Division of Macquarie

Macquarie Australian House of Representatives Division
Division of Macquarie (green) within New South Wales
Created	1901
MP	Louise Markus
Party	Liberal
Namesake	Lachlan Macquarie
Electors	100,689 (2013)^[1]
Area	4,374 km² (1,688.8 sq mi)
Demographic	Provincial

The Division of Macquarie is an Australian electoral division in the state of New South Wales. The division was created in 1900 and was one of the original 75 divisions contested at the first federal election. It is named for Lachlan Macquarie, who was Governor of New South Wales between 1810 and 1821.

The division is located to the west of Sydney, and today it covers a large part of the Blue Mountains, as well as the Hawkesbury region on Sydney's western fringe.

The current Member for Macquarie, since the 2010 federal election, is Louise Markus, a member of the Liberal Party of Australia.

History

The most prominent former member is Ben Chifley, who was Prime Minister of Australia from 1945 to 1949, and was a member of the Australian Labor Party.

Voting patterns within the electorate vary significantly between the Blue Mountains and the Hawkesbury region. At the 2004 election, the two-party preferred vote favoured the Liberal candidate by more than 70:30 in the Hawkesbury region. The result was partially reversed in the Blue Mountains where the result was approximately 60:40, favouring the Labor candidate. This voting pattern was evident in the three previous federal elections up to 2007.

The division has changed hands many times during its long history, but in elections previous to 2007 Kerry Bartlett consolidated his 1996 win to make the electorate a fairly safe Liberal seat.

On 13 September 2006, however the Australian Electoral Commission announced that the seat was to be redistributed. The Hawkesbury towns moved to Greenway while Macquarie moved west as far as Bathurst. The seat then contained the rural service and university town of Bathurst and the working-class towns of Lithgow, Portland and Oberon. This not only restored the seat's connection with Chifley, but erased Bartlett's majority. While Bartlett had previously sat on a majority of eight percent, he now found himself in a seat with a notionally marginal Labor majority of 0.5 percent. Bartlett was defeated by former New South Wales Minister for the Environment and Attorney General Bob Debus at the 2007 election on a 7.04 percent margin.

During the 2009 redistribution, however, Bathurst and Lithgow were shifted to Calare, restoring its 2007 boundaries. The redistribution nearly wiped out Labor's majority in the electorate, reducing it to an extremely marginal 0.3 percent. Debus retired before the 2010 election. Louise Markus, previously the Member for Greenway, reclaimed the seat for the Liberals in this election.

Members

	Party	Term
Sydney Smith	Free Trade	1901–1906
Ernest Carr	Labour	1906–1916
	National Labor	1916–1917
	Nationalist	1917–1917
Samuel Nicholls	Labor	1917–1922
Arthur Manning	Nationalist	1922–1928
Ben Chifley	Labor	1928–1931
John Lawson	United Australia	1931–1940
Ben Chifley	Labor	1940–1951
Tony Luchetti	Labor	1951–1975
Reg Gillard	Liberal	1975–1980
Ross Free	Labor	1980–1984
Alasdair Webster	Liberal	1984–1993
Maggie Deahm	Labor	1993–1996
Kerry Bartlett	Liberal	1996–2007
Bob Debus	Labor	2007–2010
Louise Markus	Liberal	2010–present

Election results

Main article: Electoral results for the Division of Macquarie

Australian federal election, 2013: Macquarie^[1]
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Liberal	Louise Markus	42,590	47.36	+2.89
	Labor	Susan Templeman	27,872	31.00	−1.36
	Greens	Danielle Wheeler	9,986	11.10	−2.99
	Palmer United	Philip Maxwell	3,731	4.15	+4.15
	Christian Democrats	Tony Piper	2,720	3.02	+0.87
	Sex Party	Mark Littlejohn	1,776	1.98	+1.98
	Australia First	Matt Hodgson	750	0.83	+0.06
	Democratic Labour	Teresa Elaro	499	0.55	+0.55
Total formal votes			89,924	94.37	−0.15
Informal votes			5,362	5.63	+0.15
Turnout			95,286	94.63	−0.18
Two-party-preferred result
	Liberal	Louise Markus	48,987	54.48	+3.22
	Labor	Susan Templeman	40,937	45.52	−3.22
	Liberal hold		Swing	+3.22

References

1 2 "NSW Division - Macquarie, NSW". Virtual Tally Room, Election 2013. Australian Electoral Commission. 1 October 2013. Retrieved 6 November 2013.

External links

Division of Macquarie - Australian Electoral Commission

Electoral divisions of the Australian House of Representatives in New South Wales

Banks Barton Bennelong Berowra Blaxland Bradfield Calare Charlton Chifley Cook Cowper Cunningham Dobell Eden-Monaro Farrer Fowler Gilmore Grayndler Greenway Hughes Hume Hunter Kingsford Smith Lindsay Lyne Macarthur Mackellar Macquarie McMahon Mitchell New England Newcastle North Sydney Page Parkes Parramatta Paterson Reid Richmond Riverina Robertson Shortland Sydney Throsby Warringah Watson Wentworth Werriwa Abolished: Barrier Bland Canobolas Cook (1906–55) Dalley Darling Dundas East Sydney Evans Gwydir Illawarra Lang Lawson Lowe Martin Nepean Parkes (1901–69) Phillip Prospect Riverina-Darling St George South Sydney Watson (1934–69) West Sydney

Divisions in: New South Wales Victoria Queensland Western Australia South Australia Tasmania Australian Capital and Northern Territories

Coordinates: 33°28′30″S 150°38′31″E / 33.475°S 150.642°E / -33.475; 150.642

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Wednesday, May 04, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.