Division of Port Adelaide

This article is about the federal electorate. For the South Australian state electorate, see Electoral district of Port Adelaide.
Port Adelaide
Australian House of Representatives Division

Port Adelaide (dark green) in the city of Adelaide
Created 1949
MP Mark Butler
Party Labor
Namesake Port Adelaide
Electors 105,204 (2013)
Area 181 km2 (69.9 sq mi)
Demographic Inner Metropolitan

The Division of Port Adelaide is an Australian electoral division in the state of South Australia. The 181 km² seat extends from Buckland Park in the north to Grange Road in the south whilst its eastern boundary takes in parts of Salisbury. Suburbs include Alberton, Beverley, Birkenhead, Cheltenham, Findon, Kilkenny, Largs Bay, Mansfield Park, North Haven, Ottoway, Parafield Gardens, Paralowie, Pennington, Port Adelaide, Queenstown, Rosewater, Salisbury Downs, Semaphore, Woodville, West Croydon, and part of Seaton. The seat also includes Torrens Island and Garden Island.

The seat was named after the suburb of Port Adelaide, the working port of Adelaide, with the seat of Hindmarsh moving south as a result. The seat was proclaimed at the redistribution of 11 May 1949, and was first contested at the 1949 federal election. For most of its history, it has been a comfortably safe Labor seat. The closest Labor has ever come to losing it was at the 1988 by-election, where Labor candidate Rod Sawford won on a 5.2 percent two-party margin. The two-party margin currently stands, after the 2013 vote, at 14.02 percent, making it the safest Labor seat in the state and the eighth-safest Labor seat in Australia. Port Adelaide remains the only electorate in South Australia to have voted Labor at every federal election in its existence. The former safe Labor seat of Bonython was abolished, with some southern parts transferred to Port Adelaide, however the majority of Bonython was transferred to Wakefield which contributed to Wakefield's change from a rural safe Liberal seat to a hybrid urban-rural notional marginal Labor seat.

A notable curiosity in recent years was that in the 1998 and 2001 federal elections, the seat was the only one in Australia where a Communist Party candidate, Michael Perth, stood for election. This was the only occasion when the Liberal Party did not preference the One Nation Party last. He achieved about one percent of the vote on each occasion.

Sawford retired at the 2007 election, which saw South Australian Labor's historically safe seat easily won by the newly endorsed Labor candidate, unionist and former head of the Left state Labor faction Mark Butler.

Members

MemberPartyTerm
  Albert Thompson Labor 1949–1963
  Fred Birrell Labor 1963–1974
  Mick Young Labor 1974–1988
  Rod Sawford Labor 1988–2007
  Mark Butler Labor 2007–present

Election results

Australian federal election, 2013: Port Adelaide
Party Candidate Votes % ±%
Labor Mark Butler 46,024 50.58 −3.98
Liberal Nigel McKenna 23,955 26.32 +3.32
Greens Dusan Popovic 7,834 8.61 −6.51
Family First Bruce Hambour 6,843 7.52 +0.29
Palmer United Chandy Huynh 5,227 5.74 +5.74
Australia First Terry Cooksley 1,116 1.23 +1.23
Total formal votes 90,999 93.80 +1.14
Informal votes 6,020 6.20 −1.14
Turnout 97,019 92.17 −1.16
Two-party-preferred result
Labor Mark Butler 58,261 64.02 −6.89
Liberal Nigel McKenna 32,738 35.98 +6.89
Labor hold Swing −6.89

Notes

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    Coordinates: 34°46′37″S 138°32′46″E / 34.777°S 138.546°E / -34.777; 138.546

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