LIB 6.2%
Incumbent MP
Zoe McKenzie, since 2022.
Geography
Flinders covers most of the Mornington Peninsula, including Mount Eliza, Sorrento, Rosebud, Dromana, Hastings, Somerville and Mornington.
Redistribution
Flinders expanded slightly, taking in Mount Eliza from Dunkley. This change reduced the Liberal margin from 6.7% to 6.2%.
History
Flinders is an original federation electorate, and has a long history of having been held by conservative parties, with Labor only winning the seat three times, and no Labor MP managing to win re-election in Flinders.
The seat was first won in 1901 by Free Trader Arthur Groom, a former member of the Victorian colonial Parliament. Groom was not an active member of the first Parliament, and retired in 1903.
Flinders was won in 1903 by another Free Trade candidate, James Gibb, who had served in the Victorian Legislative Assembly in the 1880s. He held the seat for one term. Gibb left Flinders in 1906 in an attempt to defeat William Lyne in the NSW seat of Hume. Lyne was a former Premier of NSW and a prominent Protectionist minister, and easily saw off Gibb.
Flinders was won in 1906 by former Victorian Premier William Irvine. Irvine joined the merged Liberal Party in 1909. He served as a senior minister in Joseph Cook’s government from 1913 to 1914. He left Parliament to serve as Chief Justice of the Supreme Court of Victoria in 1918.
The 1918 Flinders by-election was won by Nationalist candidate Stanley Bruce. Bruce was appointed Treasurer in 1921. After the 1922 election the Nationalists had to rely on Country Party support to remain in government, and as a price for their support the Country Party demanded the replacement of Billy Hughes as Prime Minister, which saw Bruce appointed Prime Minister.
Bruce won re-election at the 1925 and 1928 elections, but his government came undone in 1929 when Billy Hughes led a group of Nationalist rebels across the floor in opposition to industrial relations legislation, and Bruce lost his majority.
Bruce’s Nationalists not only lost the federal election, but Bruce himself was defeated in Flinders by the ALP’s Jack Holloway. Holloway was secretary of the Melbourne Trades Hall Council, who had stood against Bruce in protest at the government’s arbitration policies.
Holloway was a leading left-winger in the Labor caucus during the Scullin government, and moved to the safer seat of Melbourne Ports in 1931. Holloway had served as an assistant minister for much of the Scullin government, and he went on to serve as a minister in the Curtin and Chifley governments, retiring in 1951.
Bruce won back Flinders in 1931 for the newly-formed United Australia Party. Bruce was appointed as a minister without portfolio in the Lyons government, and soon went to London to represent the Government. He resigned from Parliament in 1933 to serve as High Commissioner to London from the Australian government. Bruce served in the role until 1945, playing a key role in Australia’s participation in the Second World War. Bruce went on to serve in the House of Lords.
The 1933 Flinders by-election was won by James Fairbairn, who had served briefly as a UAP state MP before moving to federal Parliament. Fairbairn regularly flew aircraft and was appointed as Minister for Civil Aviation in the Menzies government in 1939. He served as the first Minister for the Air, with responsibility for the Royal Australian Air Force, and served as a key minister in the war effort until his death.
Fairbairn died in a plane crash in 1940. He was flying from Melbourne to Canberra along with four crew and five other passengers, including two other ministers and the Chief of the Defence Staff, and the plane crashed on approach to the airport in Canberra.
Fairbairn died only one month before the 1940 federal election, so no by-election was held. Flinders was won at the ensuing election by Rupert Ryan of the UAP. Ryan held the seat for the UAP and the successor Liberal Party until his death in 1952.
The 1952 Flinders by-election was won in a surprise result by the ALP’s Keith Ewert. He lost the seat at the 1954 federal election to Liberal candidate Robert Lindsay.
Lindsay held the seat until 1966, serving on the backbenches for twelve years.
In 1966, Flinders was won by Liberal candidate Phillip Lynch. Lynch quickly rose to ministerial rank, serving as a minister from 1968 until the defeat of the McMahon government in 1972.
Lynch became Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party under Billy Snedden after the 1972 election. He continued to serve in that role under Malcolm Fraser’s leadership.
Lynch served as Treasurer from 1975 to 1977, when he was forced to resign from the ministry due to allegations of tax minimisation. He was only out of office for a month before returning to Cabinet. Lynch retired from Parliament in 1982.
The 1982 Flinders by-election was won by the Liberal Party’s Peter Reith. The by-election took place in December 1982, but he never took his seat, as Fraser called a double dissolution in March 1983.
Reith had won Flinders at the 1982 by-election with a small margin, and lost the seat to the ALP’s Bob Chynoweth in 1983. He won the seat back in 1984. Chynoweth moved to the new seat of Dunkley, holding it until 1990, and again from 1993 to 1996.
Reith joined the Liberal frontbench in 1987, and served as Deputy Leader and Shadow Treasurer from 1990 to 1993. He served as Minister for Workplace Relations in the Howard government from 1996 to 2000, and then as Minister for Defence from 2000 until his retirement in 2001.
Flinders was won in 2001 by Greg Hunt, a former advisor to Alexander Downer in the 1990s. Hunt held his seat from 2001 until his retirement in 2022.
Liberal candidate Zoe McKenzie won Flinders in 2022.
- Mike Brown (One Nation)
- Adam Frogley (Greens)
- Zoe McKenzie (Liberal)
- Sarah Race (Labor)
- Jason Smart (Trumpet of Patriots)
- Ben Smith (Independent)
Assessment
Flinders is a reasonably safe Liberal seat.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Zoe McKenzie | Liberal | 43,013 | 43.5 | -3.2 | 43.3 |
| Surbhi Snowball | Labor | 21,487 | 21.7 | -3.0 | 22.8 |
| Colin Lane | Greens | 9,293 | 9.4 | +2.6 | 9.5 |
| Despi O’Connor | Independent | 7,163 | 7.2 | +7.2 | 6.7 |
| Sarah Russell | Independent | 5,189 | 5.2 | +5.3 | 4.8 |
| Alex Van Der End | United Australia | 4,472 | 4.5 | +2.0 | 4.4 |
| Cyndi Marr | One Nation | 3,373 | 3.4 | +3.4 | 3.3 |
| Chrysten Abraham | Liberal Democrats | 2,366 | 2.4 | +2.4 | 2.4 |
| Pamela Engelander | Animal Justice | 2,060 | 2.1 | -0.3 | 2.0 |
| Jefferson Earl | Federation Party | 486 | 0.5 | +0.5 | 0.5 |
| Others | 0.2 | ||||
| Informal | 5,687 | 5.4 | -0.5 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Zoe McKenzie | Liberal | 56,075 | 56.7 | +1.1 | 56.2 |
| Surbhi Snowball | Labor | 42,827 | 43.3 | -1.1 | 43.8 |
Polling places in Flinders have been divided into four parts: east, north, south and west.
The Liberal Party won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in three out of four areas, ranging from 53.5% in the west to 54.3% in the east. Labor won 54.8% in the south.
| Voter group | GRN prim | LIB 2PP | Total votes | % of votes |
| North | 10.8 | 53.8 | 14,320 | 13.3 |
| West | 11.0 | 53.5 | 10,205 | 9.5 |
| East | 10.2 | 54.3 | 8,235 | 7.6 |
| South | 17.5 | 45.2 | 4,070 | 3.8 |
| Pre-poll | 8.5 | 56.8 | 48,514 | 45.1 |
| Other votes | 8.5 | 60.2 | 22,314 | 20.7 |
Election results in Flinders at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, Labor, independent candidates and the Greens.
For the third election in a row, there’ll be a teal or teal-like independent. You might recall in 2019, Julia Banks was the Member for Chisholm but ran here as a proto-teal independent after quitting the Liberals.
The redistribution made Flinders a bit more teal-friendly with the addition of Mt Eliza. A teal was quite close to winning Mornington at the 2022 state election with postals and prepolls strongly favouring the Liberal. The eastern shores of the Western Port (Flinders to Somers) are also somewhat teal.
Despite all this, I’m predicting a Liberal retain. The Liberal vote is quite strong across the electorate.
Liberal hold with a swing towards them.
If recent polling commissioned by Climate200 is to be believed (treat with a high degree of scepticism), the independent Ben Smith is in with a decent chance here – supposedly 51-49 to Lib 2CP.
I’ve been in the electorate in the last couple of weeks and if corflutes were anything to go by Smith would win so this may be worth a watch.
Obviously any push may be dead in the water if Smith can’t get past Labor’s candidate into second at the 3CP stage.
Ben Smith seems to be running a reasonably well resourced campaign here, but I think it’ll take a couple of cycles – much like Alex Dyson in Wannon – for him to be in with a chance, assuming he decides to run again next time. I’m just not seeing the same sort of momentum in Flinders that delivered wins to community independents in 2022. He’ll probably get a primary vote in the high teens/low 20’s.
I attended Ben Smith’s election campaign launch event today. At least a couple hundred people in attendance. Smaller than the other ‘Voices Of’ campaigns but still a lot of energy.
Smith’s campaign manager reiterated the 51-49 to Lib 2CP. This seat might be closer than I perhaps anticipated.
Hard for Teal to win as this seat may not be safe liberal enough to win.