LIB 5.1%
Incumbent MP
James Newbury, since 2018.
Geography
Southern Melbourne. Brighton covers the northern half of Bayside local government area, and a small part of the City of Port Phillip. The seat covers the suburbs of Brighton, Elwood and Hampton, and part of Hampton East.
History
Brighton has existed as an electoral district ever since the creation of the Victorian Legislative Assembly in 1856. The seat has never been held by a Labor MP, and has been almost always held by the Liberal Party for the last century.
Brighton was held by unaligned members of Parliament from 1856 to 1909. Sir Thomas Bent had held the seat for 32 of the previous 38 years, but died in 1909.
The 1909 by-election was won by Liberal candidate Oswald Snowball. He held the seat for the Liberal and Nationalist parties for almost two decades. In 1927 he was elected Speaker of the Legislative Assembly, and he retained that role until his death in 1928.
The 1928 by-election was won by Ian MacFarlan. He served as a member of the Nationalists and United Australia Party, although he served as an independent from 1937 to 1943. He served as deputy leader of the UAP and Liberal Party from 1943 to 1945, when he led a breakaway group of Liberals that brought down the state government of Albert Dunstan. He was briefly appointed as Premier, but lost his seat at the 1945 election.
MacFarlan was defeated in Brighton by Liberal candidate Raymond Tovell. He served as a Liberal Party member until 1953, when he was expelled from his party over his support for former Liberal Premier Thomas Hollway, who had created a breakaway ‘Electoral Reform League’ campaigning to end malapportionment of electoral boundaries. Tovell lost his seat in 1955.
Tovell was defeated by John Rossiter, who held the seat for the Liberal Party from 1955 to 1976, when he retired. He was succeeded by Jeannette Patrick, who held the seat until 1985.
Brighton was won in 1985 by barrister Alan Stockdale. When the Liberal Party came to power in 1992, Stockdale became Treasurer. He served in that role until his retirement at the 1999 election.
Louise Asher won Brighton in 1999. Asher had previously held the upper house seat of Monash since 1992. Asher served as a junior minister in the second term of the Kennett government. After the 1999 election she served as Liberal deputy leader and Shadow Treasurer until just before the 2002 election. She has continued as a frontbencher ever since, and returned to the deputy leadership in 2006. Asher stepped down from the deputy leadership after the 2014 election, and retired in 2018.
Liberal candidate James Newbury won Brighton in 2018, and was re-elected in 2022.
- Ebony Bain (Greens)
- Bridget Mullahy (Labor)
- James Newbury (Liberal)
- Jessica Smith (Victorian Socialists)
Assessment
While James Newbury doesn’t hold Brighton by a very large margin, this is not likely to be a hospitable environment for One Nation, and Labor’s position will be significantly weakened compared to the last election, so he should be comfortably re-elected.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| James Newbury | Liberal | 18,791 | 45.6 | +0.8 |
| Louise Crawford | Labor | 10,164 | 24.7 | -7.4 |
| Sarah Dekiere | Greens | 5,680 | 13.8 | -1.1 |
| Felicity Frederico | Independent | 3,749 | 9.1 | +9.1 |
| Sally Gibson | Independent | 941 | 2.3 | +2.3 |
| Alicia Walker | Animal Justice | 851 | 2.1 | -2.8 |
| Nick Sciola | Family First | 558 | 1.4 | +1.4 |
| John Tiger Casley | Independent | 251 | 0.6 | -0.2 |
| Allan L. Timms | Independent | 211 | 0.5 | +0.5 |
| Informal | 1,786 | 4.2 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| James Newbury | Liberal | 22,710 | 55.1 | +4.6 |
| Louise Crawford | Labor | 18,486 | 44.9 | -4.6 |
Booths have been divided into three areas: central, north and south.
The Liberal Party won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in two out of three areas: 51.7% in the south and 61.2% in the centre. Labor won 58.7% in the north.
The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 10.2% to 21.6% in the north.
| Voter group | GRN prim | LIB 2PP | Total votes | % of votes |
| North | 21.6 | 41.3 | 5,040 | 12.2 |
| Central | 10.2 | 61.2 | 4,880 | 11.8 |
| South | 12.8 | 51.7 | 3,109 | 7.5 |
| Pre-poll | 12.9 | 54.8 | 21,009 | 50.7 |
| Other votes | 13.6 | 57.9 | 7,394 | 17.8 |
Election results in Brighton at the 2022 Victorian state election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, Labor, the Greens and independent candidate Felicity Frederico.
I know there’s been some rumblings of a teal running here and making a notable play. I feel for a few reasons this seat is a likely retain for the Liberals.
This was the strongest Liberal area in Goldstein. Brighton is safely blue with a lot of affluent voters who pump up the Liberal vote into double digit margins. There is also a decent Jewish population around Brighton East, and if federal results among Jewish voters are to go by then they seem to be trending largely blue as well.
The notable increase in crime and robberies in Brighton would play well with Brad Battin’s law and order agenda he has been heavily promoting, likely pushing voters towards the Liberals who are concerned with crime.
Unless Zoe Daniel decides to run here (I think she’d rather run in Sandringham because her base is in Brighton), and it’s just a ‘cookie cutter’ teal running, then should be a comfortable retain for James Newbury.
@ James
You are correct. i think Zoe Daniel is better running in Sandringham where the Jewish community is smaller and crime rates lower.
Just noticed a typo, was meant to say Hampton instead of Brighton in the final paragraph. Zoe Daniel’s base is in Hampton.
@Nimalan – agreed. Would be a better shot at winning there for those reasons you mentioned.
The Elwood & Elwood North booth look out of place here.
Elwood fits much better with St Kilda. Ideally there would be a seat based on St Kilda, St Kilda East, Balaclava, Elwood and maybe Windsor which would have a very strong community of interest, because currently Balaclava is out of place in Caulfield, Elwood is way out of place in Brighton, and St Kilda which has its own very distinctive community of interest is split between two seats.
The problem is the numbers just don’t really work to do that without leaving seats like Albert Park & Prahran short unless they cross the river.
Elwood belongs in Albert Park. Maybe Southbank could be moved to Melbourne to compensate. Southbank definitely is a better fit for Melbourne than Elwood is for Brighton.
Random question for Ben (posting here because I already have a previous post relating to the topic which is awaiting moderation):
How come if you make a post while NOT logged into Patreon it appears automatically, but if you post while logged into your Patreon account, it requires moderation? I would have thought it would be the other way around where being a Patreon contributor would skip the moderation process.
It’s a bit of a weird quirk because if you want your post to appear automatically, you have to log into the Patreon to view the whole page properly, then log out again to make your post.