Bruce – Australia 2022

Labor shouldn’t have any trouble in the short-term, but it will be interesting to see what happens in the future, if growth patterns continue and this seat keeps getting pushed further east.

This seat is now unrecognisable from its pre-2019 boundaries. Only around one-quarter of electors on the present boundaries were part of Bruce then. A good thing – it didn’t make much sense to have a division running from Glen Waverley to Dandenong.

I’m guessing this was mostly in Aston and Menzies when Sir Billy Sneeden held the seat? It was safe Liberal back then but I’m wondering which areas it contained back then.

I believe Bruce used to cover most of the areas now covered by Chisholm: Burwood, Mt Waverley, Glen Waverley, and Vermont.

in my proposal this will shift west to be a greater dandenong seat so will move to the very safe column. however the new seat that covers the top half of casey will be a very marginal seat and up for grabs for the liberals

@ John, i would support that proposal i would prefer a seat that is focused on Greater Dandenong council which shares a community of interest and even help fix Issacs, Hotham-name to be retired, There is virtually no community of interest between East Bentleigh and Noble Park or Mentone or Dandenong.

@nimalan thanks ive efforts to do the same with other lgas as well where possible. i can guarantee that my proposals dont cross multiple in the 3-4+ range like the current divisions do. they certainly arent made up of parital lgas. i made it so it takes in whole lgas where possible and only take parts of other lgas to make up the numbers where the whole lgas dont have enough

@nimalan my “hotham” is going to be the lga of Monash and “issacs” will be the lga of kingston. agree due to the major changes hotham will need to be retired but issacs should be able to remain. perhaps Crean after the late Simon Crean who once held this seat. he was well respected by both sides so i doubt there will be any ill will from either side of politics

@ John, i do agree with Monash LGA based seat and a Kingston LGA based seat of Issacs. Originally, i was thinking of McEwen being the seat that crosses the Yarra River in the Upper Yarra Valley, Which would lead to Deakin being more focused on either Whitehorse Council and Menzies taking northern Maroondah and Chisholm being the Monash LGA based seat. Alternatively, we can use Jagajaga for the seat that includes Southern Banyule/Western Manningham and push Menzies eastwards to take Croydon, parts of Ringwood and Eastern Manningham. Determining the seat that will cross the Yarra is the first part. I expect the seats with natural boundries such as Goldstein and even Higgins to be retained to it could be either Chisholm or Hotham that gets abolished.

I don’t like the idea of a City of Monash based electorate purely because Glen Waverley and Mount Waverley share more of a community of interest with Burwood, Box Hill, Blackburn etc in Whitehorse than with the southeastern corridor. Chisholm’s boundaries are quite sensible.

The seat that crosses for me will b le menzies that will cover nanyule and northern manningham which crosses the yarra. Deakin will cover the remainder of manningham and maroondah. Yes I agree Chisholm should be the Monash seat. I will create a new name for Whitehorse lga. See my maps in the federal redistribution thread Hotham would be abolished

Interesting results with the Voice referendum here, the poorer and more ethnically diverse booths had much stronger Yes vote than middle class to affluent whiter areas
1. Dandenong Central- has booths of 60% Yes, 55% Yes etc
2. Doveton, one of the most deprived areas of Melbourne had a 53% Yes booth and the other one was only 51% No, still much better than the national/statewide result.
3. Hallam had a yes 51% booth and the other one was no 51%. Still a much better result than the national average
4. Strongest No vote was in more affluent Narre Warren North, Berwick and to a lesser extent Endevour Hills
5. In Neighbouring Hotham, pretty much all of Springvale/Noble Park votes Yes (despite it being a deprived area) in contrast to Mulgrave and Wheelers Hill which voted No.

I think there is a rule of thumb that any community inside the ring road that I mentioned in another thread (Metro ring Road, Yet to be built NE Link and Eastlink) had immigrants more likely to vote no than the Native born but any community outside the Ring Road has immigrants more likely to vote Yes than the Native Born hence I say there is a divide in the Anglo and other Native Born between those living inside and outside the ring road.

I say based on my rule of thumb

-East and South East Asian leaned No (50-55% No) with those over aged over 35 and bring born overseas being heavily No but this is countered by a heavy Yes vote from Australian-Born (or immigrated before 10 Year old) and anyone under 30 which are both heavily educated demographics in additional to the Native born (or 1.75) wanting to be more westernised and distance themselves from parents conservatism

– South Asian leaned Yes (55-60% Yes) but it may depend on certain groups where I think Hindi Speakers probably leaned No like East and South East Asians but often countered by other South Asians (especially Punjabi speakers) voting Yes heavily

– Arabs and other Middle Eastern leaned No but again may vary from age and education

Eastern and Southern Europeans voted No with many in the older immigrant generation being conservative and having the “Why not us rhetoric” but the younger generation that tend to be Native Born being more like the national average subject to education and location

@Nimalan i noticed a similar trend in western sydney. although the yes vote obviously underperformed in this region pockets within western sydney electorates had yes votes almost ten percent higher than the state average. in fowler, cabramatta and liverpool central booths returned yes majorities (albeit small majorities). in watson, wiley park and lakemba, arguably the most deprived areas within this electorate and the most muslim booths in the country, had the largest yes majorities of the electorate (up to 60%+ in lakemba north where the muslim vote is most concentrated). in blaxland, the no vote significantly underperformed the electorate average within blaxland. perhaps suburbs with a culmination of social disadvantage and ethnic diversity were predestined to vote yes due to scare tactics by the right possibly not resonating as well with such voters. it may be a similar situation as to what happened in inner city formally liberal elections where liberal strongholds bucked electoral trends and voted no in wealthy old money suburbs despite essentially every other booth in their electorate voting yes (toorak, hamilton, vaucluse etc.)

@Louis, You need to factor that many of those suburbs tend to have either a younger average age and/or second generation immigrant which are the demographics that are much more supportive of change. I do agree however any culture war like Australia Day, Flags or Welcome to the Country would not reasonate for non-whites (most probably don’t care).

@ Louis
I agree with you. I think ethnically diverse areas working class area often have different priorities to white working class areas. We can see the same trend in Western Melbourne with Sunshine, St Albans, Braybrook & Cairnlea voting Yes while more European and more affluent Keilor, Caroline Springs and Taylors Hill voted No. The area of Dandenong, Hallam & Doveton is very Muslim and most recent Afghan immigrants. I do agree with Marh thogh about second generation immigrants especially Vietnamese in a lot of Melbourne who may have voted Yes. Also i dont think a culture war on Australia Day, Monarchy, Treaty Flag etc will resonate with ethnic working class voters. The Only common thing that the Libs could appeal to them is LGBT issues, Abortion etc. Conversely, i dont think appeals to LGBT issue etc resonate with White Working Class voters in Brand, Spence, Hunter Region, Whitlam etc as these areas are very irreligious and had very strong support for SSM despite lower levels of Education. Thats why i dont Educational polarization is the only factor and ethnicity and religion needs to be taken into account.

Actually, I think it more likely that these areas/demographics had the lowest knowledge about the Voice. If you want a simple trajectory of the Voice, 60/40 when it was a vague, nice sounding idea to 40/60 when some meat (and not a lot at that) had to be put on the bones. I suspect for various reasons the demographics with a surprisingly high yes were also the ones that were the least reached out to, particularly by the No campaign.

For 2 data points
1) The Redbridge poll where No was 55/45, then they explained the question and re polled and No went up to 59/41.
2) The recent poll that had No voters supporting some kind of indigenous voice, was it 64% or something. I think the poll was a bit dodgy, e.g. designed to produce a Yes result, but it sort of confirms we are back to where we originally were, popular in the abstract, unpopular in reality.

@Nimalan, I think LGBT isn’t issues in western countries (other than America) given even some far-right parties came to support LGBT Rights like Geert Wilders so education won’t be a massive divide on these issues.

A thing that makes Australia be much sceptical on change is due to the large apathy towards politics and political movements (which is already weak) especially among the common people. Afterall, there wasn’t massive protest against the heavily unpopular Tony Abbott 2014 Austerity measures which would had probably caused massive revolutions in places like France

Agree Marh, in the US many rural white areas are very religious and anti-LGBT not really the case in Australia, which is why i dont compare West Virginia/Kentucky to the Hunter Region. Interestingly, Anglo-Celtic Australians are much less religious than ethnic minority CALD Australians. After the 2022 election a friend of mine who is a rank and file Liberal member(quite socially conservative one) said he believed that Muslims in working class seats can be won over to the Liberal party if they embraced social rather than economic conservatism and believed seats like Calwell should be targeted, i was skeptical as that is really only one area of commonality.

i think the importance of lgbtq issues is really overestimated by political punters. i really doubt that many voters in outer suburban electorates are willing to change their vote simply due to a party’s positioning on same sex marriage/lgbtq issues, which has been largely absent from political discussion since 2017. even when i lived in western sydney some 20 years ago while people were against the proposition of same sex marriage when asked about it the topic was rarely discussed and 99% of people had a be and let be attitude. i think any assertions that the liberal party should ditch fiscal conservatism for social conservatism by discussing issues like lgbtq issues is ridiculous and would result in them losing far more voters in inner metropolitan and middle suburban areas than they would *potentially* gain in multicultural suburban electorates.

@ Louis i agree with you. This seat is a perfect example after the Broadmedows area the Dandenong are has the second largest concentration of Muslims in Victoria although it is mainly Afghans rather than Arabs. This seat voted against SSM but is happy to elect a Gay MP in Julian Hill. Julian Hill has advocated for the Hazara people against persecution and for refugees. In this seat reviving manufacturing would be more of a priority Also in Narre Warren North at a state level the Libs pre-selected a very right wing MP who was against early childhood education, abortion, climate action, indigenous rights and despite it being an open seat for the first time in 20 years the Liberal primary vote was almost 20% below the Labor Primary so i am not sure moving to the far right will pay dividends in such areas.

*very right wing candidate

A reduced margin and a candidate from Afghanistan could be fatal to Julian hi.l

Would Zahid be Pro-Palestine?

Not only is Julian Hill gay but he’s also from the Labor Left faction which is the more progressive one.

Julian Hill is also an atheist and Bruce voted against SSM but that has not prevented him from winning in Muslim parts of this seat.

@Nimalan doubt so due to the Libs’ strong pro-Israel stance. Even if he is personally pro-Palestine, he would have to remain super quiet on it otherwise he would be eaten alive on Sky News.

@ Dan M
Last time there were big swings in the west of the seat around Dandenong, Hallam and Doveton to the UAP from Labor while more affluent parts such as Narre Warren North, Harkaway and Berwick had a Lib to Lab swing. I dont expect UAP to do well among Muslims this time as lockdown are probably less pressing now. The Victorian Socialists and Greens may aim to take some of the vote in the Western parts, i am not sure if shared ethnicity/religion of the candidate will mean they will swing to Zahid in such a case.

Interesting the recent MRP poll from Redbridge has this seat as too close to call, probably the most unexpected one out of the listed too close to call seats. This seat has large areas that are very strong Labor working class areas that would drown out more lower-middle to middle class areas that are generally 50-50 to marginally Labor leaning.

I reckon 2-3% in 2025 easy pickings for the 2028 election. Will continue to move east due to population growth. Once it sheds Dandenong the coalition will have no trouble winning this seat. Could be another redistribution in 2026 due to Vic regaining it’s 39th seat.

If they put a new electorate down in the south east Melbourne which would probably push this seat west. I’m well aware that the polling says too close to call but be careful as the polling suggests that Labor would pick up Casey so I’m not entirely confident in the polling.

There is a few factors to consider here
1. Some swing to the Far left among Muslim due to Palestine. Some of them would have voted UAP last time due to lockdowns this time to Victorian Socialists/Greens
2. A swing to Libs among Christian/Europeans due interest rates etc especially in the East so Serbs, Poles. Dutton will do well among this demographic
3. Also this electorate is demographically varied and in the West of the seat there is very low levels of Education and English so i am not sure if enough Afghan refugees etc responded to to the Redbridge poll. Also Hallam is demographically more like Dandenong than Berwick so it would need to move as far east as Fountain Gate for the Coalition to be confident of holding it long term.

Julian hill also has quite a significant personal vote.

@Nimalan Not to mention the Newfoundland unpopularity of the VIC Labor govt

@Nimalan Not to mention the newfound unpopularity of the VIC Labor govt

@Darcy Julian Hill is probably one of the most outspoken MPs when it comes to refugees (bar the likes of Ged Kearney and Maria Vamvakinou), demonstrated by the time he got kicked out of the lower house for 24 hours after protesting against the then Coalition government’s delays in processing the visas of Afghan people fleeing the Taliban. He seems very in touch with the electorate demographically even though he’s from the left faction of Labor, and because of that it’s likely he’ll hold on until he resigns/retires. Whether Labor holds Bruce after Hill is a different story, particularly if redistributions keep pushing the seat towards Narre Warren/Berwick/Officer etc.