Ashwood – Victoria 2026

Labor hold, changing demographics will help them out here.

If liberals gain more than 5 seats they will gain this one. We cant say changing demographics will mean every metro seat cant be won by the libs. 4 years is not long enough to change demographics all that much. Ashwood is older and wealthier than average so i would say its demographics are still very much favourable

Prime Liberal target along with Glen Waverley and Bayswater – the 2024 Warrigal and Highbury Road fatal collision and other local youth crime incidents won’t help Labor.

Again a seat where the Libs had a sub optimal candidate in 2022 – and like Ringwood a blow in from outside.

I think Amelia Hamer will run here. If she ran in Box Hill It would be Hamer vs Hamer. No relation

John, Hamer is focused on Kooyong.

Mex, I have heard the same, Hamer has told friends that she is looking to run in 28.

She’ll have a hell of a preselection battle on her hands then if the joshy rumours are based on anything real

Have nominations closed for the LP in Ashwood? If so does anyone know who nominated?

LP = liberal party

Must win seat for the Libs. They must be wise to not choose another Asher Judah here. If they can’t win here, they won’t have any chance of forming even a minority government.

Apparently his factional opponents have begged Theo Zographos to nominate but so far he has resisted and is focusing on Chisholm in 28.

A while back, former Boroondara councillor Garry Thompson was offered Liberal preselection but he refused.

Ashwood has trended towards Labor over the past few election cycles. The seat, especially west of Warrigal Road, has become very teal and socially progressive. I believe the seat overall is fiscally centrist or conservative.

I agree that it’s a must-win seat for the Liberals in order to govern.

Those areas are better for the libs though

Warrigal Road divides the Upper Class from the Middle Class. West of Warrigal road is Upper Class while East of it is Middle Class

Yes it’s basically boroondara and Monash dividing lines

One reason I want to put Glen Waverley back with mount Waverley and ashwood in to Glen iris

Yes, Mount Waverley doesn’t belong in the same seat as Glen Iris and Ashburton. Don’t know why both the AEC (Chisholm) and VEC have done this. It shares much better community of interest to its east with Glen Waverley, north to Burwood and Box Hill and even south to Chadstone and Oakleigh.

@ Adam
At a Federal Level if Higgins was retained this was would not have occured and Warrigal Road would have been retained as a boundary.
It is like when North Sydney was abolished Middle class Ryde and elite Hunters Hill and Lane Cove were included in the same seat.
This why an expansion of parliament is needed in the next few cycles.

And do the liberals have a candidate? Bit hard to win a seat if you can’t find someone to run…..

Asher Judah was an absolute train wreck of a candidate in both of the last two elections. When he ran in Bentleigh in 2018 he copped a -12.6% primary vote swing and -11.1% 2PP swing.

You could see it coming a mile away just from how bad his campaign was, entirely focused on the Libs’ failed crime campaign of that election. He even had big billboards and a billboard truck driving & parking around the electorate that featured an old man with a black eye, totally tasteless not to mention poorly targeted since Bentleigh has an extremely LOW crime rate, and is in one of the safest LGAs in the state!

Wasn’t so familiar with his 2022 campaign in Ashwood but I’m not surprised at all that he copped a similarly big swing there.

The problem with lane cove and hunters hill is it’s bound by the harbour leaving it not much else place to go. Same with higgins being abolished it doesn’t give Chisholm much place to go.

@ John
Only an Expansion of parliament can solve this with more seats created. These areas dont have a lot of population growth which is why an expansion of parliament is needed to fix it.

Sydney’s natural geography is a nightmare if you want to draw electoral divisions. Sydney Harbour has lots of nooks and crannies that can cause social divides, and thus can radically alter the nature of a seat if you move some in the wrong direction. The biggest example would be the current Hughes, which is a hodgepodge of SW Sydney, the Sutherland Shire, and Holsworthy Barracks.

In Melbourne I don’t see such a problem being as severe, as the biggest natural feature is the Yarra River, and that rarely gets crossed. Sure individual suburbs can be quite distinct but there’s still enough commonality between them to justify putting them in the one seat.

Nimalan even without an expansion of parliament you should be able to solve the problem if Victoria regains it’s 39th seat. You can effectively recreate higgins. Though I think parliament will have expanded by the time that happens. Victoria probly won’t be eligible for another seat til at least 2032.

My solution for Victoria at a state level effectively abolishes Hawthorn for a seat centres around Blackburn.

@ John
How can we solve it for NSW?

@Nimalan

NSW needs to either A. Gain seats at an expansion of parliament or B. Completely redraw every seat in the state. There’s no chance NSW gains new seats naturally, as it’s been constantly declining.

@ CJ
I agree i think both SA and NSW have been getting worse in terms of communities of interest as they lose seats even though they are growing in populaiton in absolute terms so having less seats than in 1984 looks a bit silly despite significant population growth even though it is not as growing as fast as the rest of the nation. I also want to see Whitlam split into 2 seats
1. I want to see Fowler loose areas in Liverpool council and be a purely Fairfield Council seat.
2. I want to see Wentworth shrink
3. I want to see Kingsford Smith loose areas South of the Cooks River
4. I want to see Warringah to be focused only on Northern Beaches & Mosman
5. I dont want to see Mackellar go into St Ives area and be a pure Northern Beaches seat
6. I would like Cook to become a Shire only seat

Federally you’d think nsw will fix itself over time. If the north shore continues to shrink they would naturally move west. Short of that an expansion of parliament as I don’t think it will gain a seat any other way

@Trent so true. They really have to improve their candidate selection this time around. Preselections might not work for seats like Ashwood where Liberal members are mostly 65+ . Probably better for the moderates on state council or Jess Wilson to pick candidates TBH. Not saying in all cases but they cannot afford to preselect people like Asher Judah or Cynthia Watson when they need Ashwood and Ringwood to win.

Open preselections are another idea which has been successfully used by NSW nationals. That way the Liberal candidate has much wider appeal.

@Nimalan I’ll continue this convo on the 1948 Big Map Change thread.

Higgins should never have been abolished

If the AEC had predicted Gorton more accurately, then the flow though would have seen the part of the federal seat of Melbourne being left to form the basis of Higgins along with the bit of Stonnington that is in Kooyong

Prior to the last redistribution Gorton was gaining electors at over 400 per month, the redistribution committee-based enrolments for this redistribution round at 197 electors per month, it is currently doing 466 Electors a month and has passed the projected final figure by around 1.400 electors.

If enrollment keeps going at this rate it will be over 17,000 above the average ay April 2028 and 15,000 above the projection

If Victoria gets an extra seat (probably not after the next election but the one after) I don’t believe Higgins will be recreated. I think the AEC has 2 options

1. Add the Parts of Melbourne that are south of the Yarra to MacNamara (as this seat is having electoral enrollment issues as it and Melbourne are on trac to be 10% below quota

2. Create a seat based on Stonnington and Glen Eira which could be called Goldstein as MacNamara would be pushed into Bayside. Kooyong would push Chisholm out of Boroondara.

The bew seat in either scenario would be created north of the Yarra

@captain i think the ker fuffle with the enrollment numbers is what casued the issue as all the suggestions were based on the old numbers so rather then take these into account the aec just did whatever

also if macnamara is adding the parts of melbourne south of the Yarra its not gonna need Bayside

@ John, you are right the wrong figures originally affected the whole state but the new figures still adjusted Gorton down significantly and thus led to the abolition of Higgins

You are right in relation to the pars of Melbourne south which is essentially option 1 above

Option 2 on the other hand would see the current Caulfield parts of MacNamara be moved to the Stonnington seat as MacNamara would be Port Philip, Bayside (part) and City of Melbourne south of the Yarra

I think it’s hard to see Higgins being recreated under a 39-seat scenario. Right now it’s a 21.46:17.54 quota split between the North/West and the South/East and that extra half a quota is progressively going to get whittled down to the current South/East entitlement of 17 divisions.

If you were to do a redistribution today, it would probably have to be plonked down between Jagajaga, McEwen, Casey and Menzies, straddling the Yarra, with McEwen moving to take in Sunbury again. It’d be difficult to put a division in between Melbourne and Macnamara given the need for the CBD to stay in Melbourne. Perhaps a return of Yarra, pairing Richmond, Hawthorn, South Yarra could work.

If we do end up with the 39 divisions in around 7 years time however, it’s most likely going to be centred on Sunbury.

@Captain Moonlight @John
Gorton is a real head scratcher given that they did update the numbers, and I’m surprised the ABS still managed to significantly under-estimate this area. Strong chance it breaches the 10% threshold within 6 months.

@Abbas if you consider that melbourne has a heap of territory south of the far as then it can.

Angas ive plotted the current numbers on jwolfs thing. by removing most of the parts of melbourne south of the yarra and most of toorak road you can easiliy rebuild higgins.i moved macnamara to punt road as and the melbournreduces to just toorak road across the yarra.