Higgins – Election 2010

LIB 7.0%

Incumbent MP
Kelly O’Dwyer, since 2009.

Geography
Higgins covers suburbs in the inner south-east of Melbourne. Its suburbs include South Yarra, Prahran, Toorak, Malvern and Glen Iris. Most of the seat is covered by Stonnington LGA, as well as southern parts of Boroondara LGA and small parts of Glen Eira and Monash LGAs.

Higgins covers the entirety of the safe Liberal state seat of Malvern. It also covers about half of the marginal ALP seat of Prahran. Higgins also covers parts of three other seats: marginal ALP Burwood, safe Liberal Hawthorn and safe ALP Oakleigh.

History
Higgins was first created in 1949 when the Parliament was expanded in size. Its first member was Harold Holt, who had previously been Member for Fawkner in the same part of Melbourne. Holt was a minister in the Menzies United Australia Party government at the beginning of the Second World War.

Holt returned to the ministry in 1949 as Minister for Immigration. He became Menzies’ Treasurer in 1958 and became Prime Minister upon Menzies’ retirement in 1966.

Holt disappeared in sensational circumstances in December 1967 while swimming at Cheviot Beach in Victoria. Higgins was won by new Prime Minister John Gorton in a 1968 by-election. Gorton had previously been a Senator and was required to move to the House of Representatives.

Gorton held the seat continously until the 1975 election. Following Malcolm Fraser’s accession to the Liberal leadership Gorton resigned from the Liberal Party and sat as an independent. At the 1975 election he stood for an ACT Senate seat and Higgins returned to the Liberal Party.

Roger Shipton won the seat in 1975 and maintained his hold on the seat until 1990, when he was challenged for preselection by Peter Costello. Costello held the seat from 1990 until his 2009 resignation, triggering a by-election.

The ensuing by-election became a contest between the Liberal Party’s Kelly O’Dwyer and the Greens candidate, prominent academic Clive Hamilton, as the ALP refused to stand a candidate. Hamilton polled 32%, a record primary vote for a Greens candidate in a federal electorate, but O’Dwyer held on comfortably with a 10% margin after preferences.

Candidates

• Tony Clark (Labor)
• David Fawcett (Independent)
• Sam Hibbins (Greens)
• Ashley Truter (Family First)
• Kelly O’Dwyer (Liberal) – Member for Higgins since 2009.

Political situation
The Liberal Party has held Higgins ever since it was created in 1949. In that time, the seat has never gone to preferences. O’Dwyer retained the seat comfortably despite a strong Greens campaign in 2009, and she shouldn’t have any trouble retaining the seat in 2010.

2007 result

2007 two-candidate-preferred result

2009 by-election result

2009 two-candidate-preferred result

Booth breakdown
I have divided polling booths in Higgins into four groups.

• West – Toorak, Prahran and South Yarra
• Central – Malvern
• South-East – Malvern East, Carnegie
• North-East – Glen Iris, Burwood, Camberwell

As the following chart shows, the ALP won a majority in the South-East, while the ALP polled slightly above average in the West and North-East. In the centre of the electorate the Liberals polled over 60% of the two-party-preferred vote.

The Liberal Party gained ground in all four areas at the 2009 by-election, with the Greens particularly performing worse than the ALP had in the south-east, which the ALP won by a slim margin in 2007. The Greens also performed poorly amongst other votes, with the Liberal Party polling almost 70% amongst these votes.

2007 election breakdown

2009 by-election breakdown