Indi – Australia 2016

IND 0.3% vs LIB

Incumbent MP
Cathy McGowan, since 2013.

Geography
North-eastern Victoria.  Indi runs along the Murray River and stretches inland to cover Wodonga, Wangaratta, Towong, Mansfield, Murrindindi, Indigo, Benalla and Alpine council areas, and a part of Moira council area. The major cities in the seat are Wodonga and Wangaratta.

History
Indi is an original federation electorate. Apart from four elections when the ALP won the seat, Indi has almost always been won by the Coalition parties and their predecessors.

The seat was first won in 1901 by Protectionist candidate Isaac Isaacs. Isaacs was a radical member of the Protectionist party and did not get along with most of his party. He was appointed Attorney-General in Alfred Deakin’s government in 1905, but in 1906 he was appointed to the High Court. Isaacs served on the High Court for 24 years. In 1930 he was appointed Chief Justice by Labor Prime Minister James Scullin. Shortly after, Scullin decided to break with tradition by appointing an Australian-born Governor-General, and chose Isaacs. Isaacs served as Governor-General until 1936.

Indi was won in 1906 by Anti-Socialist candidate Joseph Brown, a former Victorian state MP. Brown joined the merged Liberal Party in 1909, although he was a fierce critic of Alfred Deakin. He lost Indi in 1910 to the ALP’s Parker Moloney.

Moloney held Indi until the 1913 election, when he lost to the Liberal Party’s Cornelius Ahern, but Moloney won it back in 1914. Moloney lost Indi again in 1917. He went on to move across the border to the neighbouring NSW seat of Hume, which at the time covered Albury. He held Hume from 1919 to 1931, and served as a minister in the Scullin government.

The Nationalist Party’s John Leckie, a Victorian state MP, won Indi in 1917. He lost the seat in 1919 to Robert Cook of the Victorian Farmers’ Union, which became the Country Party.

Cook retained Indi at the 1922 and 1925 elections, but lost the seat in bizarre circumstances in 1928, when he failed to lodge his nomination papers. The seat instead was won by the ALP’s Paul Jones.

Jones was re-elected in 1929, when Cook attempted to retain his seat, before he lost Indi to the United Australia Party’s William Hutchinson in 1931. Jones went on to serve in the Victorian Legislative Council from 1938 and 1958, and left the ALP as part of the split in 1955, ending up in the Democratic Labor Party.

Hutchinson held Indi for two terms. In 1937 he moved to the new seat of Deakin, which he held until his retirement in 1949.

Indi was won in 1937 by the Country Party’s John McEwen, who had previously won the seat of Echuca in 1934. He served as a minister in the Liberal/Country governments from 1937 to 1941.

McEwen left Indi to take the new seat of Murray in 1949, and he joined Robert Menzies’ cabinet in the new government. He was elected Country Party leader in 1958, and when Robert Menzies retired in 1966 he became the most senior figure in the government, with tremendous influence over the Country Party’s larger ally, the Liberal Party. When Prime Minister Harold Holt disappeared in late 1967, McEwen briefly served as Acting Prime Minister, and he vetoed the choice of the Treasurer, William McMahon, leading to Senator John Gorton moving to the House of Representatives and becoming Prime Minister. McEwen retired in 1971.

Indi was won in 1949 by Liberal candidate William Bostock. Bostock held the seat until the 1958 election, when he lost to the Country Party’s Mac Holten. Holten was a former footballer, and he served as Minister for Repatriation from 1969 to 1972.

In 1977, Holten was challenged by the Liberal Party’s Ewen Cameron. Despite topping the poll on primary votes, Holten lost when Cameron overtook him on Labor preferences.

Cameron held Indi until his retirement in 1993. He was succeeded in 1993 by the Liberal Party’s Lou Lieberman, a former Victorian state MP and minister. Lieberman served on the Liberal backbench until his retirement at the 2001 election.

In 2001, Indi was won by Sophie Panopoulos (now Mirabella). Mirabella served on the backbench for the entirety of the Howard government, becoming a parliamentary secretary in 2007 and a shadow minister in 2008.

At the 2013 election, Mirabella was defeated by independent candidate Cathy McGowan, who won a very tight contest by 439 votes.

Candidates

Assessment
With Sophie Mirabella again contesting Indi, it appears the Liberal Party is seriously attempting to retake Indi. They will have to struggle with the loss of incumbency, and McGowan’s higher profile as the sitting MP.

A poll in March indicated a drop in support for Mirabella since 2013 (even after factoring in votes for the Nationals candidate) and an increase in support for McGowan. If that poll is accurate and there isn’t a swing back to Mirabella, you’d expect McGowan to win a second term.

Polls

  • 37.3% to McGowan, 26.9% Liberal, 10.6% Nationals, 8.8% Labor, 5.4% Greens, 7.6% undecided – Reachtel commissioned by the Australia Institute, 10 March 2016

2013 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Sophie Mirabella Liberal 39,785 44.7 -7.2
Cathy Mcgowan Independent 27,763 31.2 +31.2
Robyn Walsh Labor 10,375 11.7 -16.5
Jenny O’Connor Greens 3,041 3.4 -6.2
Robert Denis Murphy Palmer United Party 2,417 2.7 +2.7
Helma Aschenbrenner Sex Party 1,402 1.6 +1.6
Rick Leeworthy Family First 1,330 1.5 -2.2
Robert Dudley Rise Up Australia 985 1.1 +1.1
Jennifer Podesta Independent 841 0.9 +0.9
Phil Rourke Katter’s Australian Party 615 0.7 +0.7
William Hayes Bullet Train For Australia 489 0.6 +0.6
Informal 4,774 5.4

2013 two-candidate-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Cathy Mcgowan Independent 44,741 50.3
Sophie Mirabella Liberal 44,302 49.8
Polling places in Indi at the 2013 federal election. East in orange, Indigo in pink, South in red, West in green, Wodonga in blue. Click to enlarge.
Polling places in Indi at the 2013 federal election. East in orange, Indigo in pink, South in red, West in green, Wodonga in blue. Click to enlarge.

Booth breakdown
Booths have been divided into five areas. Polling places in Wodonga and Indigo council areas have been grouped along council boundaries. The remainder were split into East, South and West.

Cathy McGowan won a majority of the two-candidate-preferred vote in three areas. She won a slim 51% majority in the west, and larger 56% and 59% majorities in Wodonga and Indigo respectively.

Sophie Mirabella won 51% in the east, and 55% in the south.

The ALP came third, with a vote ranging from 7.7% in Indigo to 18% in the south.

Voter group ALP % IND 2CP % Total votes % of votes
West 9.6 51.4 11,169 12.5
Wodonga 11.5 55.8 10,533 11.8
South 18.1 45.2 9,499 10.7
East 8.3 49.0 7,868 8.8
Indigo 7.7 59.1 7,492 8.4
Other votes 12.1 48.3 42,482 47.7
Two-candidate-preferred (Independent vs Liberal) votes in Indi at the 2013 federal election.
Two-candidate-preferred (Independent vs Liberal) votes in Indi at the 2013 federal election.
Two-candidate-preferred (Independent vs Liberal) votes in northern parts of Indi at the 2013 federal election.
Two-candidate-preferred (Independent vs Liberal) votes in northern parts of Indi at the 2013 federal election.

50 COMMENTS

  1. God Almighty
    How could the libs preselect the appalling Sophie Mirabella. Cathie Mc Gowan has nothing whatever to fear. I predict a double digit swing to CM.
    Hopefully another party will come second to really reinforce the message.

  2. I think this will follow a trend with many independents – narrow squeak first time around, followed by a huge wave in the next election as name recognition, profile and popularity invariably increase. Expect an IND retain.

  3. McGowan shouldn’t have too much trouble here. It was just complete stupidity by the Liberals preselecting Mirabella, in my view it would have to be the worst choice ever.

  6. Mirabella is going to be humiliated here, and rightly so. She is basically a younger version of Bronnycopter

  7. Independent incumbents generally are expected to retain seats for as long as they recontest. I’d expect a swing in McGowen’s favour, though not a large Andrew Wilkie style swing that he experienced in 2013.

    Though McGowen is very much within the more progressive mould as opposed to the more conservative mould of Tony Windsor – there isn’t much more to be peeled off of Labor or the Greens. There’s definitely some to be peeled off the Liberals but whether they flip to the Nationals remains to be seen. I wouldn’t expect McGowen to hold this seat with more than a 5% margin.

  8. independents who win country seats usually retain then……. baring a very bad election
    expect Kathy Mcgowan to retain

  10. Matt
    I’ll stand by my 10% + prediction. Mirabella will be out there reminding everybody why , how they voted last time !!!. Quite literally anybody else would have been a better candidate !!!!.

  11. This Libs would do much better thinking about how they’ll hold off the inevitable independent challenge in Murray, rather than waste effort on this one.

  12. Peterjk23
    Iam sure they would. However they will lose this one for sure. to an independent, or Nat.
    One of my best mates, having met a lot of pollies, has a very low opinion of Sharman Stone.

  13. More bad news for the libs. PM live is in Indi on Thursday night. Mirabella will no doubt be shooting off her vile mouth. What a win for everyone else, with her reminding voters why they threw her out in the first place. If i were a voter not just in Indi, but anywhere in rural VIC, I’D feel i was being held in total contempt, & disregard, by her endorsement in itself.

  14. The Libs are no chance here, and with the Nats running, I feel will compound their issues. The Nats will leak preferences to McGowan. As well as Labor and the Greens directing preferences towards her.
    McGowan seems like an MP who tries to get around her electorate and actually represents her constituents. I feel like she actually shows people especially rural coalition MPs that the country isn’t as backwards and conservative as they might think.

  15. McGowan should increase her margin here significantly this time around. it would be difficult for any Liberal to regain the seat let alone the toxic style of Mirabella.

  16. Malcolm
    Not difficult. Impossible. McGowan has the job for as long as she wants.
    Then the Nats, or another independent will take it.

  18. I heard that Kroger helped her get preselection so that she got thumped and never had a shot at being a senator, which she thought was her other option.

  19. PJ
    Good on him. I’d have done the same. What a disaster it would have been for her to be a senator . Shows how, & why Kroger was too smart to ever go into politics (as an MP ) !!!,

  20. Mirabella won’t stand a chance after the 2013 election dislodged her from her safe haven. A statewide swing against the Liberals (as observed in the 2014 state election) will make this even more difficult for her. The negative media attention she has received of late, will be the nail in the already buried coffin.

  21. And next door in Murray Libs and ALP looking to do a deal to keep Nats out – even though Nats will top the poll. What’s with the ALP?

  22. @ Nick
    Apparently Labor will preference the Nats if the Libs preference the Greens in Wills. It’s almost certain that the Libs will preference the Greens in Batman. So Labor is in discussions with the Libs about these preference decisions.

  23. @L96
    Sounds like Libs outsmarting ALP on this.
    Interesting ALP has historically backed Libs over the Nats re 2013 in Mallee

  24. @Nick
    I don’t think anybody has outsmarted anyone with the current arrangements, each party is toying with what they have. Each deal has pros and cons, the Libs referencing the Greens in the Inner north could open the door to Labor losing seats, but if conservative voters catch wind of this move, especially in the Libs targets seats, this could come back to bite them.

    As for the distribution of Labor preferences in Lib/Nat contests I must confess i’ve never looked into this, although If I were Labor I would preference the Nats, as more Nats would force the Libs to lose power in the Coalition party room and this could have the potential to highlights rifts between the two.

  25. Cathy McGowan will romp it in here. Most of her vote last time was from Indigo and Wangaratta. In areas like Murrundinidi she was not very well known and a lot of these booths would have voted for Mirabella out of habit.

    Now McGowan is known to these people and they will probably look favourably toward her. The recent fiascos within the media clearly show that Mirabella has not learnt her lesson and the Liberals are still taking the electorate for granted.

    McGowan is local born and bred, as was her last campaign. She has worked tirelessly for her constituents and has made herself and her name.

    The addition of the Nationals candidate will be interesting. There was some acrimony last time in Mallee when both Nationals and Liberals ran, and this time in both Murray and Indi it will be interesting to see a) how vigorously the Nationals preference the Liberals (they surely cannot preference anyone over their coalition partners) and b) how many National preferences leak to McGowan. ALP and Greens would surely preference McGowan strongly.

    I expect we will see a 10% swing at least to McGowan.

  26. Darren McSweeney
    IF there were any justice the Nats would out poll the libs. We should all just be thankful this is the end of Mirabella.

    I like the 10% figure : 1% for every million $ of hospital funding Mirabella reckons Wangaratta lost because she wasn’t elected !!!!. What a self-serving moron she is.

  27. winediamond, I’m not so sure the Nats candidate is any better with his recent “Im not sexist but…” comments. I’m hoping for a better than Andrew Wilkie 14% swing now.

  28. L96, there’s a potential risk for Cathy McGowan in Sophie Mirabella doing really badly: If the Nats’ Marty Corboy overtakes Mirabella (courtesy of, say, DLP, FF, Country Party, Country Alliance or leakage from the ALP or even some Greens) then Mirabella’s preferences would flow much more strongly to Corboy than Corboy’s would have flowed to her (which would leak significantly to McGowan).

    It’s a near mirror image of Liberal Clem Newton-Brown’s problem in Prahran in 2014: he needed the Greens’ Sam Hibbins to end up third after Animal Justice was eliminated, as Greens would leak sufficiently to Newton-Brown to save him on the final count. As it was, Labor’s Neil Pharaoh came third of the final three, and on elimination flowed with only minor leakage to Hibbins, allowing Hibbins to overtake and defeat Newton-Brown.

  29. West Essendon, I have no idea how high the Nats will poll, but I think you are really off track. The Liberals are on almost 45% primary lets assume a train wreck campaign how low is that really going to go. There’s about 30% primary vote tied up in Cathy McGowan and probably another 12% in Labor and another 3% Green. That leaves a whole 10% of other primary votes left (assuming every single Green and Labor vote flows to McGowan and every single other vote flows to Nats) and whatever % comes off the Liberals which would need to be a 25% primary vote reduction to get a National ahead.

    Do you think the Liberal vote is going to go below 35% primary? Because the Nats aren’t going to catch up otherwise

  31. The truth is the Nats are ahead in Sportsbet Nats $6:00 and Libs (Sophie Mirabella) $11.00. So there must be something in the wind. Yes its a betting agency, but they do their homework. Barnaby Joyce has confirmed that the Nats have a better chance of winning the seat then Mirabella.

    I think once a independent or minor party has got the seat they have got it. And unlike a opposing major party it generally does not matter what the election goes because voters won’t take their anger out on a minor party or independent.

    It’s why Labor will find it hard to dislodge Adam Bandt in the seat of Melbourne. Once their there they are there, and it’s hard to get rid of them. Cathy McGowan will almost certainly retain the seat.

    The bigger picture though was Mirabella was always a bad choice for this seat from the start. Indi is a regional/rural seat and the Libs parachute Mirabella who is a neo-conservative liberal. It was a match that never fitted, and then she took the seat for granted using Indi as a stepping stone for power and paid the price for it.

  33. Roy Morgan poll today has McGowan behind 51-49 on 2PP, with Mirabella in front. Not good numbers.

  34. @Feel the Bern
    I had a look at the poll results and it said that no candidates names were published alongside the parties. That makes a significant difference because if voters see Mirabella on the ballot they are more likely to swap their vote, some Libs will change over to the Nats or McGowan and Labor or Green voters will just strategically vote for McGowan, even some Nats will vote for McGowan.

    Finally, Lib headquarters have apparently been leaking against Mirabella, and they have also cut funding off for her. Conversely the expectation within the Coalition is that the Nats are a better chance of getting into second.

  36. A couple of historical notes. John Leckie,its MP during WW1, was the father of Dame Pattie Menzies. And particularly interesting: when Labor switched preferences from the Nats to the Libs in 1977 to unseat Mac Holten, it wasn’t because of Holten or even his party, but Labor decided that in three-cornered contests, it would always give preferences against the sitting member, to maximise tensions between the Coalition partners. A bit of bastardry the Libs might choose to repay when they decide whether to give preferences to Labor or the Greens in the inner suburbs?

    On Sophie, she was pre-selected by a local panel. Quite possibly her opponents in the party had already left last time to work for McGowan, so only her supporters were left. Bizarre choice, as we all agree. But I get the sense that Corboy is to the right of her!

    And why does Morgan trash its own brand, putting out a poll like that? We will see in a month’s time whether it was right or wrong, and some of us will remember which.

  37. Would be shocked if this is less than 55-45 to McGowan. 60-40 or even a few points higher, more likely.

  38. Sophie stuffed up with that $10milliondollar clanger for Wangaratta hospital

    She wont win

    Good luck to independant member

    So long a party hack does not win and
    Indy gets a real MP not a yes man for tweedle dumb or tweedle dumber

  39. short of Kathy Mcgowan joining the communist party and being charged with murder and fraud she will be elected again

  40. The most critical phase of the Indi count will be the order of the three remaining candidates once the fourth and lower candidates (ALP, Green and minors) have been eliminated. There is no way that I can’t see McGowan, Mirabella and the Nationals’ Corboy being the final three.

    The interest for me (and heaps of others) will be, “who finishes third?” While a McGowan-Mirabella top-two is probably still the most likely, a McGowan-Corboy top-two can’t be ruled out. That is a danger for McGowan, as Mirabella supporters’ preferences will flow more strongly to Corboy (McGowan being ‘the enemy’) than Corboy’s supporters’ [e.g. former Nationals state MP Ken Jasper] preferences would flow to Mirabella.

    If Corboy finishes third at that point, Corboy-to-McGowan leakage would be greater (if Ken Jasper sentiment among Nationals is anything to go by) on his elimination. Hard heads in the McGowan camp will hope Corboy finishes third, but only just.

  43. The signage in this electorate seems to be dominated by Corboy. What Liberal stuff there is seems to be heavy on the “Turnbull team” and light on Mirabella’s name.

  44. kme – doesn’t surprise me in the slightest. She lost the seat because of her behaviour, then her behaviour in response was even worse. Don’t know what the local Liberals were thinking, choosing her as their candidate again.

    Incidentally, Sportsbet considers this a pretty easy hold for McGowan, at 1.15. Corboy is second position at 6.00, then Mirabella at 11.00. Although, personally I think Labor has a better chance of winning the seat than Mirabella does.

  45. So Mirabella gets 45000 votes against McGowans 37000 and we’re told that Mirrabella is wildly unpopular and McGowan is “much loved”.

  46. Where are those figures from? It’s certainly not the 2013 election results (which are handily included up top in the article).

  47. Mark my words, the Puff Adder will struggle to get any more than 20% of the primary vote this time around

  49. If, as predicted, we have a close election result nationally, Cathy could have a much greater voice for our electorate in Canberra. It would be great for the electors in Indi not to be taken for granted and beng given the extra attention that marginal electorates get!! Like Tony Windsor & Rob Oakshott in their respective electorates in 2013, Cathy’s bargaining power could deliver big time for Indi.
    Here’s hoping Cathy overcomes all the forces against her this time round. Suspect it will be close.

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