Electoral district of Ballarat East

Ballarat East is an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of Victoria. It is a 3,323km² part-urban and part-rural electorate covering areas to the east of the regional centre of Ballarat. It includes the Ballarat suburbs of Ballarat East, Ballarat South, Buninyong, Canadian, Mount Clear and Mount Pleasant, and the rural towns of Ballan, Bungaree, Creswick, Daylesford, Hepburn Springs, Kyneton, Lal Lal, Malmsbury, Meredith and Steiglitz. The electorate had a population of 51,926 as of the 2001 census.

Ballarat East was one of the earliest districts of the Legislative Assembly, having been created for the second state election in 1859. It was initially a two-member seat, and as with the rest of the Assembly, was largely non-partisan until 1889, when it became a one-member electorate and began to held by more partisan figures. It was held by successive early liberal parties until they merged into the Nationalist Party of Australia in the late 1910s, but fell to the Australian Labor Party in 1924, one term before being abolished in 1927. It was recreated as a marginal seat in 1992, when it was won by conservative Liberal Barry Traynor, but was regained for Labor by Geoff Howard when the party won office at the 1999 election. Howard was comfortably re-elected at both the 2002 election and 2006 election.

Members for Ballarat East

References

* [http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/BallaratEastDistrictprofile.html District profile from the Victorian Electoral Commission]
* [http://www.vec.vic.gov.au/images/maps/BallaratEastDistrictMapLR.pdf District map from the Victorian Electoral Commission (PDF)]