Created 1949 Electors 116,179 (2016) Founded 1949 Elector 116,179 | Demographic Rural | |
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Area 8,328 km (3,215.5 sq mi) Party Liberal Party of Australia | ||
The Division of McMillan is an Australian Electoral Division in the state of Victoria. It is located in the western part of the Gippsland region, which extends for the length of Victoria's eastern Bass Strait coastline. It includes the outer south-eastern Melbourne suburb of Pakenham, and also includes the towns of Warragul, Moe, Wonthaggi, Leongatha and Foster. It stretches from Mount Baw Baw and the Baw Baw National Park in the north to Wilsons Promontory, and the Wilsons Promontory National Park in the south. It is the southernmost Electoral Division in continental Australia.
The Division was proclaimed at the redistribution of 11 May 1949, and was first contested at the 1949 election. It was named after Angus McMillan, an early European explorer in the Gippsland region responsible for the Gippsland massacres. The seat traded hands between the conservative parties from its creation until Labor finally won it in 1980. The Division has changed hands five times in the last seven Federal elections. The change at the 2004 election was attributed to the redistribution of 29 January 2003, which removed the traditionally Labor-voting cities of Traralgon and Morwell from the Division. This allowed Liberal Russell Broadbent to win the seat once again; he'd previously held it from 1996 to 1998. Broadbent was reelected in the 2007 election, making it the first time he has been re-elected.
The 1972 federal election saw Country Party candidate Arthur Hewson win the seat from third place and a primary vote of 16.6%. This is the lowest primary vote for a winning candidate in any federal election; Hewson overtook the Liberal candidate on preferences from the Democratic Labor Party and disendorsed sitting Liberal MP Alexander Buchanan, and then defeated the Labor candidate on Liberal preferences.
Name change proposal
In March 2016 the Member for McMillan, Russell Broadbent, announced he had written to the Australian Electoral Commission with the suggestion his electorate be renamed. He said Angus McMillan's name has been connected with the mass murder of Gippsland's indigenous people. The Labor candidate for McMillan, Chris Buckingham, supported the change. The proposal will be considered by the AEC during its scheduled 2017 review of Victorian federal electorate boundaries.