difference between migrants who were born and grew up overseas and children of those migrants who arrived here very young or were born here.
All have a good Easter.
Cheers
Pollster
Jennifer Yang’s base is likely in the Mount Waverley/Glen Waverley area (see more signs of her there – Gladys ones show up more further north), not to mention she contested the state seat of Mount Waverley back in 2014, so I wouldn’t be surprised if it swings harder there than Box Hill/Blackburn/Forest Hill – the blue Liberal numbers in Glen Waverley aren’t that baked in. It’s also for that reason that I’d favour Labor in this seat.
National swing + Gladys Liu’s continued foot in mouth comments makes me think Labor gain, here.
Drove through the southern part of Chisholm today and there were more Jennifer Yang corflutes than Gladys Liu. There are a lot more for Gladys in the northern parts of the electorate. A few of the local Chinese businesses were being a tad cheeky by having both in their front yards.
Interestingly, Jennifer Yang is a Monash councillor, from Glen Waverley area in southern part of electorate. This area is normally much more Liberal than the area around Box Hill to the north. Wonder if Glen Waverley will end up more Labor than Box Hill this time around.
2016 swing is roughly the margin…..Julia Banks did well to win…… alp was disadvantaged by the loss of Anna Burke’s personal …… Now Ms Banks is contesting elsewhere and the liberal candidate has been a little accident prone…… I would say the alp is favoured in this seat.
Jennifer Yang was a councillor in Manningham (Doncaster / Templestowe in Menzies). She contested Mount Waverley in 2014, Senate in 2016 and Melbourne Lord Mayor in 2018 – all of the latter unsuccessfully. Frankly it all seems a tad politically desperate.
The swing here seems to be driven almost entirely by the Blackburn/Box Hill end. Labor got double-digit swings in quite a few of the booths in the north-west of the seat.
But Glen Waverley and surrounds either didn’t swing much or went back the other way. Probably reflecting their transfer from safe-Labor Bruce to a competitive seat.
I’d expect the Liberals to overturn Labor’s small lead here on postals, as they did in Chisholm last time.
Ben’s map for 2019 booths shows basically all of Chisholm swinging Labor. But not nearly enough in the south – many of the Highbury Rd ones and Mt View PS in Glen Waverley’s east stayed Liberal.