Bradfield – Australia 2019

LIB 21.0%

Incumbent MP
Paul Fletcher, since 2009.

Geography
Northern Sydney. Bradfield covers the Ku-ring-gai council area, as well as small parts of Hornsby and North Sydney council areas. Key suburbs include Hornsby, Wahroonga, St Ives, Pymble, Turramurra, Killara, Lindfield, Gordon, Roseville, Castle Cove and parts of Chatswood.

History
The seat was created for the 1949 election, and has always been held by the Liberal Party.

It was first won by former Prime Minister Billy Hughes in 1949. Hughes had been an MP since he won election to the NSW colonial parliament in 1894, and had then held the federal seats of West Sydney, Bendigo and North Sydney. He had originally served as a Labor prime minister before leaving the party over the issue of conscription and leading the new Nationalist party. He eventually ended up in Robert Menzies’ Liberal Party and was the last remaining member of the first federal Parliameent to hold a seat.

Hughes died in office in 1952, and the ensuing by-election was won by state Liberal MP Harry Turner.

Turner held the seat for the next twenty-two years, and never rose to a ministerial role during twenty years of Coalition government. He retired at the 1974 election, and was succeeded by David Connolly.

Connolly also held Bradfield for twenty-two years, and was expected to take on a ministerial role after the 1996 election, but lost preselection to Brendan Nelson, former president of the Australian Medical Association.

Nelson won Bradfield in 1996 and quickly rose through the ranks of the Liberal government, joining the cabinet following the 2001 election and serving first as Minister for Education and then Minister for Defence.

Following the defeat of the Howard government in 2007, Brendan Nelson was elected Leader of the Opposition, narrowly defeating Malcolm Turnbull in the party room. His leadership was troubled by low poll ratings and being undermined by Turnbull and his supporters, and Nelson lost a leadership spill in September 2008. Nelson resigned from Parliament in 2009, triggering a by-election in Bradfield.

The 2009 Bradfield by-election was held in December, and was a contest between the Liberal Party and the Greens, with the ALP declining to stand a candidate, along with a field of twenty other candidates, including nine candidates for the Christian Democratic Party. While the Greens substantially increased their vote, Liberal candidate Paul Fletcher comfortably retained the seat. Fletcher was re-elected in 2010, 2013 and 2016.

Candidates

Assessment
Bradfield is a very safe Liberal seat.

2016 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Paul Fletcher Liberal 57,231 61.1 -4.0
Katie Gompertz Labor 15,926 17.0 +0.4
Adrian Jones Greens 10,936 11.7 -1.2
Christine Berman Independent 4,248 4.5 +4.5
Chris Vale Christian Democratic Party 3,497 3.7 +1.9
Peter Kelly Liberty Alliance 1,796 1.9 +1.9
Informal 3,446 3.5

2016 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Paul Fletcher Liberal 66,513 71.0 +0.1
Katie Gompertz Labor 27,121 29.0 -0.1

Booth breakdown

Booths have been split into four areas. Those polling places in Hornsby Shire have been grouped together. Those in Willoughby and Ku-ring-gai council areas have been grouped together as Chatswood, and the remainder of the Ku-ring-gai council area has been split into North Ku-ring-gai and South Ku-ring-gai.

The Liberal Party won a majority of the primary vote in all four areas, ranging from 59% in Hornsby to 74.4% in northern Ku-ring-gai.

The Greens primary vote ranged from 10.6% in northern Ku-ring-gai to 12.7% in Hornsby.

Voter group GRN prim % LIB 2PP % Total votes % of votes
North Ku-ring-gai 10.6 74.4 29,578 31.6
South Ku-ring-gai 12.7 70.5 16,944 18.1
Hornsby 12.7 59.0 8,326 8.9
Chatswood 11.8 70.6 7,739 8.3
Other votes 12.1 72.1 14,952 16.0
Pre-poll 11.5 70.8 16,095 17.2

Election results in Bradfield at the 2016 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and Greens primary votes.


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4 COMMENTS

  1. Interesting the conditions under which Turner won in1952 an independent ran as 1952 was a bad year for the liberals.they liberals were worried….that the independent may win……so they made sure that all knew the independent was Catholic…

  2. The southern boundary here has a really bad impact on N Sydney. Victoria Rd literally cuts through the middle of Chatswood. It also means that Willoughby LGA is not wholly in N.Sydney. I’D be far less unhappy with Boundary Rd, & Warringah RD as the southern boundary here.

    Paul Fletcher had a successful business career, but every time i watch him evade questions i get a very different impression. It seems like he was in fact a natural politician that had success in business, not the other way round !!.
    I put it down to that nerdy, know it all persona of the the Type 5 fixation. Type 5s are unfortunately the best suited to our political system, such as it is. consequently they dominate our polity

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