Electoral district of Prahran

Prahran Victoria—Legislative Assembly
Location of Prahran (dark green) in Greater Melbourne
State	Victoria
Created	1889
MP	Sam Hibbins
Party	Independent
Namesake	Prahran
Electors	50,373 (2018)
Area	11 km2 (4.2 sq mi)
Demographic	Inner metropolitan

Prahran is an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of Victoria. It was created by the Electoral Act Amendment Act 1888, taking effect at the 1889 elections. The electorate is the state’s smallest by area, covering a little under 11 km² in the inner south-east of Melbourne. It includes the suburbs of South Yarra, Prahran and Windsor, as well as parts of Southbank, St Kilda and St Kilda East.

Prahran has tended to be a marginal seat throughout its existence, repeatedly changing between the Labor Party and its successive conservative rivals. It has not, however, been a bellwether seat, as the changes of party control have often not coincided with changes of government. In the 1980s and 1990s, the electorate became gradually more conservative as a result of increasing gentrification in the inner suburbs, resulting in seventeen years of Liberal control from 1985 until 2002. This trend was broken in the 2002 election, which saw popular local member and shadow minister Leonie Burke defeated by Labor rising star Tony Lupton on an unexpectedly large swing. The seat has since become increasingly progressive, having been won by either Labor or the Greens in 5 out of the last 6 elections while the Liberal Party's primary vote has declined from slightly above the state average to significantly below the state average.

The seat was strongly targeted by the Liberal Party during the 2006 election, with high-profile barrister Clem Newton-Brown narrowly preselected as their candidate after a tight contest. Though Newton-Brown ran a thorough campaign, he was not successful. Following his success in the 2006 election, Tony Lupton was promoted to the position of Parliamentary Secretary for Industry and Innovation. Newton-Brown stood again at the 2010 election and was this time successful. He re-contested the 2014 election but lost to Sam Hibbins of the Greens. Along with the seat of Melbourne it was the first win for the Greens in the Victorian Legislative Assembly.

Hibbins increased his two-candidate-preferred margin to 7.5% at the 2018 election, but only narrowly defeated Labor by 262 votes in the 3-candidate-preferred count. At the 2022 election, a large swing to the Greens saw them take first place on primary votes before comfortably defeating the Liberal Party on a 2-candidate-preferred basis, retaining the seat for a third term with an increased margin of 12%.

List of members for Prahran

Member		Party	Term
	Edward Dixon	Unaligned	1889–1894
	Frederick Gray	Labor	1894–1900
	Donald Mackinnon	Liberal	1900–1920
	Alexander Parker	Labor	1920–1921
	Richard Fetherston	Nationalist	1921–1924
	Arthur Jackson	Labor	1924–1932
	John Ellis	United Australia	1932–1944
		Liberal	1944–1945
	Bill Quirk	Labor	1945–1948
	Frank Crean	Labor	1949–1951
	Robert Pettiona	Labor	1951–1955
	Sam Loxton	Liberal	1955–1979
	Bob Miller	Labor	1979–1985
	Don Hayward	Liberal	1985–1996
	Leonie Burke	Liberal	1996–2002
	Tony Lupton	Labor	2002–2010
	Clem Newton-Brown	Liberal	2010–2014
	Sam Hibbins	Greens	2014–2024
		Independent	2024–present

Election results

Main article: Electoral results for the district of Prahran

This section is an excerpt from Results of the 2022 Victorian state election (Legislative Assembly) § Prahran.[edit]

2022 Victorian state election: Prahran

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Greens	Sam Hibbins	14,286	36.4	+8.1
	Liberal	Matthew Lucas	12,198	31.1	−1.6
	Labor	Wesa Chau	10,421	26.6	−3.9
	Animal Justice	Alice Le Huray	1,263	3.2	+0.9
	Family First	Ronald Emilsen	626	1.6	+1.6
	Independent	Alan Menadue	449	1.1	+0.8
Total formal votes			39,243	97.0	+2.1
Informal votes			1,223	3.0	−2.1
Turnout			40,466	82.7	−1.6
Notional two-party-preferred count
	Labor	Wesa Chau	23,966	61.1	+2.4
	Liberal	Matthew Lucas	15,277	38.9	–2.4
Two-candidate-preferred result
	Greens	Sam Hibbins	24,334	62.0	+3.0
	Liberal	Matthew Lucas	14,909	38.0	−3.0
	Greens hold		Swing	+3.0

Primary vote results in Prahran (Parties that did not get 5% of the vote are omitted)

  Liberal

  Labor

  Greens

Two-candidate-preferred results in Prahran

External links

• District profile from the Victorian Electoral Commission

References

• "Re-Member". Parliament of Victoria. Retrieved 12 March 2014.