The Division of Melbourne Ports is an Australian federal electoral division in the inner south-eastern suburbs of Melbourne, Victoria, Australia.
The electorate was created in 1900 at the time of Australian Federation (see History of Australia), and was one of the original 75 divisions contested at the first federal election. It is named for the fact that at the time of its creation it was centred on Port Melbourne and Williamstown, both major ports.
The electorate, formerly working class, is much more demographically diverse on its current boundaries. It still includes Port Melbourne, but now also includes the upper middle class and alternative lifestyle suburbs of Albert Park, St Kilda, Elwood and middle class Caulfield. It is the home of one of Australia's larger atheist communities and according to 2006 census, this electorate has 23.2% No Religion, 18.8% Catholic, 12.7% Jewish, 10.8% Anglican, 11.7% Other Christian, 5.9% Other Religions, and 16.9% not stated. It also has a large gay and lesbian community.
Melbourne Ports has been held by the Australian Labor Party (ALP) since 1906. Located in Labor's traditional heartland of west Melbourne, for decades it was one of the safest Labor seats in the country. Since its extension eastwards to Caulfield in the 1990 redistribution, it has become much less secure for Labor, and was nearly lost in 2001 and 2004. However, Michael Danby, who has held the seat since 1998, gained enough of a swing in the 2007 election that it is now reckoned as a "fairly safe" Labor seat.
Read more about Division Of Melbourne Ports: Members, Election Results
Famous quotes containing the words division of, division and/or ports:
“Between married persons, the cement of friendship is by the laws supposed so strong as to abolish all division of possessions: and has often, in reality, the force ascribed to it.
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—David Hume (1711–1776)
“The division between the useful arts and the fine arts must not be understood in too absolute a manner. In the humblest work of the craftsmen, if art is there, there is a concern for beauty, through a kind of indirect repercussion that the requirements of the creativity of the spirit exercise upon the production of an object to serve human needs.”
—Jacques Maritain (1882–1973)
“It is true, we are such poor navigators that our thoughts, for the most part, stand off and on upon a harborless coast, are conversant only with the bights of the bays of poesy, or steer for the public ports of entry, and go into the dry docks of science, where they merely refit for this world, and no natural currents concur to individualize them.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)