ALP 12.9%
Incumbent MP
Nick Champion, since 2019. Previously member for Wakefield, 2007-2019.
Northern fringe of Adelaide. Wakefield covers the towns of Elizabeth, Gawler and Salisbury on the northern outskirts of Adelaide. In addition to the entirety of the Gawler and Playford council areas, it covers northern parts of the Salisbury council area and small parts of the Barossa and Light council areas (those parts immediately to the north and east of Gawler.
History
Spence was a new name created for the 2019 election, replacing the seat of Wakefield.
Wakefield was an original South Australian electorate, having been created in 1903 at the first election with single-member electorates in South Australia. The seat was almost always been held by conservative parties. Prior to the 2007 election, the ALP had only won the seat two times. The electorate was significantly redrawn prior to the 2004 and 2019 elections in ways that shifted the seat from being a conservative fringe seat to a Labor-leaning urban seat.
The seat was first won in 1903 by Frederick Holder. Holder had previously been Premier of South Australia and had won an at-large seat in the House of Representatives in 1901 and had been elected as the first Speaker of the House of Representatives. Holder served as an independent and as Speaker up until July 1909, when he died while presiding over a raucous session of the House of Representatives.
The ensuing by-election was won by the Commonwealth Liberal Party’s Richard Foster, who had previously served as a minister in state governments before losing his seat in 1906. Foster held the seat continuously until the 1928 election, when he was defeated by Country Party candidate Maurice Collins. Collins was defeated at the 1929 election, and the party has never won Wakefield since.
The seat was won in 1929 by Nationalist Charles Hawker, who went on to serve as a minister in Joseph Lyons’ first government before resigning from the ministry in protest against high ministerial salaries during the Depression. Hawker died in a plane crash in 1938.
The ALP’s Sidney McHugh won the seat in the following by-election. McHugh was a former state MP, and lost the seat to UAP candidate John Duncan-Hughes in 1940 before returning to state politics. Duncan-Hughes had previously held the seat of Boothby before losing it in 1928, and then had served as a UAP Senator from 1932 to 1938.
Duncan-Hughes lost to ALP candidate Albert Smith in 1943. Smith was defeated by Philip McBride (LIB) in 1946. McBride had previously held the seat of Grey and then served in the Senate, and had served in Menzies’ first ministry while in the Senate.
McBride served as a minister when the Liberal Party gained power in 1949, first as Minister for the Interior and then as Minister for Defence from 1950 until his retirement in 1958.
Bert Kelly won the seat in 1958, and was a prominent proponent of free trade at a time when it was a minority view. He served as a minister from 1967 until 1969 but his advancement was limited by his free trade advocacy.
The redistribution before the 1977 election abolished the seat of Angas and the sitting member for Angas, Geoffrey Giles, challenged Kelly for Liberal preselection and won Wakefield. Giles had held Angas since 1964, when he won a by-election triggered by the death of Alexander Downer Sr.
Giles retired in 1983, and was succeeded by Neil Andrew. Andrew had a largely undistinguished career until after the 1998 election, when he was elected Speaker of the House of Representatives.
A redistribution before the 2004 election made Wakefield a notional Labor seat, and Andrew retired. Despite the unfavourable redistribution the Liberal Party’s David Fawcett retained the seat. Fawcett held the seat for one term before losing it to the ALP’s Nick Champion in 2007.
Champion has been re-elected five times, winning the renamed seat of Spence in 2019.
Assessment
Spence is a safe Labor seat.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Matt Burnell | Labor | 46,596 | 43.9 | -7.1 |
| Shawn Lock | Liberal | 27,153 | 25.6 | -0.3 |
| David Deex | Greens | 12,052 | 11.3 | +4.1 |
| Linda Champion | One Nation | 11,532 | 10.9 | +10.9 |
| Alvin Eric Warren | United Australia | 7,158 | 6.7 | -0.3 |
| Matilda Bawden | Federation Party | 1,736 | 1.6 | +1.6 |
| Informal | 5,534 | 5.0 | -1.0 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Matt Burnell | Labor | 66,818 | 62.9 | -1.2 |
| Shawn Lock | Liberal | 39,409 | 37.1 | +1.2 |
Booths have been divided into three parts: central, north-east and south-west.
Labor won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 55.3% in the north-east to 70% in the south-west.
The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 10.8% in the south-west to 13.8% in the north-east. One Nation polled slightly less than the Greens, with a primary vote ranging from 8.9% in the north-east to 12% in the centre, with a higher pre-poll vote than the Greens.
| Voter group | GRN prim | ON prim | ALP 2PP | Total votes | % of votes |
| Central | 12.1 | 12.0 | 65.2 | 30,497 | 28.7 |
| South-West | 10.8 | 9.4 | 70.0 | 16,935 | 15.9 |
| North-East | 13.8 | 8.9 | 55.3 | 10,406 | 9.8 |
| Pre-poll | 10.4 | 11.3 | 61.2 | 26,848 | 25.3 |
| Other votes | 10.7 | 10.8 | 59.9 | 21,541 | 20.3 |
Election results in Spence at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Liberal Party, the Greens and One Nation.
It’s still a tad too early to say if this will have the highest No vote in all Labor seats, but it looks like it will. Could this be under threat in future? The other 3 seats with highest No for Labor are all seen as at risk, Blair, Hunter, Paterson, etc. Why did this vote overwhelmingly No if it is a progressive seat?
I think this seat is like Blair or Longman in outer Brisbane, covering the fringe suburbs of Adelaide which consist of mostly those from white, working-class backgrounds. These are the type of voters who may be less inclined to continue supporting Labor, so I agree that this may become more marginal in the future.
One Point of difference between Adelaide/Brisbane is that the Northern Suburbs of Adelaide is heavily industrialized so has a unionized workforce so it makes it a bit difference from Longman. Longman also has Bribie Island and some more middle class areas. Blair is also marginal as it includes significant rural areas even in 2007 Labor only won it by 5% so not really a heartland as it is a mixed seat while Spence is clearly a heartland seat, it one of most deprived seats in the country. Adelaide is also a more class segregated City with a clearer class divides compared to Brisbane so it makes more akin to Sydney/Melbourne despite being much smaller.
Firstly, Spence is a working class outer suburban seat, not a “progressive” seat.
Secondly, this area has in fact trended towards Labor, as Gawler has become more an outer suburb, and less the country town it once was. Look at the state seat of Light, which has gone from safe Liberal to marginal to safe Labor in a short space of time.
Also, comparisons with recent elections (like 2007) are fraught because this electorate had a whole heap of rural territory when it was called Wakefield.
@ David Walsh agree with you. I compared Blair to 2007 which was a good year for Labor in QLD. Even if we use 2007 as an example Labor would have won it by 16% TPP so much stronger for Labor than Longman/Blair
With the result there’s no douht the LNP will try on a strategy of flipping outer suburban seats by running an anti-woke resentment wedge campaign. Imply that the government cares more about [insert issue] than the cost of living crisis. it may look different in anglo and multicultural working class seats.
They won’t win back teal seats that way except maybe Indi and Mayo, and probably lose Deakin to Labor, Bradfield to teals and Sturt to somebody. But the idea would be to take enough seats off Labor that the teals are kingmakers and hope enough of them choose the LNP (as is tradition in their seats) over Labor. Even if they don’t, they can make 2025-2028 look like 2010-2013 (without the knifing if Labor is wise).
Even if that works though, there’s a lot of safety margin in Spence.
And it may not even remotely work – people were saying the same thing about the Same Sex Marriage postal survey but the story of 2019 was more Morrison reversing Turnbull’s surprise losses than a political realignment.
It’s working class outer suburban Adelaide with a satellite town of Gawler. I read that it’s amongst the most economically depreived electorates in the country.
Labor may struggle to get over 50% here in primaries but it’s still out of reach to the Liberals. Like many other similar Labor seats, Labor is at risk of losing votes to third parties e.g. One Nation, or localist independents similar to Dai Le (pending candidate quality and campaigning).
In 2022, UAP and ONP polled strongly off the back of populism and pandemic politics. Many Labor voters fled to such parties in outer suburban Adelaide and Sydney, even though Liberal Premiers and a Liberal PM declared lockdowns, rolled out vaccines etc. For many reasons, the pandemic disproportionately affected the working class who were less likely to work from home and had less resources e.g. technology for kids, to cope with the pandemic.
Expecting a large swing away from Labor here to One Nation in the primary vote but to the Liberals in ttp. I could see a situation where Labor wins Sturt and improves in Boothby but goes backwards here.
The last of the Liberal candidates have been pre-selected in South Australia.
https://saliberal.org.au/team/daniel-wild
Gawler appears to be growing size… will
It spill over into a Barossa valley seat?
Huge swing to Liberals here I think, not enough to win but enough to make it winnable next time
When you hit rock bottom the only way you can go is up
It’s the kind of seat that will see some sort of swing to the right but if the last election is anything to go by, the swing to the Liberals will probably be muted somewhat compared to other states. One Nation did quite well in this seat last election taking 3rd place over the Greens, and preference flows suggests that the flow to the Libs are weaker than other competitive seats.
The Elizabeth/Salisbury area are your working-class, deindustrialised, demoralised, socially-deprived, mortgage belt zones that would usually be the hunting ground for the Liberals, but even in 2013 and since 2014 when Holden shut down under the Abbott government there’s been a sense of disdain towards the Liberals on both state and federal levels, as in as bad as Labor gets the votes still don’t go to the Liberals because they’re perceived to be worse, largely in part due to the gap left by GM in the formerly industrial heartland and the lack of attention paid by the Liberals in this area on both levels. In many ways this seat is like the Chifley or Calwell of South Australia (as in Mt Druitt and Greenvale are the equivalent of Elizabeth) where even if the swing is on, Labor still holds quite comfortably so to speak.
Sorry should correct the record that One Nation didn’t come 3rd overall but came third in many Labor heartland booths like Elizabeth North and Craigmore.