Bradfield – Australia 2025

LIB 2.5% vs IND

Incumbent MP
Paul Fletcher, since 2009.

• Geography
• Redistribution
• History
• Candidates
• Assessment
• 2022 results
• Booth breakdown
• Results maps

Geography
Northern Sydney. Bradfield covers the Ku-ring-gai council area and most of the Willoughby council area. Key suburbs include Wahroonga, St Ives, Pymble, Turramurra, Killara, Lindfield, Gordon, Roseville, Castle Cove, Chatswood, Willoughby and Artarmon.

Redistribution
Bradfield shifted south, taking in about one third of the abolished seat of North Sydney. Specifically Bradfield took in most of the Willoughby council area, including Artarmon, Castlecrag, Middle Cove, Naremburn, Northbridge and Willoughby. The suburb of Hornsby was moved from Bradfield to Berowra, so the electoral boundary now mostly follows the local government boundary between Hornsby and Ku-ring-gai. The seats of North Sydney and Bradfield both had a teal independent in the final two-candidate-preferred count, and the changes reduced the Liberal margin against those independents from 4.2% to 2.5%.

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 has been re-elected five times.

Candidates
Sitting Liberal MP Paul Fletcher is not running for re-election.

Assessment
If the teal independents were to pick up an extra seat in 2025, Bradfield is a very clear frontrunner. The seat has taken in about a third of an abolished seat that has been represented by an independent for the last three years, and the previous form of Bradfield had a strong independent of a similar style and political ideology in 2022.

Nicolette Boele has been actively campaigning for Bradfield since her 2022 defeat. She will be a serious contender, but the particular circumstances that led to independents winning in northern Sydney in 2022 is not quite so present now.

2022 result

2022 two-candidate-preferred result

2022 two-party-preferred result

Booth breakdown

Booths have been divided into three parts. Polling places in the Ku-ring-gai council area have been split in two while those in the Willoughby council area have been grouped together.

The Liberal Party won 55.8% of the two-candidate-preferred vote in North Ku-ring-gai, while independents won 50.7% in South Ku-ring-gai and 53.6% in Willoughby.

Labor came third, with a primary vote ranging from 14.4% in North Ku-ring-gai to 21.1% in Willoughby.

Election results in Bradfield at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Liberal vs Independent), two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, independent candidates and Labor.

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