The electorate of Goldstein encompasses the bayside suburbs of Melbourne’s south east including Beaumaris, Blackrock, Bentleigh, Brighton, Caulfield South, Gardenvale, McKinnon, Hampton, Sandringham and parts of Elsternwick, Glenhuntly, Ormond, Highett, and Cheltenham.
Our community is well served by public parks, walking tracks and public transport that people highly value, as well as excellent public and private schools, and plenty of strip shopping precincts and public amenities which give Goldstein its community village feel.
Goldstein is a thriving economic community of influential small and large business leaders, entrepreneurs and professionals across professional and creative services, science and R&D, manufacturing, digital and technology, health, education, hospitality, media, sport, the arts, real estate, and retail. Goldstein’s community is ready to embrace the immense business and job opportunities that a renewable climate economy presents.
Issues that matter to the Goldstein Community
Goldstein is one of the most socially progressive, climate aware, business savvy and well-educated electorates in Australia with the overwhelming majority wanting urgent action on climate change, workable climate and economic policies to transform our economy and safeguard our future, integrity in politics, real equality, health, affordable housing and building strong resilient communities.
The division is named after Vida Goldstein, a ground-breaking and internationally renowned woman and parliamentary independent candidate who contested five separate elections in the first two decades after Federation.
Goldstein became an electorate in 1984 after a seat redistribution and Ian Macphee became our first sitting member as a Liberal party MP and minister in the Fraser Government. Read Ian Macphee’s statement of support for Zoe here.
Did you know?
Here are some interesting statistics about the electorate of Goldstein:
Life expectancy, Housing & Socioeconomics
- Median age is 42.5 years which is older than the median for Victoria. This is because we tend to live longer, with 3.5% of Goldstein being over 85, compared to only 2.2% of Victoria.
- In Sandringham the proportion of people over 85 is 5.5%.
- Goldstein residents are 7.4% more likely to own their house outright than the average Australian
- Goldstein is one of the wealthiest electorates in Australia with 46% of its residents in the highest socio-economic group
Education & Careers
- Almost 40% of adults in Goldstein have a bachelor’s degree or higher, almost double the Australian number of 22%
- 54% of adults in Goldstein are either managers or professionals, almost 25% more than the Australian average
- McKinnon has almost double the state average attending a state secondary school (21.3% vs 11.0%) and has a significantly higher high-school aged population (17.4% vs 11.8%)
- With Goldstein serviced by 2 train lines, we are twice as likely as other Victorians to travel to work by train (11.7% vs 5.8%)
Multiculturalism & Community
- Goldstein has about the same proportion of people as the rest of Victoria with both parents born overseas and both parents born in Australia
- Goldstein residents are about 5% more likely than the rest of Australia to say that they have no religion
- 6.8% of Goldstein residents identify as Jewish, but in Elsternwick the number rises to 17.8% and almost 36% in Caulfield South
- Glen Huntly has a significant Indian population, with 20% of those in the suburb born in India
- Bentleigh has double the state average number of people who speak Mandarin (6.4%) and Greek (4.2%), and has a significant Russian speaking population (2.8%)
- People in Black Rock (58.6%) and Beaumaris (60%) are far more likely than those in the the rest of the state (48.4%) to be married and both have only 25% of the population never married (compared to 35% for the state)
Climate Action (source YouGov Poll, July 2021, Together We Can Movement)
- 83% of Goldstein voters believe greater climate action will help protect nature and wildlife from extreme weather compared to 79% for all Australians
- 76% of Goldstein voters do not believe that new coal or gas power stations should be a priority for the federal government compared to 71% for all Australians
- 72% of Goldstein voters believe the federal government needs to be doing more to address climate change compared to 67% for all Australians
- 73% of Goldstein voters say the Coalition and Labor plans for climate action will influence their vote compared to 65% for all Australians
