Hotham – Australia 2016

It’s always a bit difficult to draw boundaries in this part of Melbourne. There’s a green wedge through the middle of this seat (you can see clearly where there’s no booths), consisting of golf courses, wetlands, Moorabbin Airport, tip and garden waste dumps, and industrial areas.

You can also see how different the areas are on either side of this divide; generally middle class and Liberal/50-50 in the west, very working class and strongly Labor on the east. This explains why the seat has gradually turned from safe Liberal to safe Labor as it has got pushed further out.

Hotham is another of the south-east Melbourne seats that are well under quota, so will likely see some big changes at the next redistribution. I can’t see any change affecting Labor’s hold on the seat, though.

Even in the east, there’s a stark political difference between Dingley Village and Springvale/Springvale South.

Yeah, Dingley’s the odd man out. It’s kind of cut off from all the surrounding suburbs, so it’s very different in nature from Springvale or Keysborough.

Ben I think you got you dot colors mixed up for North and East booths…great work by the way!

MM – the Dingley By pass opened three months ago – it runs the “green wedge” from Warrigal Road to Westall road and makes to possible for the seat to be divided along community lines for the first time, thereby great alignment of boundaries in the south east.

This is the seat that should go much for the same reason seat of Henty before it was abolished. .

SB, if you mean use the Dingley Bypass as a possible new boundary, then yes that is one option. But it will depend on what happens with other seats in the south-east.

Abolishing Hotham would be tricky IMO. The western part of the seat could easily be distributed to Higgins, Goldstein, and Isaacs….but where does Oakleigh, Clayton, and Springvale/Keysborough go?

MM – I’m not recommending it as a boundary in this instance, just mentioning it’s now feasible. In the longer term I thinks its feasible, but I’m not sure it will play a role this time.

Answering second question is long winded but I want you to understand the rationale. The unusual thing about this redistribution is if it was simply the loss of a seat in Victoria the boundary changes would be quite contained, but creating a seat in the north west will mean the north will be short 30,000 voter. I stress we won’t know the exact number until the redistribution is called, but on current number the Casey/McEwen boundary through the Yarra Valley is the pressure value for population changes between East and West and will be moving back into the Yarra Valley. It did kill some other scenarios I was looking at namely Menzies into Banyule/Nullumbik or Casey into Nullumbik.

Abolishing Hotham is an outcome not an article of faith. I didn’t seek to abolish Hotham or Isaacs as I thought it through, I actually started with Chisholm and I chose Chisholm recognising that Menzies will be 15,000 voters short of a quota and may need at least at least 25,000 voters to meet projected 2021 quotas but due to its falling enrolment so that it “shrinks” down the quota. My preferred abolition was actually either Deakin or Menzies (both Prime ministers seats) as this where then VEC implemented most of its boundary changes.

What I found was this – the northern half of Chisholm is neat split between Kooyong, and Deakin voters nicely topping up Aston and Menzies with Aston, southern half to Bruce. McEwen loses voters due to the creating of (lets call it Fraser) and will come back into Yarra Valley where becomes messy and you still have to deal with the issue of what to do with City of Dandenong. The quick flow through is Dandenong becomes part of Hotham, Dunkley moves up to at least Chelsea due to changes in Cardinia and Casey and the rump of Isaacs takes the western half of Hotham.

Even though I like this outcome, it’s hard to argue for such significant boundary changes and I’m not sure the AEC will buy it as it prefers the de minimus approach. Why I’m cautious about this when I do the math new Isaacs ends up way over quota which is problematic as Goldstein, Melbourne Ports and Higgins will be pretty close to quota due to the heavy amount of urban “infill” in this areas, in fact the recent speed Melbourne Ports is growing suggested it could actually be over quota by the redistribution.

By abolishing Hotham you are dragging all seats southwards. Kooyong (down to High Street), Aston(following the last redistribution proposal into Endeavour Hills) , Bruce (taking whole of the City of Dandenong including Keysborough and Sandhurst), Deakin (into Glen Waverley and Knox), and Chisholm (taking Oakleigh to the Monash municipal boundary and part of Mount Waverley). Again you have the McEwen, Casey, La Trobe dynamic happening independently but less so as your solved what to do with Dandenong. As Dunkley doesn’t vary as much and Higgins is now taking 15,000 voters from Hotham (Carnegie/Murrumbeena and parts of Oakleigh), the rump of the seat now has the Isaacs half dominant (Hence Hotham is abolished) with the remainder of the City of Kingston which would include Clayton South, South Oakleigh, Dingley, Cheltenham East, Bentleigh East and Highett East added to Isaacs.
On current figures (which I stress) abolishing Hotham reduces the number of voters moved around in the City of Casey (Narre Warren) and Cardinia shire.

In a nutshell, I like the boundary changes that Chisholm’s abolishment brings, it makes sense. If I could be sure Kooyong moving south to High St, I’d go for it. But the AEC tries to move the boundary of Kooyong to Edgars road, which if Chisholm is abolished and given it proposed it back in 2010, then I think you find it would trigger a number of unnecessary boundary changes.

I don’t really like abolishing Hotham as its too pro ALP an outcome, but it surprised me that big boundary changes ended up being triggered in the south east as well as the east.

SB, I grew up in Wantirna South (in Aston) so I know the area well. I would not at all support Aston pushing south into Endeavour Hills; there’s a big national park between them with very little communication across it. Aston’s natural and logical expansion is to the east, to take in the balance of Boronia and Ferntree Gully (or as much of it as will fit) from Latrobe. Then it would be a fairly simple nip-and-tuck with Holt, Dunkley, Flinders, etc.

*IF* a seat is to be abolished in the SE, it seems most logical to me that it be Chisholm. Mont Albert and Surrey Hills into Kooyong. Box Hill/Burwood into Deakin, Mount Waverley/Ashwood into Bruce, the balance of Clayton into Hotham. In this scenario, Hotham would probably lose its western ends to Higgins, Goldstein, and/or Isaacs, and move decisively east into Bruce’s share of Dandenong. Maybe Holt would need to re-take part of Dandenong too.

There doesn’t seem to be any outrageous or ridiculous boundary changes anywhere in this scenario. But i don’t know if the numbers will work.

Anyway, hopefully we are not taking the thread too much off track. My email is freely available on my past submissions (markmulcair@gmail.com), so you are welcome to discuss your ideas further offline if you want.

Dingley is mostly a golfing community. Lots of wealthy old white men, hence the Libs domination of the booths there.

Some strange results here, there were some big swings in both directions with no obvious pattern or reason why. The north swung to the Liberals, as you’d perhaps expect as it becomes more affluent. But then Dingley (Liberal) swung heavily to Labor, while Springvale (Labor) swung the other way.

Perhaps some booths were closed or moved in this seat?

No, the Frankston line booths in Goldstein showed similar moves, Isaac is still present but dampened and it seems to be pretty much from Caulfield to Chelsea. the postal vote also favour the Libs so we many see the

Bear in mind the libs weren’t even handing out how to cards in most booths near me in Hotham and they achieved these results. 15 years ago the ALP would get 55-60% in most Bentleigh east and Carnegie booths but these are the areas targeted for “infill” and the type of development we’ve seen has made them more Liberal inclined.

To get an idea of how much Hotham has drifted to the Libs I would have expected the ALP to hold this with circa 11% margin.

But I do think Andrews is toast in these figures.