Ashburton Votes: a brief history
- scraze
- Apr 7
- 5 min read
In case you’ve been living under a rock in the last few weeks, you need to know two things. The first is that the penguins of Heard and Macdonald Islands have been surreptitiously importing goods to the United States and no-one knew about it except Donald Trump.
The second thing is that there’s a federal election coming up on Saturday, 3 May in Australia.
A brief history of federal election voting in Ashburton
Until this 2025 election, almost the whole of Ashburton fell into the Higgins federal electorate. Created in 1949, Higgins was until very recently a super safe Liberal seat. It even produced two prime ministers (John Gorton and Harold Holt) and a treasurer (Peter Costello).
On paper, the Federal Election results of Higgins look very benign. But when you break them down to the Ashburton polling booth level, they become very interesting. It’s hard to find voting data by polling booth before 2001 but fortunately, a few years ago, I found a statistical book from the 1990 Election at the State Library. This was the first year Peter Costello of the Liberal Party stood as the member for Higgins. He was fully expected to sweep into the seat unopposed. And he did.
Every single polling booth in Higgins voted Liberal. Every single polling booth but one that is. And that one rebellious outlier was in, you guessed it, Ashburton.
But that is only a piece of the story.
Every Federal Election, there are always two polling booths in Ashburton; one at Ashburton Primary School on Fakenham Road and the other on the southern side of High Street. For decades, the Ashburton Primary School polling booth always reliably returned a Liberal majority. Even in 2022, when the whole of Higgins fell to Labor for the first time in its history, the Ashburton Primary School booth only just went to Labor.
But on the other side of High Street, at the polling booth situated at the Craig Family Centre (known as Alamein) a mere couple of hundred metres away, the voting preferences were very different. You can see it in this table of results from 2001-13.
Only in 2013 did the Liberal party vote on the south side of Ashburton finally surpass Labor. At the same time, the progressive vote was going towards the Greens. Their polling stayed steady at Ashburton Primary for years, gradually attracting growing numbers of voters on both sides of High Street.
We can explain some of this equalisation by demographic changes, the demise of public housing in the Markham Estate, gentrification and the general history of the area I wrote about in my book.
But then in the 2016 Election, things started to get really interesting. The Craig Family Centre polling booth moved to Solway Primary School, further away from the more traditionally working-class area that traditionally returned a strong Labor vote. Suddenly the Libs were equal with Ashburton Primary School voters but far more of the progressive vote in Solway went to the Greens, instead of Labor.
With each subsequent election, the south side of Ashburton voters became more conservative than the previously super conservative Ashburton Primary School cohort. In the last federal election of 2022, the whole of Higgins flipped to Labor for the first time.
This time around, the Liberal Party won in Solway but lost at Ashburton Primary School. And the really weird and fascinating thing is that Ashburton Primary School voters, once the stalwart of the Liberal vote in Higgins, were the ONLY ones to vote a majority Labor within a five kilometre radius. In other areas, it wasn’t even close.
In addition, the 2022 Election saw Ashburton Primary School host voters from nearby Kooyong for the first time, primarily those who lived between Baker Parade and Toorak Road. They held fast to the Liberal tradition, giving the Liberal Party 42.23% of the vote. Kooyong ultimately went to Independent candidate, Monique Ryan.
What we know about the 2025 election in Ashburton
The first thing to know is that the AEC abolished the Higgins Electorate to make way for a new electorate called Bullwinkel* in Western Australia. This was met with a resounding chorus of, “meh, whatever" across the electorate.
However, if you are one of the people who lamented the loss of Higgins to WA, not to worry, the suburb of Higgins in Canberra still bears the name of Henry Bourne Higgins, an Irish-born lawyer, politician, and High Court judge sympathetic to the early 20th century labour movement and everything the traditional voters of Higgins hated.
The AEC moved Ashburton to the electorate of Chisholm, currently held by Carina Garland of the Australian Labor Party with a 6 per cent margin.
Where to vote
The next thing to know is that you can vote in Ashburton or the surrounds:
From 22 April at the Ashburton Scout Hall (closed for the ANZAC Day public holiday)
On 3 May at:
Ashburton Primary School
Solway Primary School
Glen Iris Road Uniting Church
Malvern Valley Primary School
Alfred Road Kindergarten
1st Malvern Scout Hall
Ashwood High School
Hartwell Primary School
St Cecilia’s Primary School
Ashwood Community Hall
St Roch’s Primary School
If you decide on your voting location based on whether there is a sausage sizzle and/or cake stall, you can check the Democracy Sausage website for locations on the day.
About the Chisholm Electorate
Unlike Higgins, Chisholm is very used to being a completely different shape for every Federal election. Thanks to the ABC website and because I really love a good map, I put together this little video of how the AEC changed Chisholm over the years.
Created in 1949, Chisholm is named after Caroline Chisholm, a social worker and promoter of women's immigration. It’s one of the small minority (10%) of federal electorates in the country named after women.
Standing for Chisholm this time is:
Carina Garland (ALP) the incumbent
Katie Allen (LP) the 2019-22 member for Higgins
Kath Davies (Independent) the candidate selected by Voices for Chisholm
Peter Jones (Family First)
Tim Randall (Greens)
Christine McShane (TOP)
Chisholm swung quite hard to Labor in 2022 but the dramatic redrawing of the boundaries removed some of the areas where Labor polled strongly in 2022 and added in less Labor-leaning areas like Ashburton. Those 496 Kooyong voters from Ashburton Primary are now also in the Chisholm electorate.
This picture from the ABC Website shows how Chisholm traditionally voted.
Pundits currently predict Chisholm to retain a 3.3% lean towards Labor. But then who believes anything polling shows these days?
What we do know is that Chisholm is considered a key seat for both major parties in Victoria. This means your vote may really make a difference. It also means there’s lots of chatter about what will happen in Chisholm. You can read about here:
On the ABC website (with super cool maps!)
The Tally Room (includes a brief history of the seat)
The Age (subscription required)
So what’s going to happen in Ashburton for the 2025 election?
Your guess is as good as mine!
NOTES:
The Voice Referendum: The AEC does not delineate the Referendum vote by polling place. Higgins voted 65.8% in favour of the Voice.
* the new electorate of Bullwinkel is named in honour of Lieutenant Colonel Vivian Statham (nee Bullwinkel), a civilian and military nurse who was the sole survivor of the Bangka Island massacre during WWII. Naming the seat after her represents the contribution and sacrifices of our military nurses.
If you want to do your own data wrangling, it’s all there on the AEC Website (from 2001) under "Information Centre".
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