Flinders – Australia 2028

This is another seat where dumbing net zero will hurt the Liberals and could cost them this seat. Anyone know what faction Zoe McKenzie is aligned with?

Not to worry I found out which faction.

Zoe McKenzie seems to be the kind of MP who’d work well in the electorate as she appears as a Moderate, but I sense from her demeanour in TV interviews and parliamentary proceedings suggests that she’s also quite open to tolerating her conservative colleagues. She’ll have to tread carefully as she was almost unseated by a no name Teal last time round. Peter Reith would be spinning in his graves if they ever lost Flinders.

@SpaceFish November 6, 2025 at 9:37 pm
According to James Massola and the Age, Zoe McKenzie is unaligned, which is generally made up of MPs who want to defend the party’s status quo. This is conjecture on my part but she could also be what the article describes as one of those newish MPs “who don’t want to show their hand yet, for fear it could damage their chances of promotion”

https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/liberal-party-factions-the-split-in-the-right-that-is-reshaping-the-opposition-20250903-p5ms5b.html

Reith himself lost Flinders in 1983!

Nicholas
Peter Reith lost Flinders before Dunkley took Frankston out of Flinders in 1984. Even before that, it had only been lost in 1929 by Stanley Bruce and 1952 in a by election (and then won back in 1954).

@ Tommo9
When parliaement was expanded in 1984 the Sitting Labor MP Bob Chynoweth decided to contest newly created Dunkley which contained Frankston previously in Flinders as @redistibuted correctly pointed out. The new boundaries of Flinders still had a notional margin of 0.3% with no sitting MP and a correction Peter Reith regained it and the seat has been held ever since by Liberals.
In the years since, the gap between the Liberal statewide vote and Liberal vote in Flinders as widened as Antony Green pointed out in his guide. I think there is a few explanations for that
1. A lot of population growth in Victoria has been NW Melbourne while Labor has underpeformed in last two elections they still return big majorities for Labor and it makes a larger proportion of Victoria’s population than in the 1980s. Labor does not need to do as well in places like Casey and Flinders
2. Growing wealth divide, Flinders tends to attract wealthy retirees as more people are on occupational super and less on state pension intergernational wealth divide as widened. While income maybe less of a factor in voting patterns. Asset Ownership remains a fault line.
3. Ethnicity: Flinders is the least diverse seat in Victoria in terms of % who speak a Non English language at home. This area probably has not changed as much as the rest of Melbourne and as Victoria has diversfied especially NW Melbourne and parts of the SE such as Pakenham/Cranbourne rail corridor Labor no longer needs to win as many white voters as it once did.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/federal/2025/guide/flin

@Nimalan Flinders circa 1983 would’ve been more of a swing seat in this day and age given Frankston is a heavy Labor area coupled with the rest of the Mornington Peninsula being lean Liberal (but hard to figure out a pattern given there’s random bits and bobs that vote Labor amongst a sea of blue) and Portsea/Sorrento being heavily blue. Creating Dunkley has helped Labor consolidate its base around Frankston but has also seen Flinders become much stronger Liberal territory, made moreso by the addition of French and Phillip Islands, Koo Wee Rup and that rural corridor along the Bass Highway which is now in Monash.

Last election there were primary vote swings virtually everywhere in Flinders to Labor and the Teal candidate, even the addition of Mt Eliza from Dunkley didn’t help Zoe McKenzie consolidate her vote. She’ll have to be very conscious of the fact that the voters in her seat would long prefer a moderate over the conservative freaks that run the Victorian Liberal party and will vote accordingly if she doesn’t stay in the centre-right.

@ Tommo9
Agree with much of your analysis but even after Frankston was removed in 1984 it was still competative for Labor. I do think growing wealth divide may explain this as increasingly older voters are wealthier. Superunation has lead to a inceased wealth gap. the State seat of Dromana/Nepean show a simmilar trend while Labor narrowly won it in 2018 there gap between the statewide vote and the vote in that seat was wider than in 1985 and 1988 (when Labor just missed out)

https://www.abc.net.au/news/elections/vic/2022/guide/nepe

Worth noting here that the Flinders that Stanley Bruce won and lost bears only a slight resemblance to the modern seat, taking in most of what is now the middle and outer eastern suburbs of Melbourne (not much of which was urban in the 1920s).

@SpaceFish, I’m not sure if net zero is a huge vote-swaying issue in Flinders. Sure there are teal-ish voters here but those who valued net zero probably voted independent in 2025 anyway.

Mornington Peninsula has a huge retiree population. I was thinking about whether older Liberal voters would drift to One Nation if the Liberals are seen as unstable or divided. This could be a blow for the Liberals. Not all One Nation voters preference the Liberals ahead of their main opponent but most do. AEC shows that in Flinders in 2025, 73% preferenced the Liberals ahead of the independent.

@Votante, Zoe McKenzie says net zero a big issue, and she has posted social media content promoting renewables. and while Flinders does have a large retire population, I wouldn’t call it a One Nation type area, due to many of the retirees being from wealthier middle-class background, however there are pockets of working class in parts of Rosebud and Rye, and Labor does well in Hastings.