Canterbury – NSW 2015

ALP 7.4%

Incumbent MP
Linda Burney, since 2003.

Geography
Inner south-west of Sydney. Canterbury covers eastern parts of the City of Canterbury and a small part of the Ashfield local government area. It covers the suburbs of Belmore, Canterbury, Campsie, Clemton Park, Earlwood and Hurlstone Park.

Map of Canterbury's 2011 and 2015 boundaries. 2011 boundaries marked as red lines, 2015 boundaries marked as white area. Click to enlarge.
Map of Canterbury’s 2011 and 2015 boundaries. 2011 boundaries marked as red lines, 2015 boundaries marked as white area. Click to enlarge.

Redistribution
Canterbury shifted west, losing Ashbury, Summer Hill and Dulwich Hill to Summer Hill and Croydon Park to Strathfield. Canterbury then gained Belmore and Clemton Park from Lakemba. These changes cut the Labor margin from 8.3% to 7.4%.

History
The district of Canterbury has sent members to the Legislative Assembly since 1859, with the exception of three elections in the 1920s. The seat has been held by the ALP continuously since 1935.

The district of Canterbury was included in the multi-member district of St George from 1920 to 1927. When the seat was restored in 1927, it was won by the ALP’s Arthur Tonge. He had been elected to a casual vacancy in the district of North Shore in 1926.

Tonge was defeated by 111 votes in 1932 by the United Australia Party’s Edward Hocking. He regained the seat in 1935, and held it until 1962, when he lost Labor endorsement and retired.

Kevin Stewart defeated Tonge for preselection in Canterbury in 1962. He served as a minister in the Labor government from 1976 to 1985, when he resigned from Parliament to take up appointment as NSW Agent-General in London.

The 1986 by-election was won by Canterbury mayor Kevin Moss. He retained the seat throughout the 1980s and 1990s, retiring at the 2003 election.

Canterbury was won in 2003 by Linda Burney, the first indigenous member of the NSW Parliament. She served as a minister in the Labor government from 2007 to 2011, and has served as deputy leader of the NSW Labor Party since 2011.

Candidates

Assessment
Canterbury is a safe Labor seat.

2011 election result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Linda Burney Labor 21,417 47.2 -9.9 49.0
Ken Nam Liberal 16,115 35.5 +17.2 36.8
Marc Rerceretnam Greens 6,186 13.6 +0.6 9.4
Albert Fam Christian Democrats 1,673 3.7 +0.5 4.2
Others 0.6

2011 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
Linda Burney Labor 24,356 58.3 -18.8 57.4
Ken Nam Liberal 17,393 41.7 +18.8 42.6
Polling places in Canterbury at the 2011 NSW state election. East in green, North in orange, West in blue. Click to enlarge.
Polling places in Canterbury at the 2011 NSW state election. East in green, North in orange, West in blue. Click to enlarge.

Booth breakdown
Booths in Canterbury have been split into three parts: east, north and west.

Labor’s two-party-preferred vote ranged from 58% in the east and west to 59.4% in the north.

The Greens vote ranged from 7% in the north to 12.7% in the east.

Voter group ALP 2PP % GRN % Total % of votes
West 57.9 7.9 13,003 28.4
East 58.0 12.7 11,771 25.7
North 59.4 7.0 10,657 23.3
Other votes 54.9 10.0 10,333 22.6
Two-party-preferred votes in Canterbury at the 2011 NSW state election.
Two-party-preferred votes in Canterbury at the 2011 NSW state election.

9 COMMENTS

  1. Linda would have been an interesting choice for Labor leader. An ideologically progressive, articulate indigenous woman. I can’t see the Tele embracing her, but she does have some rock star quality, which might have sparked an otherwise pretty dull election campaign.

    Obviously an easy Labor hold.

  2. No one is interested in this seat.

    In 2011 there was a 10% swing to the Libs here. In 2011 a 10% swing away. Only 2% of that went to Labor and one of its star MPs, Linda Burney… and none went to the Greens (as in most of multicultural Sydney, they went backwards). No, over 6% went to the Christian Democrats who now beat the Green into 3rd place.

    If you read either any of the two Sydney metro papers today and the Australian, you would have many pages about the Greens getting swings of less than that in two nearby inner west seats. Pages and pages of agony/gloating/hyperbolic blather (the Tele’s front page was classic) plus the inevitable nonsensical editorials about what it all means…

    But not one word about Canterbury. Not. One. Word.

  3. I don’t understand what you think the story is. The greenest parts of Canterbury were redistributed into Summer Hill. So the Nile Party got 10% of the vote here. So what? It’s not a feat comparable to winning Newtown and Balmain.

  4. No its not, I know the media need a story and they focus on the very obvious – Newtown and Balmain, as the Tele did (rather hysterically yesterday) and you have too. A “feat” yes but have a look at the sea of minus figures for the Greens primary everywhere just outside those two electorates:

    Sydney -3.4%, Strathfield -2.3%, Parramatta -0.7, Bankstown -1% Rockdale -2.3%, Kogarah -2.3%. In Canterbury they dropped to 4th place behind CD. It’s hard to find a single positive figure anywhere in the parts of multicultural Sydney that are growing in population. The Greens vote was all low (around 5-6%) beforehand, and now in decline…

    There is a story there David… An untold one.

  5. I would assume the Greens concentrated their fire on Newtown and Balmain, and to a lesser extent Summer Hill. If they devoted resources away from finishing “honourable distant 3rd” in all these other seats, it’s not surprising their vote would suffer.

    Sydney had a strong independent so it’s not surprising some of the “green” vote ended up there.

  6. True enough Mark, they did – concentrated everything on those two inner city seats and the CSG ones up north to the exclusion of everything else. And went backwards everywhere else.

    4.3% (-1%) in the Labor seat of Bankstown, and that’s typical of a whole swag of ALP seats and non-CSG regional ones, as Ben has noted elsewhere. The Greens have the oft-stated aim of replacing the Labor Party, and bristle with indignation when its suggested their real future lies with aiming at the Liberals. Though Chris Harris (NSW Greens convenor) seemed happy enough with the idea in yesterday’s Herald. Maybe he was misquoted? (He does seem very specific and definite). But I trust he and other party strategists are looking at the dismal Canterbury (and similar) figures.

    Why are they so unappealing to working class and multicultural Sydney?

  7. They are unappealing to working class voters everywhere, not just in Sydney. The reason for that is pretty obvious. Working-class voters see the Greens as a bunch of wealthy, upper-class, Anglo-Saxon, inner-city, self-important elitists, who want to ban a whole range of things that working-class people (especially men) tend to like – cars, smoking, duck-shooting, gambling, meat, shoes, TV, heterosexuality, etc etc. And even if they don’t care about those things, they see the Greens as a threat to their jobs.

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