LIB 10.1%
Incumbent MP
Dan Tehan, since 2010.
Geography
South-western Victoria. Wannon covers the southwestern corner of Victoria, including Warrnambool, Portland, Ararat and Hamilton. Wannon covers Pyrenees, Ararat, Corangamite, Central Goldfields, Glenelg, Moyne, Southern Grampians and Warrnambool council areas.
History
Wannon is an original federation seat, having been created for the 1901 election. It has mainly been held by the Liberal Party and its predecessors, with the exception of a number of short periods when it was held by the ALP, with the ALP last holding the seat up to the 1955 election.
Wannon was first won in 1901 by Free Trade candidate Samuel Cooke. Cooke was a former minister in the Victorian colonial government, and he held the seat for one term before heading overseas in 1903.
He was succeeded in 1903 by another Free Trader, Arthur Robinson, who was a former colonial/state MP in the Victorian Parliament. Robinson held the seat for one term, losing in 1906. He went on to return to the Victorian Parliament and serve as a state minister.
The ALP’s John McDougall won Wannon off Robinson in 1906, campaigning against Robinson’s anti-union views. McDougall was re-elected in 1910, but lost in 1913, and failed to return to the House of Representatives in other seats at the 1914 election, a 1915 by-election and the 1917 election.
McDougall was replaced in 1913 by Liberal candidate Arthur Rodgers. Rodgers served as a minister in the Hughes government from 1920 to 1922 He held the seat until the 1922 election, when he lost to the ALP’s John McNeill. Rodgers won the seat back in 1925, before again losing to McNeill in 1929. McNeill served as a minister in the Scullin government, before losing the seat yet again in 1931.
The United Australia Party’s Thomas Scholfield won the seat in 1931, and held it until 1940, when he lost to the ALP’s Donald McLeod. McLeod held the seat for most of the next decade, losing it in 1949 to the Liberal Party’s Daniel Mackinnon.
Mackinnon only held the seat for one term, with McLeod regaining the seat in 1951. Mackinnon went on to win the neighbouring seat of Corangamite in a 1953 by-election, and held it until 1966.
At the 1954 election, McLeod was challenged by Liberal candidate Malcolm Fraser. McLeod defeated Fraser with a 17-vote margin.
In 1955, McLeod retired, and Fraser won the seat with a comfortable margin.
Fraser was a right-winger within the Liberal Party, and sat on the backbenches for a decade before joining the ministry in 1966. He served first as Minister for the Army, then Minister for Education and Science, and then Minister for Defence.
In 1971, he resigned from the ministry in protest at John Gorton’s interference in his portfolio, triggering a party room vote which saw a tied vote, and John Gorton was replaced as Prime Minister by William McMahon.
Fraser served as a minister in the McMahon government and on the opposition frontbench in the first term of the Whitlam government. After Billy Snedden’s loss in 1974 Fraser challenged for the leadership. Under Fraser’s leadership, the Liberal Party obstructed Gough Whitlam’s government in the Senate, which eventually led to Whitlam being dismissed by the Governor-General in late 1975, and Fraser became Prime Minister.
Fraser won the 1975, 1977 and 1980 elections, but lost in 1983, and retired from Parliament shortly after.
The 1983 by-election was won by David Hawker, also of the Liberal Party. Hawker served as an opposition whip from 1989 to 1990 and as a frontbencher from 1990 to 1993, and again as a whip until the 1996 election.
Hawker served as a backbencher in the Howard government from 1996 until the 2004 election. Hawker was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives after the 2004 election, and served in the role until the 2007 election.
Hawker retired in 2010, and the seat was won by Dan Tehan. Tehan was re-elected in 2013.
Candidates
- Michael Barling (Labor)
- Thomas Campbell (Greens)
- Dan Tehan (Liberal)
- Bernardine Atkinson (Independent)
- Michael McCluskey (Independent)
Assessment
Wannon is a safe Liberal seat.
2013 result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Dan Tehan | Liberal | 47,392 | 53.7 | +8.3 |
| Michael Barling | Labor | 26,044 | 29.5 | -1.8 |
| Tim Emanuelle | Greens | 5,668 | 6.4 | +0.2 |
| Bradley Ian Ferguson | Palmer United Party | 3,519 | 4.0 | +4.0 |
| Chris Johnson | Sex Party | 2,455 | 2.8 | +2.8 |
| Craig Haberfield | Family First | 1,957 | 2.2 | -0.1 |
| Therese Corbett | Australian Christians | 1,167 | 1.3 | +1.3 |
| Informal | 3,665 | 4.2 |
2013 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Dan Tehan | Liberal | 52,984 | 60.1 | +4.4 |
| Michael Barling | Labor | 35,218 | 39.9 | -4.4 |
Booth breakdown
Booths have been divided into six areas. The three local government areas in the north-east of the seat have been grouped together. Polling places in the other five local government areas have been grouped along council boundaries.
The Liberal Party’s two-party-preferred vote ranged from 50.7% in the north-east to 71.1% in Corangamite.
| Voter group | LIB 2PP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| North-East | 50.7 | 15,913 | 18.0 |
| Warrnambool | 55.4 | 10,026 | 11.4 |
| Corangamite | 71.1 | 8,449 | 9.6 |
| Moyne | 65.9 | 6,615 | 7.5 |
| Glenelg | 60.2 | 6,353 | 7.2 |
| Southern Grampians | 66.3 | 6,161 | 7.0 |
| Other votes | 60.8 | 34,685 | 39.3 |
This seat is a classic example of the compromises you need to make when you draw electoral boundaries. Central Goldfields in the north-east doesn’t really have much connection to the rest of Wannon, and even the AEC admitted it was less than ideal.
The logical arrangement for Wannon is to extend eastwards into Colac, but this unfortunately would mess up the Geelong seats. Unless you’re willing to jump Little River (which the AEC is not) then you have to settle for Wannon pushing northwards into areas that fit better with Ballarat, Bendigo, or Mallee.
With the death of Malcolm Fraser and the re-naming of the ACT seat, this is very likely to be renamed “Fraser” at the next redistribution.
Liberal vote in Portland seems lower than I would expect
The compromise the AEC made was to bow to public outcry over the abolition of Murray. The original proposal kept Central Goldfields in Bendigo and stretched Wannon north to Horsham.
That proposal also put Little River at the heart of a Lalor division containing both Werribee and Lara/Avalon.
One wonders whether they’ll have to revisit the idea of abolishing Murray next time. In which case, Fraser might be the name of the replacement seat.
Mark Mulcair, I think the AEC may want to preserve Wannon’s name since it’s a Federation electorate (similar to how Werriwa wasn’t renamed Whitlam)
Mark Mulcair, you might think I’m harsh but it’s another idee fixe of yours regarding the potential renaming of Wannon. If your reasoning is correct, then Kooyong would be Menzies; Higgins Holt and Finders would be Bruce.
I noticed at the NSW Redistribution that you as well as several others objected to the location of the Division to be called Whitlam. But there is no correlation between the seat named after a former PM and the electorate represented by the PM. Besides, it’s axiomatic that any PM had a connection with any seat named after him/her and wherever the location..
In 2015 in NSW, the Commissioners went out of their way to avoid abolishing Hunter, a Federation name.
At the Public Hearings for NSW last December I had handed out to the Commissioners a short paper on deceased former NSW Prime Ministers, the location of the Division named after them and the location of the seat(s) represented by them when in Parliament. It wasn’t published in the final report, so I reproduce it below:
“Commonwealth Divisions named after deceased New South Wales Prime Ministers
Since Federation NSW has supplied 13 of the 29 Australian Prime Ministers. Eight deceased former NSW based Prime Ministers have Electoral Divisions named in their honour. The NSW Redistribution Committee has proposed that the Division of Throsby be renamed Whitlam.
The ALP supports the reasoning of the Redistribution Committee which decided to retain the Division name of Werriwa which is both a Federation and Aboriginal name.
Most of the objections to the renaming of Throsby have been anchored on the fact that Mr Whitlam was never an MP for an Illawarra based seat. However, this argument is a complete irrelevance.
Of the nine NSW Prime Ministers, including Whitlam, for whom a Division is named only Earl Page, who served as PM for three weeks in 1939 has a Division named in his honour which he partially represented when in Parliament. Even so, he never represented Lismore which is the dominant City in Page.
The following are the deceased NSW Prime Ministers and the Divisions they represented when in Parliament:
Prime Minister (Term of Office) Seat(s) held
1. Edmund Barton (1901-3) Hunter
2. Chris Watson (1904) Bland(Wagga Wagga based) 1901-6; South Sydney (1906-10).
3. George Reid (1904-5) East Sydney
4. Joseph Cook (1913-14) Parramatta
5. W. M. Hughes (1915-23) West Sydney(1901-17); Bendigo(1917-22); North Sydney(1922-49); Bradfield(1949-52).
6. Earl Page (1939) Cowper
7. Ben Chifley (1945-49) Macquarie
8. William McMahon (1971-72) Lowe
9. Gough Whitlam (1972-75) Werriwa”
As ever, Shane, it’s just my personal opinion. No more, no less.
It seems a very likely and logical outcome to me for Wannon to be renamed “Fraser”….if the AEC disagrees with that (like with Whitlam) then so be it.
My prediction: Easy Liberal hold, and expect this or Murray to be re-named Fraser next redistribution.
big swings in Portland & Warrnambool except for prepoll seemed quite good for Labor