| Hinkler |
Division of Holt | Hotham |
 Hon Anthony Byrne (ALP) His electorate website |  |
Location: Melbourne: Cranbourne, Doveton, Endeavour Hills, Hampton Park
Division named for: Rt Hon Harold Holt, Prime Minister of Australia 1966-67 Median weekly family income: $965 (56th highest) Persons born in non English speaking countries: 23.6% (27th highest) Persons in professional occupations: 14.7% (148th highest) Persons employed in manufacturing: 25.3% (1st highest) Persons aged 65 and over: 6.0% (148th highest) Couple families with dependent children: 49.7% (1st highest) Dwellings being purchased: 48.4% (1st highest) Sitting member: Hon Anthony Byrne (Labor), elected 1999by, 2001, 2004, 2007 Born: 1 December 1962, Adelaide. Career: Chief executive officer Anxiety Disorders Foundation of Australia, adviser to Senator Jacinta Collins. Member, Opposition shadow ministry 2006-07. Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for Foreign Affairs 2006-07. Parliamentary Secretary to the Prime Minister from 3 December 2007 1996 two-party majority: Labor 12.8 1998 two-party majority: Labor 15.1 1999 by-election two-candidate majority: ALP over Democrat 22.1 2001 two-party majority: Labor 13.3 Effect of 2004 redistribution: 05.4 shift to Liberal 2004 two-party majority: Labor 01.5 2007 two-party majority: Labor 11.6 
2004 enrolment: 89,764 2007 enrolment: 100,884 (+12.4%) Holt was created in 1969, based on the manufacturing centre of Dandenong in Melbourne's south-eastern suburbs. Subsequent redistributions, however, have pushed the seat further out to the east, removing Dandenong and adding the commuter suburb of Cranbourne. Holt is now the country's foremost mortgage belt seat - it has the highest proportion of families with dependent children and the highest proportion of dwellings being purchased of any electorate. It is thus acutely sensitive to interest rates, and it was fear of interest rate rises under a Labor government, combined with the changes at the 2004 redistribution, that produced the large swing to the Liberals at the 2004 election. Labor retained the seat only because of the solid working-class vote in Doveton. In 2007 the same voters who swung violently against Labor in 2004 swung even more violently back again, apparently because of their fear of the Howard government industrial relations policies. There was a 10.1% swing overall, ranging up to 17% in Narre Warren South. Labor polled 74% of the two-party vote at Coral Park and Doveton North, and also topped 70% at Doveton, Doveton West and two booths in Hampton Park. The Liberals' best result was 49% at Hillsmeade and Centre Road. Holt was held for 16 years by the Hawke government minister Michael Duffy. He was succeeded in 1996 by former Senator and Foreign Minister Gareth Evans, but his stay in the House of Representatives was short, and he resigned after the loss of the 1998 election. The 1999 by-election which followed Evans's resignation was won by Anthony Byrne, who has held the seat since. In 2007 he became a Parliamentary Secretary in the Rudd government. | |  Two-party vote by booth, 2007
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