Division of Flinders

Flinders Australian House of Representatives Division
Division of Flinders in Victoria, as of the 2016 federal election.
Created	1901
MP	Greg Hunt
Party	Liberal
Namesake	Matthew Flinders
Electors	115,356 (2016)
Area	1,955 km^2 (754.8 sq mi)
Demographic	Rural

The Division of Flinders is an Australian Electoral Division in Victoria. The division is one of the original 75 divisions contested at the first federal election. It is named for Matthew Flinders, the first man to circumnavigate Australia, and the person credited with giving Australia its name.

Originally a country seat south and east of Melbourne, Flinders is now a hybrid urban-rural seat based on the outer southern suburbs on the Mornington Peninsula, including Dromana, Hastings and Portsea.

It has usually been a fairly safe seat for the Liberal Party and its predecessors, who have held it for all but six years since its creation. However, it has occasionally been won by the Australian Labor Party, notably at the 1929 federal election when Prime Minister Stanley Bruce was defeated. This was the first of two times an Australian prime minister lost their own seat at a general election. The second time was not until Liberal Prime Minister John Howard lost his seat of Bennelong at the 2007 federal election.

The seat's most prominent member was Bruce, who held it for all but two years from 1918 to 1933. Other prominent former members include Jack Holloway, the Labor challenger who ousted Bruce and later a senior minister in the Curtin and Chifley governments (though he was the member for Melbourne Ports by then) and two deputy Liberal leaders Sir Phillip Lynch and Peter Reith

Members

Member		Party	Term
	Arthur Groom	Free Trade	1901–1903
	James Gibb	Free Trade, Anti-Socialist	1903–1906
	(Sir) William Irvine	Anti-Socialist	1906–1909
		Commonwealth Liberal	1909–1917
		Nationalist	1917–1918
	Stanley Bruce	Nationalist	1918–1929
	Jack Holloway	Labor	1929–1931
	Stanley Bruce	United Australia	1931–1933
	James Fairbairn	United Australia	1933–1940
	Rupert Ryan	United Australia	1940–1944
		Liberal	1944–1952
	Keith Ewert	Labor	1952–1954
	Robert Lindsay	Liberal	1954–1966
	(Sir) Phillip Lynch	Liberal	1966–1982
	Peter Reith	Liberal	1982–1983
	Bob Chynoweth	Labor	1983–1984
	Peter Reith	Liberal	1984–2001
	Greg Hunt	Liberal	2001–present

Election results

Australian federal election, 2016: Flinders^[1]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±
	Liberal	Greg Hunt	52,412	51.60	−3.74
	Labor	Carolyn Gleixner	27,459	27.03	+1.83
	Greens	Willisa Hogarth	10,868	10.70	+0.96
	Animal Justice	Ben Wild	4,347	4.28	+4.28
	Rise Up Australia	Yvonne Gentle	3,381	3.33	+2.82
	Independent	Shane Lewis	3,107	3.06	+3.06
Total formal votes			101,574	96.34	+1.31
Informal votes			3,863	3.66	−1.31
Turnout			105,437	91.40	−2.34
Two-party-preferred result
	Liberal	Greg Hunt	58,683	57.77	−4.04
	Labor	Carolyn Gleixner	42,891	42.23	+4.04
	Liberal hold		Swing	−4.04

References

1. Flinders, VIC, Virtual Tally Room 2016, Australian Electoral Commission.

External links

• Division of Flinders - Australian Electoral Commission

Coordinates: 38°20′46″S 145°19′26″E / 38.346°S 145.324°E