Editing Division of Flinders (section)

==History==
[[File:Toussaint Antoine DE CHAZAL DE Chamerel - Portrait of Captain Matthew Flinders, RN, 1774-1814 - Google Art Project.jpg|150px|thumb|left|[[Matthew Flinders]], the division's namesake]]
It has usually been a fairly safe seat for the [[Liberal Party of Australia|Liberal Party]] and its predecessors, who have held it for all but six years since its creation.  However, it has occasionally been won by the [[Australian Labor Party]], notably at the [[1929 Australian federal election|1929 federal election]] when [[Prime Minister of Australia|Prime Minister]] [[Stanley Bruce]] was defeated. This was the first of two times an incumbent Australian prime minister lost his own seat at a general election; the second time was not until Liberal Prime Minister [[John Howard]] lost his seat of [[Division of Bennelong|Bennelong]] at the [[2007 Australian federal election|2007 federal election]].

The seat's most prominent member was Bruce, who held it for all but two years from 1918 to 1933. Other prominent former members include [[Jack Holloway]], the Labor challenger who ousted Bruce and later a senior minister in the [[John Curtin|Curtin]] and [[Ben Chifley|Chifley]] governments (though he was the member for [[Division of Melbourne Ports|Melbourne Ports]] by then) and two deputy Liberal leaders – [[Phillip Lynch|Sir Phillip Lynch]] (a minister in the [[John Gorton|Gorton]], [[William McMahon|McMahon]] and [[Malcolm Fraser|Fraser]] governments) and [[Peter Reith]] (a minister in the [[John Howard|Howard]] government).
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