Electoral district of Ballarat East

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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.

[edit] Members for Ballarat East

First incarnation (1859—1889)
Member		Party	Term
	John Humffray	Unaligned	1859-1864
	John Cathie	Unaligned	1859-1864
	Charles Jones	Unaligned	1864-1867
	Charles Dyte	Unaligned	1864-1871
	John Humffray	Unaligned	1868-1871
	John James	Unaligned	1871-1886
	Robert Walsh	Unaligned	1871-1874
	Townsend McDermott	Unaligned	1874-1877
	Daniel Brophy	Unaligned	1877-1880
	James Russell	Unaligned	1880-1880
	Daniel Brophy	Unaligned	1880-1883
	James Russell	Unaligned	1883-1889
	Edward Murphy	Unaligned	1886-1889
Second incarnation (1889—1927)
Member		Party	Term
	John Dunn	Liberal	1889-1894
	Robert McGregor	Liberal/Nationalist	1894-1924
	William McAdam	Labor	1924-1927
Third incarnation (1992—present)
Member		Party	Term
	Barry Traynor	Liberal	1992-1999
	Geoff Howard	Labor	1999-