LIB 10.5%
Incumbent MP
Alex Hawke, since 2007.
Geography
North-Western Sydney. Mitchell mainly covers parts of the Hills as well as northern parts of the City of Parramatta, including Baulkham Hills, Castle Hill, Rouse Hill, Winston Hills and Kellyville.
Redistribution
Mitchell shifted south, picking up West Pennant Hills from Berowra and losing Box Hill, Gables, Nelson and Rouse Hill to Greenway. These changes slightly cut the Liberal margin from 10.7% to 10.5%.
Mitchell was created for the 1949 election. It has almost always been won by the Liberal Party, except for two elections where the ALP won the seat, and it has become a solidly Liberal seat over recent decades.
Mitchell was won by Liberal candidate Roy Wheeler in 1949. Wheeler was re-elected at every election in the 1950s, but lost Mitchell to ALP candidate John Armitage. Armitage only managed to hold on to the seat for one term, losing it to Liberal candidate Leslie Irwin in 1963, although he later held the safe Labor seat of Chifley from 1969 to 1983.
Irwin held Mitchell from 1963 until the 1972 election, when he was swept aside with the election of the Whitlam government, with Mitchell being won by Labor candidate Alfred Ashley-Brown. Ashley-Brown lost in 1974 to Liberal candidate Alan Cadman.
Cadman held Mitchell for over thirty years without rising to much prominence in the Liberal Party, and by the mid-2000s was one of only three MPs remaining from the time of the Whitlam government, along with Prime Minister John Howard and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock. Cadman served as a Parliamentary Secretary in the final years of the Fraser government and the early years of the Howard government, but didn’t rise any further.
After narrowly surviving a preselection challenge in 2004, Cadman faced a challenge in 2007 from prominent right-winger Alex Hawke, and decided to retire. Hawke easily won election in 2007, and has been re-elected five times.
Assessment
Mitchell is a reasonably safe Liberal seat.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Alex Hawke | Liberal | 56,918 | 52.6 | -9.4 | 52.4 |
| Immanuel Selvaraj | Labor | 27,597 | 25.5 | +1.6 | 25.6 |
| Matt Cox | Greens | 12,796 | 11.8 | +3.8 | 12.0 |
| Linda Daniel | United Australia | 3,916 | 3.6 | +0.9 | 3.5 |
| Clinton Mead | Liberal Democrats | 3,708 | 3.4 | +3.4 | 3.3 |
| Donald McKenzie | One Nation | 3,258 | 3.0 | +3.0 | 2.9 |
| Others | 0.2 | ||||
| Informal | 4,811 | 4.3 | -0.8 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Alex Hawke | Liberal | 65,662 | 60.7 | -7.9 | 60.5 |
| Immanuel Selvaraj | Labor | 42,531 | 39.3 | +7.9 | 39.5 |
Polling places in Mitchell have been split into three areas: central, north and south.
The Liberal Party won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 56.1% in the south to 62.7% in the north.
The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 12.1% in the north to 13.3% in the south.
| Voter group | GRN prim | LIB 2PP | Total votes | % of votes |
| South | 13.3 | 56.1 | 24,702 | 23.7 |
| North | 12.1 | 62.7 | 18,263 | 17.5 |
| Central | 12.9 | 58.8 | 13,347 | 12.8 |
| Pre-poll | 10.8 | 61.9 | 30,287 | 29.1 |
| Other votes | 11.3 | 63.2 | 17,548 | 16.8 |
Election results in Mitchell at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, Labor and the Greens.
Hi Ben,
For some reason when you click on Nicholls it directs you to Mitchell thread for some reason.
@spacefish
Has Alex Hawke changed seats?
It was a bug on the map, should be fixed now.
I don’t understand this seat at all. It is surrounded by Labor territory on the west and to some extent the south. It has the safe somewhat-regional Liberal seat of Berowra to the east, but somehow here is safer than Berowra despite being more suburban and more Labor surrounded. What goes on here that I’m not aware of?
@Nick G a few points:
1. The Labor territory around it on the state level is all key marginal seats that were Liberal-held from 2011 until 2023. Federally these areas fall into Greenway and Parramatta.
2. Berowra is by no means regional. It is a Sydney seat. It includes places like Hornsby and Cherrybrook.
And to explain the area: this is one of the most ethnic Liberal seats in Australia. Lots of Chinese and Indian people live here. Furthermore, though, it is an upper-middle class seat and one of the richest seats in Sydney. Places like Castle Hill are old money while places like Kellyville and Bella Vista have growing housing estates. Lots of businesses are in Castle Hill. Mitchell and the Hills in general also has some semi-rural areas bordering the Hawkesbury which are very Liberal-voting.
Hope this helps.
Even after a 10% swing.this seat has a 10% liberal. Margin. The hills is not the preserve of Labor.
Hawke’s danger is being rolled in a preselection by his own side
@Nether Portal ok, that makes slightly more sense, thanks
Nick G, to add to what Nether Portal wrote, this also has a reputation as being a very religious area. For example, it’s where the Hillsong Church is headquartered.
This seat had NSW’s largest election-day booth at Jasper Road Primary School in Baulkham Hills, with 3110 votes cast, which is the largest in the country.
North-West Sydney has been known as the “bible belt”. Hillsong is in Norwest.
Interestingly, there are LGAs that have far higher percentages of people who are Christians. The most Christian LGAs are peri-urban ones e.g. Camden, Wollondilly, Penrith. Bossley Park in Fowler and in Fairfield LGA is the Sydney suburb with the highest percentage of people who are Christian.
Any Liberal insiders have insight into how preselection went here? I would have thought many Liberals would have been keen on deposing Hawke after all the shenanigans in 2022.
Dear Leader Supreme Life Emperor of the Principality of Mitchell Hawke romped in his preselection victory. Alex can not be stacked out!
A bit of a limb here but I’m getting the vibes Hawke will increase his margin despite all his controversies. Labor is putting no effort in here, candidate has no bio on the ABC page, not a surprise due to the demographics here but nonetheless Alex Hawke will hold.
Guessing the only way to get rid of Alex is some hard core branch stacking or a conservative community independent
I predict the margin to decline but a comfortable retain for Hawke. The demographics are getting more Labor friendly.
@ Adda
This very is very CALD and is racially tolerant. While it is socially conservative on religious based issues i dont see Dutton to be generally well liked here. However, it is mortgage belt so COL and interest rates may hurt Labor so maybe there will be a small swing here to Libs but i am not sure.
There’s new developments thanks to the metro line here and generally a younger (and Indian) crowd moving in to those. But I would not call it mortgage belt – the only new suburb is North Kellyville, and most of the growth regions in the north-west are just outside of this seat now in Greenway. It’s mostly established middle to outer ring suburbs which in general have been growing more friendly for Labor.
I would also say that even in the growth areas in the north-west of Sydney, interest rates are probably less of an issue likely to backlash against Labor compared to the south-west, as they are higher income and education demographics that are more likely to be taking up residence. So although it is not a strong point for Labor, it is compensated by those voters being both younger and more highly educated than the mean in the electorate, and thus being more of a Labor voting demographic naturally.