Division of Indi

Indi Australian House of Representatives Division
Division of Indi (green) in Victoria
Created:	1900
MP:	Sophie Mirabella
Party:	Liberal
Namesake:	Murray River (Aboriginal name)
Area:	28,008 km² (10,814 sq mi)
Demographic:	Rural

The Division of Indi ( /ɪnˈdaɪ/) is an Australian Electoral Division in Victoria. It is located in north-eastern Victoria. Its northern border is formed by the Murray River (which also serves as the Victorian-New South Wales border). It is bounded to the south-east by the Division of Gippsland, the border being roughly the watershed separating the Murray basin from Gippsland's catchment in the remote and almost completely uninhabited Australian Alps. To the south, the seat shares a small boundary with the Division of McMillan, including the isolated village of Woods Point. To the west, it also borders on the divisions of McEwen, Bendigo and Murray.

The largest settlements in the division are Wodonga, Wangaratta, and Benalla. Other towns in the electorate include Rutherglen, Mansfield, Beechworth, Myrtleford, Corryong, Tallangatta, Euroa and a number of other small villages (notably including the ski resort of Falls Creek).

While Indi is one of the largest electorates in Victoria, much of it is located within the Alpine National Park and is thus uninhabited. While Wodonga serves as a regional hub for much of the more heavily populated northern part of the electorate, the southern part is closer to Melbourne than Wodonga.

Indi has existed continuously since Federation. It was created in 1900 and was one of the original 75 divisions contested at the first federal election. It has been held by one of the conservative parties (either the Liberal Party of Australia, the National Party of Australia, or the United Australia Party) since 1931. The seat has traditionally been filled by candidates who might be described as "rural gentry" who have not tended to advance beyond the back bench, but this has changed when in 2001 Sophie Mirabella, a formerly city-based female barrister, was elected and has proved very popular, winning with 66% of the two-party preferred vote in the 2004 Australian federal election.

The most nationally prominent person to represent Indi to date was the first, Sir Isaac Isaacs, who rose to become Attorney General, Chief Justice of the High Court of Australia, and the first Australian-born Governor-General of Australia. Another member for Indi, John "Black Jack" McEwen, was a long-serving Minister and was briefly Prime Minister of Australia after the death of Harold Holt in 1967, but he was member for Murray by then.

Members

Member		Party	Term
	Isaac Isaacs	Protectionist	1901–1906
	Joseph Brown	Anti-Socialist	1906–1909
		Commonwealth Liberal	1909–1910
	Parker Moloney	Labor	1910–1913
	Cornelius Ahern	Commonwealth Liberal	1913–1914
	Parker Moloney	Labor	1914–1917
	John Leckie	Nationalist	1917–1919
	Robert Cook	Country	1919–1928
	Paul Jones	Labor	1928–1931
	William Hutchinson	United Australia	1931–1937
	John McEwen	Country	1937–1949
	William Bostock	Liberal	1949–1958
	Mac Holten	Country	1958–1975
		National Country	1975–1977
	Ewen Cameron	Liberal	1977–1993
	Lou Lieberman	Liberal	1993–2001
	Sophie Mirabella	Liberal	2001–present

Election results

Main article: Electoral results for the Division of Indi

Australian federal election, 2010: Indi
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Liberal	Sophie Mirabella	44,555	52.62	-1.76
	Labor	Zuvele Leschen	23,034	27.20	-4.92
	Greens	Jenny O'Connor	8,000	9.45	+1.87
	Independent	Alan Lappin	4,945	5.84	+5.84
	Family First	Robert Cavedon	3,190	3.77	-0.05
	Democrats	Mark Carey	947	1.12	-0.57
Total formal votes			84,671	96.09	-1.23
Informal votes			3,449	3.91	+1.23
Turnout			88,120	94.80	-1.00
Two-candidate preferred result
	Liberal	Sophie Mirabella	50,755	59.94	+0.75
	Labor	Zuvele Leschen	33,916	40.06	-0.75
	Liberal hold		Swing	+0.75

References

• Division of Indi, Australian Electoral Commission