Booth map of the day – Banks and Hughes

By his map adding parts of campbelltown did not effect the result in hughes

Labor did well in booths that coincided with Heathcote state electorate

While these two seats were recovered by Labor. This was a high tide election so they are still Liberal leaning seats under the Cook PVI compared to state and national result. David Moncrieff is only about 30 so he has no memory of Hughes being a Labor seat. He recently met with the last Labor MP for Hughes Robert Tickner. The two Labor MPs for Hughes before 1996 were both Ministers. David Moncrieff and Zhi Soon may become great local champions but these seats are still unlikely to see Labor Ministers gain

Wouldn’t be surprised if the libs try and recover these two seats especially after 3moreyearsof albo

@ John
Offcourse the Libs will try and recover the seats there is really no pathway for them to win Goverment without Banks and Hughes. In the past they may have been able to win seats like Lilley and Moreton which are much less likely now same with Kingston. Fraser did not need Hughes and Howard did not need Banks but that is not the case now. Conversely, Capricornia/Page is not a seat really seats that Labor needs these days to the same extent.

Agree John and nimalan, other critical seats for the coalition to recover as their top tier targets would be ones such as Aston, Menzies, forde, dickson and petrie.

Essentially all the outer suburban seats that Labor picked up at this election and should never have been lost in the first place.

Even Kevin Rudd in his 2007 victory never won Aston, Menzies, Hughes or Dickson

To be fair Menzies and hughes were caused by The redistribution on the old boundaries they would have been retained. Aston was lost due to incumbency of labor due to several factors at the by election and Dickson I believe people were sending a message to PD. And in 2007 the Libs didn’t stab themselves at the 11th your and trump wasn’t on the ballot.

Dickson would have been lost in 2007 under the current boundaries. Dickson has always been a marginal that probably just tipped Liberal on Peter Dutton’s profile but the swing was very big this time and the margin substantial for Ali France, who now has a chance to build a profile. Eastern Melbourne has meanwhile become much less Liberal friendly since 2007. Hughes is probably the one which should be most obviously a Liberal seat when they are in a better position but that doesn’t necessarily translate to an easy pickup either.

Banks and Petrie are the only 2 seats that Labor lost in 2013 but regained in 2025. Kevin Rudd had a sizable victory in 2007 but it wasn’t anything as the 2025 Labor victory. Seats like Dickson and Hughes were close in 2007.

There was not much campaigning by Labor, especially in Hughes, and their candidates were chosen relatively late in my opinion. Zhi Soon had more momentum due to his previous attempt and a visit from the PM at prepoll. David Moncreiff’s win was a bigger surprise. Imagine if both had several months of leadtime and campaign resources.

The swings to the Greens in the northern suburbs of Banks were an extension of the swings in Watson and Barton. Suburbs north of the T8 Airport Line tend to be lower-income, more likely to rent and have large Lebanese/Muslim cohorts. In fact, it was the swing to the Greens that helped drive up the Labor 2CP.

I think the teal probably hurt Dutton as well but it’s definitely not lost forever

I think I was people voting against the liberals not for the govt the liberals did labors campaigning for them

Como West was the only Labor booth in Hughes in 2022. Como has held for Labor since 1949 after Labor finally outpolled the CPA. As always, Como leads Australia left & hopefully Australia follows Como. Great memories of Metal Trades Federation half day stoppages in the 1980s when the Como Pub was full of Metal Workers in the afternoon. & Go the Mighty Mos.

@ Yoh An
Darth vader is correct in that the results in Hughes and Menzies are due to redistibutions favourable to Labor. Menzies (my seat) would not have been won on the 2007/2010 boundaries in 2025. However, it is fair to say the Labor party has overperformed there and it is the best result since 1983. Adda also correcty pointed out that Dickson would have narrowly be won by Labor in 2007 on current boundaries in 2007 the Somerset Region (now in Blair) saved Dutton. However, it is also true that since around 2016 the LNP has underperformed in Dickson compared to the QLD has a whole. I think there are two factors for this, Labor is underperfoming in Central QLD compared to the past while Labor is improving in Brisbane metro. Secondly, Dutton increased profile in the last few elections meant more centrist voters have left who may have otherwise voted Liberal. Regarding Aston, yes incumbency is a factor plus Labor actually bothering to campaign. IMHO Labor should have won Aston in 2010 and they did come close.

@ Votante
You are correct Petrie and Banks are two of the 2013 losses that have been reversed. I think Petrie is generally a bellwether that was missed in 2022 and Forde generally a bellwether as well. Both mortgage belt seats. Deakin is another 2013 loses that was reversed in 2025. However, Deakin would not have been won on the 2025 boundaries in either 2007 or 2010. La Trobe is a 2013 loss that was not reversed in 2025. Howver, the boundaries are more Liberal friendly today and on current boundaries Labor would not have won in 2010 either.

Roger Roughead, it seems like you have some fond memories of Como.

I often thought of Como as teal-ish. Its income is the highest out of all the suburbs in the two electorates. The teal vote in 2022 from memory and so it makes sense that it had swung hard to Labor, and to a lesser extent the Greens this election.

*The teal vote in 2022 was the highest.

Nimalan, Deakin was also a reversal of a loss in 2013. Mike Symon held the seat for Labor, gaining it in 2007 from Phil Barresi but then losing to Michael Sukkar in 2013.

@ Yoh An
Some seats that were held during 2007-2013 that have not been reversed
1. Capricornia, Dawson (2010 loss) Flynn (2010 loss) Central QLD seats i think this will be hard to reverse
2. Page-may be hard to reverse. May no longer be a bellwether
4. La Trobe (2010 gain)-very different boundaries. However, long term prospects for Labor are good due to increased urbanisation and ethnic diversification

@nimalan i think he libs will have good long term prospects in places like Gorton, Hawke, McEwen, Coarngamite, maybe Lalor. Jagajaga if it moves across the Yarra. Menzies will be a Labor prospect in the medium term as it moves south. Bruce, Holt should swing back when the libs get there act together. I think SA is lost for at least the near term.

Agree Nimalan – looking at seats Labor holds now that they did not win during Kevin Rudd’s 2007 ‘landslide’, they are:
Boothby and Sturt in SA
Moore, Tangney, Pearce, Cowan and Swan in WA
Dickson in Queensland
Menzies in Victoria

Given demographic trends, the inner-city ones like Tangney, Boothby and Sturt will be harder to recover. Even the state seats overlapping Moore saw minimal (below average) swings against Labor at the recent WA election.

It does make you wonder what else Labor could have won if they knew they were in for a win of this magnitude and had put in the effort in seats that weren’t at all on the radar but were unexpectedly close in the end. Berowra and/or Mitchell?

@ Nicholas/Yoh An
I think the 3 seats Labor would have love to win but did not win are the 3 L seats on the outkirts of the 3 Largest cities are Lindsay, La Trobe and Longman (Lindsay and Longman are white working class seats so Dutton would not be too toxic there). If Labor won those 3 it would have mocked the outer suburban strategy even more than the embarassing results for libs in Bruce and Holt.

Aston should be added to your list as seats Rudd did not win in 2007.

I think the results from recent elections shows that the ‘outer suburban’ strategy used by the Coalition generally only works for seats that are considered ethnically white. Seats with substantial numbers of CALD minorities like Holt, Bruce, Calwell, Gorton, Lalor and Werriwa saw the Liberal vote remain low.

This is also true for places like the US, where the Republican Party has only made inroads into ‘blue collar’ whites without a tertiary education. Nonwhite voters without a tertiary qualification will still back the Democrats, although Trump did manage to pull some former Hispanic Democratic voters into his column for 2024.

For the Liberals to return to a winning position they will have to find ways to appeal beyond their white, working-class base to include CALD minorities and young, professional type voters.

@ Yoh An
When the Libs were winning Teal seats they did not need to worry about working class CALD seats now that some of them want to abandon Teal seats they focus on Bruce, Holt etc which in the past they did not need to care about at all. La Trobe is mixed has CALD areas and white areas hence marginal. John Howard and Tony Abbott not need to win any of the seats you mentioned. CALD working class voters are more religious conservatives than nationalist conservatives.

I mean somewhere like Dickson is quite white but they lost it, Longman also they almost lost.

Agree Nimalan, the Liberals haven’t really won the support of nonwhite/CALD voters for the entire time since the disbanding of the White Australia policy. The same is true for Republicans in the US, they haven’t been strong with nonwhite voters at any stage.

The only difference is the conservative party’s declining support amongst younger, affluent voters who are tertiary educated. Areas covered by the teal seats are similar to places like Orange County in California and parts of New Jersey adjacent to NYC, areas where Republicans used to win easily at elections pre-Obama but now struggle to win during the Trump era.

For the US, the tradeoff to secure the support of white, working-class voters who were typically left leaning has paid off quite well. But in Australia, with a higher proportion of tertiary educated voters and a population concentrated into a handful of major cities, that tradeoff is probably a fatal miscalculation

@ Yoh An
The Libs were doing well among the Middle Class Chinese community prior to the pandemic and at a state level in NSW they were doing ok among South Asians. The Libs have had very little support among Muslims but prior to October 7th it was suggested that muslims could be targeted based on shared social conservatism hence seats like Bruce, Holt. The Libs have never needed Muslim support to win government and given they tend to be concentrated in Low SES seats this was never a problem until some wanted to chart a path without Teal seats, Ryan, Brisbane and Boothby

Fair point Nimalan – earlier this century during the Howard years the Liberals fared best targeting only the higher SES seats (both majority white and CALD heavy districts). They left all the low SES ones to be won by Labor.

With the rise of Trumpism, the Liberals thought they could focus on social issues to win the low SES Labor held seats (those in the outer suburbs and regional/rural areas). It turns out that the CALD heavy outer suburban seats have not moved much, and they also lost support in most of the ‘affluent’ or higher SES seats regardless of ethnicity.

Nimalan,
The Division of Page was never considered a bellwether seat.
The reasons it changed hands in 1990 and again in 2007 specifically related to the Clarence River.
In 1990, the NSW Coalition Government had approved a woodchip pulp mill near Grafton. The project was instigate and championed by the state MP for Clarence. It was opposed by the local community as the waste products was to be discharged into the Clarence River. The ALP candidate campaigned on stopping the woodchip pulp mill.
In 2007, the federal coalition government was planning on damming one of more of the Northern Rivers (Clarence, Richmond & Tweed) to provide additional water supply to southeast Queensland. The largest swings were in the rural communities along the rivers.
https://results.aec.gov.au/13745/Website/HouseDivisionTcpByPollingPlace-13745-138.htm

The current MP for Page claims to sit on the crossbench which shields him from any backlash against unpopular Coalition / National Party policies.

Watson – whilst incumbent Page MP Kevin Hogan did move to the crossbench for a short time following Malcolm Turnbull’s ‘ousting’ as leader, he then returned to the Nationals party room after the 2019 election.

@ Watson Watch
Fair point. I know Grafton has some white working class voters with sugar mills etc and the state seat of Clarence was won by Bob Carr.
Also while i have you there as you live in Watson, i think it will be great if you can make some comments is there ever a chance you see that the Libs could win Watson by focusing on religious conservativism with the Muslim commmity focusing on LGBT issues etc.

@nimalan – is the pitch to the muslim community going to be “we hate LGBT more than we hate muslims”?

@ Bazza
That is not my suggestions for the Libs i would prefer the Libs focus on the Teal seats. However, this is what Sky After Dark, Andrew Bolt suggest when describing the realignment stategy focus on winning the state seat of Greenvale instead of Hawthorn etc. I think part of the say Moira Deeming is seen as hero is that many believe she could have won Muslim voters etc. Sometimes i wonder if the word “Abrahamic” will replace Judeo-Christian and the Libs will use the word Abrahamic values etc to try and win Muslims. I think many in the Libs geninuely though they were in a good shot in Bruce.

Agree Nimalan, I would say for Muslim voters that religion is not the first thing that pops out when determining which party they wish to support.

Especially for those in the outer suburbs and from a lower socioeconomic background, factors such as cost of living, economic metrics and infrastructure development would play a much greater role compared to religious and social issues. Hence why all the Muslim majority seats saw swings to community-based independents in the mould of Dai Le instead of the Liberals.

@nimalan. there are only about 1/2 dozen teal seats. whereas there are at least a dozen working class labor seats they can win these are seats taht labor has taken for granted and has effectively banked without feeling the need to do anything to ensure they keep them. its much like the blue wall in the US states the democrats thought they would automatically get without putting any resources into. unliike the greens the teals do not have succession plan. once the teals go there isnt a party machine to ensure another takes their place. the libs only have t be patient for the long game and those teal seats will come back to them

@ John
Blue Wall state Pennyslvania, Michigan and Wisonsin have been close at every election where Republicans did well for example 2000 and 2004 so it was not outlandish that Trump won them in 2016, a surprise not a shock victory. Nevada was won by George W Bush in 2004 and was close in 2016, 2020 so not a hugh shock Trump won them.
As WL mentioned in the Muslim vote thread and what discussed in the Spence thread. There is a sense that the Labor takes such seats for granted. However, there is a stigma of vote 1. Liberal in such seats just like why if the Teals did not exist it would have been highly unlikely that Labor could have won Mackellar, Curtin, Warringah etc in a classic contest which is Why it was in Labor’sinterest to run dead. It is the same reason why it is probbaly best for the Libs not to campaign in a seat like Calwell and let Carly Moore or Joseph Youhana win it. If the Libs made the 2CP in Calwell Labor would have won it easily. Also in Indi we saw Helen Haines successed Cathy McGowan so it in entirely possible that that could happen in the Teal seats. Finally, if you ask Petra Credlin and Rita Panahi they will argue that the Teal seats will turn Labor eventually based on realignemnt.

@Nimalan I am not sure that a group that the Libs have consistently demonised for decades is going to switch over to them because they start complaining more about transgenders

@ Bazza
I have my doubt as well so i am with you but i am just repeating what i have heard.

There’s no guarantee that being the new incarnation of the DLP will win ethnic seats, in fact they just won’t full stop.

Muslim doesn’t mean socially conservative (even in some Muslim-majority countries or countries with large Muslim populations), and chances are socially conservative Muslims already vote DLP or for independents or some more extreme ones probably don’t vote at all due to their belief that Western society is evil and corrupt.

I also think on a side note the term “Muslim country” when used by politicians should be used carefully. Lebanon is majority-Muslim but 40% are Christian. For me that’s not enough to be considered Muslim and as a Lebanese myself I refuse to be considered “Muslim”.

@NP
I fear the Libs are becoming “DLP lite” especially the Victorian Libs with their focus on Greenvale etc and will abandon Secular voters who are non religious. Most Australians dont care if someone had a child out of wedlock etc or prefers a defacto relationship over marriage. and i hope Australia stays that way. Australia is a chill and Easy going country and i hope that is not lost.

Just to clarify when I say I refuse to be considered “Muslim” this isn’t against Muslims, I’ve known some Muslims who are great people, I just am not one. It’s a bit like calling an Australian an American.

Nimalan,
Thanks for the response.

Harwood is the nearest sugar mill to Grafton. None of the mill workers would live in Grafton – they live close to the mill – Harwood, Maclean, Yamba, or in between.
In rural areas, there isn’t a distinct breakdown between blue collar workers, white collar workers, and farmers. Farmers often have another occupation as well. When I was at high school, some of our teachers were also cane farmers.

Here is the history of state seats in the Clarence Valley in my lifetime.
Bob Askin become of NSW in 1965. In his first term he introduced a 5% rural weighting accompanied by redistribution. The weighting was increased to 10% in his second term and 15% in his third term.

In 1971, (after the 10% weighting was introduced), a new seat of Casino was created. It covered the Lower Clarence (Clarence Valley downstream of Grafton), Kyogle, Casino and mid Richmond (Coraki, Broadwater, Woodburn, Evans Head). The seat of Clarence became a Grafton – Coffs Harbour seat. There was a dispute in the Country Party over candidate selection (Richmond Valley versus Clarence Valley). The Country Party selected a candidate from the Richmond Valley.
Three weeks before the election, Labor selected Don Day as their candidate. He owned the Ford Motor dealership in Maclean, which also sold and maintained farm machinery. He was also a farmer and Maclean Shire President. Don Day won by about 400 votes. He was narrowly reelected in 1973 and 1976.
Around 1977, CSR announced that they would be closing the three NSW sugar mills. The Canegrowers Assoc approached the Doug Anthony (member for Richmond and Deputy PM) for assistance. They were told can’t do anything about that. They then approached Don Day. He negotiated with CSR which allowed the Canegrowers to purchase the mills as a going concern. The payment price was just the scrap value that CSR would have received for the materials.
In 1978, Don Day was reelected with an 8% swing towards him.
The rural weighting was removed prior to the 1981 state election. Casino was abolished and Clarence became most of the former seat of Casino plus the city of Grafton. Don Day contested Clarence and won comfortably.

When Don Day retired in 1984, Clarence was won by Ian Causley. Ian was chairman of the canegrowers co-operative which took over the running of the sugar mills. I find this mildly amusing.

The Country Party candidate that Don Day defeated in 1971 was Charles Yabsley. His son, Michael Yabsley, was briefly member for Bligh. He was defeated by Clover Moore.

In 1996, Ian Causley resigned as member for Clarence to contest the Division of Page. At the subsequent Clarence by-election, Labor nominated Harry Woods, the defeated member for Page.
The National Party candidate lived outside the electorate. On his nomination he gave his residential address as a vacant block of land in Glenreagh, a village in the electorate. The Grafton Daily Examiner found out and published a picture of the vacant block on its front page. The candidate spent the rest of the campaign in hospital with a stress related illness. Needless to say, he wasn’t elected.

South-Western Sydney is quite working class and religious. Scott Morrison came across as a man of faith and a religious conservative. He probably helped the Liberals hold up their vote in Banks and Hughes and Werriwa in 2019 and 2022. I remember that in 2019 and 2022, there was talk about how the religious vote was critical here and Morrison had some appeal, hence why he visited there mid-campaign. Labor held on both times.

Dutton didn’t appear as religious as Morrison. Even Albanese appeared more religious than Dutton. Dutton was seen as hardline and was known more for his stances and rhetoric on race and immigration and foreign policy than on social issues like LGBT issues or socio-religious issues. This isn’t too surprising given his previous ministerial portfolios in defence and immigration and home affairs.

Dutton was also pro-Zionist and hawkish, though not necessarily on Middle-Eastern affairs. My guess is that such stances put off voters and made some Liberal voters swing, even to Muslim independents in Watson and Blaxland.

In Banks, the overall primary vote swing to the Greens (+3.27%) was more than 5 times that of the successful Labor candidate (0.59%). It could be argued that the preferences that flowed from Nat Hannah to Zhi Soon was what won it for Labor.
https://tallyroom.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-31496-103.htm

It’s also worth noting that unlike in the last 3 federal elections, Banks was not a target seat for the anti-Dutton campaign of the unions (including the NSW Teachers Federation that I’m a member of and which mobilised hundreds of members to volunteer in other Sydney seats like Reid, Bennelong and Werriwa). Yet it flipped this time, which is interesting given they’re taking the credit for some of the other Liberal defeats.

I believe by mid April, the Labor camp sensed things going in their direction and the Liberals had gone off the rails. This might’ve prompted Albanese to pop into Banks.

https://www.smh.com.au/politics/nsw/sydney-s-accidental-mps-who-seized-liberal-seats-when-no-one-was-looking-20250506-p5lx3s.html
“Both ran ultra-local campaigns on shoestring budgets in the electorates where they grew up and still live. They are also accidental MPs who seized Liberal seats when no one was looking.”

I guess it was a case of striking whilst they’re asleep. The Liberals mistakingly believed that they were safe in their own seats and even would gain swings in marginal Labor seats.

It was believed for many, many months that seats like Reid, Bennelong and Robertson and even Parramatta were at-risk. A lot of money and resources were pumped in earlier on and that likely contributed to the super-sized swings to Labor.