NAT 16.7%
Incumbent MP
Darren Chester, since 2008.
- Geography
- Redistribution
- History
- Candidate summary
- Assessment
- 2019 results
- Booth breakdown
- Results maps
Geography
Eastern Victoria. The seat of Gippsland covers most of the East Gippsland and Latrobe Valley regions, stretching as far west as Morwell and Traralgon.
History
The seat of Gippsland is an original federation electorate. It has always been held by conservative candidates, and has been held by the Country Party and National Party continuously since 1922.
Gippsland was first won in 1901 by Allan McLean, a former Premier of Victoria and opponent of federation. McLean was a member of the Barton-Deakin protectionist party, but was at odds with their alliance with the Labour party. He was re-elected in 1903, but in 1904 he effectively left the Protectionist party to join the Free Trade ministry of George Reid. The ministry lasted for eleven months, and at the 1906 election McLean was defeated by George Wise, a Protectionist candidate.
Wise refused to join the Fusion in 1909 and defeated the Liberal candidate as an independent in 1910. In 1913, however, he lost to Liberal candidate James Bennett. Wise won back the seat, again as an independent, in 1914, and joined the new Nationalist party in 1916. He served briefly as a minister in the Hughes government from 1920 to 1921. Wise lost the seat in 1922 to the Country Party’s Thomas Paterson.
Paterson served as a minister in the Coalition government from 1926 until its defeat in 1929. He served as Deputy Leader of the Country Party from 1929 to 1937, and served as a minister again in the Lyons government from 1934 until the 1937 election. He retired from Parliament at the 1943 election.
The Country Party’s George Bowden won Gippsland in 1943. He held the seat until his retirement in 1961, and despite serving through twelve years of conservative rule, he never reached ministerial rank.
Peter Nixon won Gippsland in 1961. He joined the cabinet in 1967, and served in Coalition governments through to 1972 and again for the entirety of the Fraser government, before retiring at the 1983 election.
In 1983, Gippsland was won by Peter McGauran. McGauran held the seat for the Nationals for the next quarter century. He served as a junior minister in the Howard government from 1996 to 2005, barring a year from 1997 to 1998 when he was forced onto the backbench for his involvement in the ‘travel rorts’ affair. He was promoted to Cabinet in 2005 and was a senior member of the Nationals by the time of the 2007 election. He moved to the backbench in 2007 and retired from Parliament in 2008.
The 2008 Gippsland by-election was won by Nationals candidate Darren Chester, who defeated a challenge from both the Liberal Party and the Labor Party. Chester has been re-elected four times.
Assessment
Gippsland is a very safe Nationals seat.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Darren Chester | Nationals | 52,202 | 54.0 | -1.8 |
| Antoinette Holm | Labor | 22,426 | 23.2 | +3.0 |
| David Snelling | Shooters, Fishers and Farmers | 6,872 | 7.1 | +7.1 |
| Deb Foskey | Greens | 5,835 | 6.0 | -1.8 |
| Kerri Jane Brewer | United Australia Party | 4,257 | 4.4 | +4.4 |
| Sonia Buckley | Independent | 3,043 | 3.1 | +3.2 |
| Neville Phillip Tickner | Conservative National Party | 2,043 | 2.1 | +2.1 |
| Informal | 5,320 | 5.2 | -1.6 |
2019 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Darren Chester | Nationals | 64,456 | 66.7 | -1.5 |
| Antoinette Holm | Labor | 32,222 | 33.3 | +1.5 |
Booths have been divided into four areas. Polling places in East Gippsland and Wellington shires have been grouped together. Polling places in the Latrobe Valley have been split between the towns of Traralgon and Morwell.
The Nationals won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all four areas, ranging from 50.4% in Morwell to 72.1% in Wellington.
| Voter group | SFF prim % | NAT 2PP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| East Gippsland | 5.8 | 68.1 | 13,354 | 13.8 |
| Wellington | 7.6 | 72.1 | 13,197 | 13.7 |
| Traralgon | 8.2 | 61.4 | 8,249 | 8.5 |
| Morwell | 8.7 | 50.4 | 6,464 | 6.7 |
| Pre-poll | 6.8 | 68.2 | 48,003 | 49.7 |
| Other votes | 7.9 | 64.4 | 7,411 | 7.7 |
Election results in Gippsland at the 2019 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Nationals and Labor.
National hold, But here is a fun fact, Then opposition leader Brendan Nelson predicted Labor would win this in the 2008 By-election only for the Nats to get a big swing to them!
The decline of the Labor vote in the Latrobe Valley has changed the political complexion a lot since 2008, though.
Even in the late 2000s, Labor was polling around 65% in Morwell and holding close in Traralgon. In 2019, Morwell was 50-50 and Traralgon was reliably 60%+ for the Nats.
Darren Chester is probably the only National who is sensible. As Keating once said – I went to the graziers and they said that the Nationals were a bunch of hillbillies and hobos. Darren Chester should be a Minister and not a junior one at that
James
Who have you been speaking to, or listening to ?. The man is known for being outstandingly arrogant, & dismissive. Chester has been spectacularly ineffective as a vet minister, & didn’t do well at his previous gig either. Barnaby despises him, for being useless, disloyal, lazy, & incompetent. Harsh but fair. Barnaby might not be a towering intellect but he is a good judge of cattle, & people. it’s called instinct. More useful than intellect. Chester serves as another variety of illustration that intelligence without humility is worse than useless, it’s destructive.
Chester was the first beast be “culled”( from the NAT “herd !”). Sooner he moves on to the political “abattoir” the better.
Hopefully in the next redistribution all of La Trobe Vally is put in the same rather then being spit into two electorates.
Bob
If Morwell and Traralgon were taken out of Gippsland they would need to be replaced. All of both South Gippsland and Bass Coast shires would be the replacement. The poor MP would have to look after an area extending from Westernport to the NSW border. In terms of community of interest, there is a lot more commonality between Traralgon and Sale , rather than Philip Island with Sale .
Having spent quite a bit of time doing business in that part of the world, I think they rather like having two MPs to lobby.
Redistributed, if Hotham is abolished at the next redistribution then La Trobe may move inwards towards Narre Warren and loose the Rural portion of Cardinia such as Nar Nar Goon, Bunyip etc to Monash in that case it may allow La Trobe valley to be united in Gippsland and allow Monash to have Bass Coast, Baw Baw, South Gippsland and Rural Cardinia.
Nimalam
On present enrolment, if Victoria was divided into 38 seats, then Gippsland and Monash would maintain the status quo or be close. Regional seats are holding their enrolments so – at this stage – it would seem to be a big shuffle in Melbourne.
Jim McDonald, Liberal Democratic Party candidate for Gippsland, has been omitted from the list.
The list is not yet final. I explained this in my last blog post.
Sorry, Ben Raue. I am new to this site and didn’t know about your blog.
All good. I’m moving as quick as I can but I still have about 400 candidates who I need to check for a website before I can do the update.
The Chester has the Greens at #3 above the LibDems and ON. Can’t imagine the local Nats members being too happy about that.
I grew up in this seat. Chester’s actually a pretty centrist type. He doesn’t really like Morrison or Joyce – tbh it wouldn’t have surprised me for him to have left the Nats entirely and run as an independent a la Windsor or Oakeshott (and I reckon he’d win if he did). We voted in Craig Ingram in the 90s to help sink Kennett.
Also remember Gippsland isn’t a Queensland coal seat – people here actually care about climate change etc.
Expat I though Gippsland does have a few remnants of coal (i.e. Latrobe Valley) although you could argue that area is winding down and not as dominant as Central Queensland/Hunter Valley. Some of the coastal areas (near NSW border) are probably more left/Greens leaning as these areas are more focused on tourism and were hit hard by the 2020 bushfires.
The big difference is that the Latrobe Valley coal is only for the power stations and there is no export market so the issue is not as loaded. It has been winding down for decades since privatisation. Not sure why Chester (and McCormack for that matter) stick around in the Nats. Both seem decent guys dedicated to their constituencies. At state level in NSW and Victoria, the Nats are more pragmatic and less fixated on coal – maybe that keeps them in. The Nats could be another party to have a post election reckoning.
Correct – LV coal is a) pretty much already dead, and b) isn’t making corporate types rich like export coal from Qld.
It’s worth a few votes for local jobs, but it doesn’t have $ attached from Palmer or Rinehart.
Redistributed, maybe it could be that Darren Chester is like the moderate Liberals who are staying put in the hope of having some influence to try and push/persuade the remaining Coalition caucus to not move too far right. Although with the moderates’ numbers dwindling fast, this will be quite a pointless exercise
The nats are nuts…. how could anyone reelect Barnaby.
Chester was on the losing side
Solid swing to Chester here, seems to be driven mostly by big 10% swings around Morwell.
All of the Morwell and surrounding booths are now 55-60% Coalition, almost unthinkable even a decade or so ago.
There also didn’t seem to be any ‘bushfire backlash’ around here….Mallacoota and similar areas swung heavily to the Nationals (although maybe being a Nat instead of Lib helped here)
The Decline of the coal industry has played a part is the decline of the Labor vote in the Coal areas of this seat. Interestingly, Darren Chester is pro-climate action even if he represents a major part of the La Trobe valley.
@ Redistributed agreed the Coal in La Trobe valley not being export oriented. This is a big point of difference to the Hunter Valley or Central QLD. Maybe a better comparison to the La Trobe valley would be parts of the Central West around Lithgow where not much is discussed but the Coal industry has been declining and the Labor vote with it. Look how the state seat of Bathurst has changed and also the Federal seat of Calare.
This seat is interesting, From 2007-2022 it had the biggest state adjusted TPP swing against Labor of -15.4 over those 15 years. In 1998, after the Howard Government implemented Gun Law Reforms it had the second biggest TPP swing to Labor. It is one of the reasons that the Labor won the TPP nationally but much of the swing happened in the wrong place. In many ways Calwell was the Gippsland of 2022. However, once memories of the Gun Law reforms had passed and Howard left it returned to form. In hindsight, the Labor party was foolish to contest the 2008 Gippsland by-election, the swing against them was partly a correction. As mentioned, Coal has been declining for sometime and is not exported oriented like in Central QLD and Hunter Valley.
You also see the same happen with the state seats around the area: Gippsland East, Gippsland South, Morwell and Narracan have all swung substantially to the right lately. Interestingly in 2002, where Labor in Victoria got a landslide win and a massive swing a few seats actually swung to the Nats: Lowan, Gippsland East, Gippsland South, Morwell, Rodney, Shepparton & Swan Hill. These were the only seats that swung against Labor this election.
Agree Drake
i think Morwell is one formally Labor held seat which they will never win back. In the 2022 Morwell thread, i said prior to the election it was their final chance to win the seat. After the result was announced, i said maybe in 10-15 years there will be no Red booths in the La Trobe Valley. Labor actually devoted resources to try and win Morwell in 2022 in hindsight they should have devoted the resources to Croydon instead. I think Labor has a better chance to win Rowville than Morwell now. The La Trobe valley and some other Nats territory is one area of Victoria which i say confidently has moved to the right
https://www.tallyroom.com.au/archive/vic2022/morwell2022/comment-page-1#comments
@Nimalan
And the campaigning did work to a large extent. On Fed figures Labor got 38.4% of the TPP in Morwell compared to 45.6% in the state election. It’s probably the area they most over-performed their federal results but in the end they couldn’t beat changing demographics. Labor ran a really good campaign here and it still wasn’t enough.
@ Drake
Good point about over performing the federal result. They did campaign strongly in Morwell and you said it was not enough. This area maybe one of the few places where older voters maybe more left-wing than younger ones. For example you may have a retired power station worker who once worked for the SEC who is a lifelong union member who still votes Labor but a younger millennial who never worked in Coal maybe less likely to vote Labor.
Some other areas where State Labor over performed the 2022 Federal result was the outer East, Deakin and Aston would be Labor held on state results.
This got me thinking if the Hunter Valley might eventually swing to the Coalition once Coal Mining Declines as they are probably would had voted Right-Wing Parties if it wasn’t for their Jobs and Unions? Although I do acknowledge that La Trobe Valley declined earlier since it is Brown Coal which is dirtier
@ Marh possibly although the Hunter Valley is more economically vibrant and urbanized than the La Trobe Valley as i mentioned in the Capricornia thread. A lot of Newcastle suburbs extend into Hunter, Shortland and Paterson seats. Newcastle itself if very progressive.
Also Brown Coal is not exported so the decline happened earlier.
La Trobe Valley does seem it bit like West Virginia and Eastern Kentucky which used to be heavily Democratic until 15-20 years ago but now heavily Republican as those areas has seen a decline in Coal Mining.