Over the course of this week I’ll be running through four categories of seats that seem interesting as we get closer to Saturday. Today, I’m analysing twelve classic Labor vs Liberal seats in the Sydney region.
I’ve identified ten Liberal seats and two Labor seats worth mentioning. These seats mostly lie in an arc from the south-east to the northern suburbs, arcing through the outer western suburbs.
These seats are held by margins ranging from 0.1% to 9.7%. I’ll run through them by their margin.
Labor has come close to winning East Hills (LIB 0.1%) at the last three elections but it has remained very marginal. While the rest of the state moved back to Labor, East Hills hasn’t budged. But if there is a substantial swing to the ALP, it’s hard to see East Hills not flipping.
The iconic marginal seat of Penrith (LIB 0.6%) is held by former Liberal deputy leader Stuart Ayres. The sitting member was brought unstuck by a scandal related to the appointment of former deputy premier John Barilaro to a trade post in New York. Ayres is already in a very fragile position, but his recent history surely cannot help. Having said all that, these swings are never uniform, and there’s a lot of chatter that the Liberal Party is still more competitive in Penrith than in seats that appear to be safer on the pendulum.
The seat of Seven Hills has been renamed Winston Hills (LIB 5.4%). This seat is very marginal and Labor is running Parramatta deputy mayor Sameer Pandey, but the chatter on the blog suggests a high opinion of the local Liberal member Mark Taylor and his ability to hold on. This is exactly the kind of seat Labor needs to win to be in a position to form government, even if it’s not in majority.
There are then three seats in a trilogy with similar margins, and where all of the sitting members have moved on. The first is Riverstone (LIB 6.2%) where Liberal member Kevin Conolly is retiring after twelve years.
Secondly there is Holsworthy (LIB 6.3%) where local member Melanie Gibbons lost her preselection to Tina Ayyad, whose husband is the mayor of Liverpool. Gibbons has moved on to run for the seat of Kiama, where she has little connection, and thus has opened up space for Labor to do well here.
Finally in Parramatta (LIB 6.3%) the sitting Liberal MP Geoff Lee is retiring. Labor’s candidate Donna Davis is the local lord mayor and has a strong profile in a seat where Lee’s personal vote appears to have been strong. It’s also a seat significantly affected by the redistribution, having been pulled south into more Labor-friendly territory.
The next few seats are more stretch goals for Labor. They don’t fall within the first nine most marginal seats for Labor to form a majority, and seem most likely to stay in Liberal hands, but keep an eye on them.
Camden (LIB 7.4%) in south-western Sydney is rapidly growing with pressures on infrastructure. The seat also has a history of being won by Labor under the last Labor goernment.
Oatley (LIB 7.4%) is in the St George area. Local member Mark Coure appears strong and the consensus is that he will hold on but the swing could significantly cut his margin and I wouldn’t rule out a Labor win.
There is an opening in Ryde (LIB 9.0%) due to the retirement of Victor Dominello after 15 years in the seat. This seat and its predecessors has regularly been won by Labor when they have won elections, but it’s probably a bit too much this time.
The seat of Mulgoa has been renamed Badgerys Creek (LIB 9.7%) with a reduced margin. This is the kind of seat that’s probably a bridge too far for Labor in 2023 but would be a key seat if Labor was looking to solidify a majority next time.
There are also two Labor marginals worth mentioning. There are a handful of other Labor marginals in Sydney that are unlikely to be of interest. But I’m mentioning two that are notional Labor seats – they haven’t actually been won by Labor yet.
The seat of Leppington (ALP 1.5%) is a new seat taking parts of six other seats in south-western Sydney. The seat includes both fast-growing suburbs and more established suburbs (to ease the expected population growth) but a huge proportion of the seat’s voters are new to the electorate. The seat has no sitting MP, but is being contested for Labor by Liverpool councillor Nathan Hegarty and for the Liberal Party by Camden mayor Therese Fedeli. Labor will probably win but it’s harder to predict.
The seat of Heathcote (ALP 2.1%) has been held by Liberal MP Lee Evans since 2011. He held the seat by a 5% margin in 2019, but the redistribution shifted the seat a long way south, losing suburbs in the Sutherland Shire and gaining the northern suburbs of Wollongong. Those new suburbs are strongly pro-Labor, indeed you could argue they are strongly pro-Greens. The areas added to Heathcote had a Greens primary vote of about 25% last election. This has flipped the seat to Labor, but I think it’s still worth watching. It’s possible there are less voters for Labor to gain in that southern end where the Liberal Party hasn’t seriously challenged for a while.
That’s it for today – tomorrow I’ll be analysing the interesting non-classic seats in the Sydney region.
It’s quite possible Labor gets a swing but not where it needs to form government or minority government kinda like Victoria where the government suffered swings in safe seats but had swings to them in key areas or very small swings against them in those key areas.
@ Bob, Agree that is very possible especially if Libs are able to sandbag seats with sitting members. In Victoria as you said the swing to the Libs was wasted in the wrong areas. For example the Libs got a 15% swing to them in Greenvale but Labor still won it comfortably the swing to Labor in Hastings was only 1.4% and 0.9% in Bass but that was enough to win them off the Libs which is why the Libs were down in net seats to Labor even if they recorded a TPP swing to them overall.
The voting system of opv complicates the normal sums ..it seems to me that the coalition needs to out poll Labor in terms of primary votes to gain from opv. This and the lack of a uniform swing in seats held by the coalition make prediction difficult. It is possible for Labor to Win Riverstone but miss out on Goulburn.
whats this ICONIC seat. ya cant write an article there days about anything without using the word ICONIC
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