Division of Indi

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The Division of Indi (IPA: [ɪn.dɑe]) is an electoral division in the Australian House of Representatives. 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; it is one of the safest conservative seats in Australia. 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.

[edit] Members

Member	Party	Term
Isaac Isaacs	Protectionist Party	1901-06
J T Brown	Anti-Socialist Party	1906-10
C J Ahern	Commonwealth Liberal Party (LIB)	1910-13
P J Moloney	Australian Labor Party (ALP)	1914-17
John W Leckie	Nationalist Party of Australia (NP)	1917-19
R Cook	Australian Country Party (ACP)	1919-28
P Jones	ALP	1928-31
W J Hutchinson	United Australia Party (UAP)	1931-37
John McEwen	ACP	1937-49
W D Bostock	Liberal Party of Australia (LP)	1949-58
R M Holton	ACP/National Country Party (NCP)	1958-77
E A Cameron	LP	1977-1993
Lou Lieberman	LP	1993-2001
Sophie Mirabella	LP	2001-

Electoral Divisions of the Australian House of Representatives in Victoria
Aston | Ballarat | Batman | Bendigo | Bruce | Calwell | Casey | Chisholm | Corangamite | Corio | Deakin | Dunkley | Flinders | Gellibrand | Gippsland | Goldstein | Gorton | Higgins | Holt | Hotham | Indi | Isaacs | Jagajaga | Kooyong | Lalor | La Trobe | McEwen | McMillan | Mallee | Maribyrnong | Melbourne | Melbourne Ports | Menzies | Murray | Scullin | Wannon | Wills