Division of Barker

Barker
Australian House of Representatives Division

Division of Barker in South Australia, as of the 2016 federal election.
Created 1903
MP Tony Pasin
Party Liberal
Namesake Collet Barker
Electors 105,648 (2016)
Area 63,886 km2 (24,666.5 sq mi)
Demographic Rural

The Division of Barker is an Australian Electoral Division in the south-east of South Australia. The division was established on 2 October 1903, when South Australia's original single multi-member division was split into seven single-member divisions. It is named for Collet Barker, an early explorer of the region at the mouth of the Murray River. The 63,886 km² seat currently stretches from Morgan in the north to Port MacDonnell in the south, taking in the Murray Mallee, the Riverland, the Murraylands and most of the Barossa Valley, and includes the towns of Barmera, Berri, Bordertown, Keith, Kingston SE, Loxton, Mannum, Millicent, Mount Gambier, Murray Bridge, Naracoorte, Penola, Renmark, Tailem Bend, Waikerie, and parts of Nuriootpa and Tanunda.

History

Barker is the only one of South Australia's remaining original six divisions that has never been held by the Australian Labor Party and is traditionally the safest seat for the Liberal Party of Australia in the state. It has been in the hands of the Liberals and its predecessors for its entire existence, except for a six-year period when Country Party MP Archie Cameron held it; however, Cameron joined the United Australia Party, direct forerunner of the Liberals, in 1940. The conservative parties have usually had a secure hold on the seat. This tradition has only been threatened three times. Labor came within 1.2 percent of winning the seat at the 1929 election, and within 1.7 percent of winning the seat at the 1943 election. In the latter election, Barker was left as the only non-Labor seat in South Australia, and indeed the only Coalition seat outside the eastern states. It would be seven decades before the conservatives' hold on Barker would be seriously threatened again.

Though it has always covered the state's entire south-east, Barker was historically a hybrid urban-rural seat that extended for some distance into the Adelaide area. For most of the first half-century after Federation, it included Glenelg and the Holdfast Bay area, and at times stretched as far as the western metropolitan suburbs of Keswick and Henley Beach. However, it became an entirely rural seat after parliament was expanded in the redistribution prior to the 1949 election, making this already strongly conservative seat even more so. Barker had always included Kangaroo Island and the connecting Fleurieu Peninsula until parliament was expanded in the redistribution prior to the 1984 election. Exchanged between Barker and Mayo since, Kangaroo Island and the Fleurieu Peninsula have been in Mayo since the redistribution prior to the 2004 election, where the massive redistribution of Wakefield, resulting from the abolition of Bonython, saw Barker absorb the Riverland from Wakefield.

The seat's most prominent members have been Cameron, a former leader of the Country Party and later Speaker of the House in the Menzies Government, Jim Forbes, a minister in the Menzies, Holt, Gorton and McMahon governments, and Ian McLachlan, Minister for Defence from 1996 to 1998 in the Howard Government.

2016 election

South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon confirmed in December 2014 that by mid-2015 the Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) would announce candidates in all states and territories at the 2016 election, with Xenophon citing the government's ambiguity on the Collins-class submarine replacement project as motivation.[1] ABC psephologist Antony Green's 2016 federal election guide for South Australia states NXT has a "strong chance of winning lower house seats and three or four Senate seats".[2]

A ReachTEL seat-level opinion poll in the safe Liberal seat of Barker of 869 voters conducted by robocall on 20 June during the 2016 election campaign surprisingly found NXT candidate James Stacey leading the Liberals' Tony Pasin 52–48 on the two-candidate preferred vote. Seat-level opinion polls in the other two rural Liberal South Australian seats revealed NXT also leading in both Grey and Mayo.[3]

Election-night counting showed that Stacey was second to Pasin on first preferences, however the indicative two-candidate preferred count had been done between Pasin and Labor candidate Mat O'Brien, which meant there was no early indication of whether Stacey would receive enough preferences to beat Pasin before postal, absentee and provisional votes were counted and preferences distributed in the following two weeks.[4] Ultimately, it was confirmed that Stacey had not only overtaken O'Brien on first preferences, but reduced Pasin's margin in Barker to 4.7 percent--thus making Barker a marginal seat for the first time since Cameron's near-defeat in the 1943 landslide.[5] However, Barker remains a comfortably safe Liberal seat in a "traditional" two-party matchup with Labor; Pasin only suffered a one-percent swing against Labor.

Members

MemberPartyTerm
  Sir Langdon Bonython Protectionist 1903–1906
  John Livingston Anti-Socialist 1906–1909
  Commonwealth Liberal 1909–1917
  Nationalist 1917–1922
  Malcolm Cameron Liberal Union 1922–1925
  Nationalist 1925–1931
  United Australia 1931–1934
  Archie Cameron Country 1934–1940
  United Australia 1940–1944
  Liberal 1944–1956
  Jim Forbes Liberal 1956–1975
  James Porter Liberal 1975–1990
  Ian McLachlan Liberal 1990–1998
  Patrick Secker Liberal 1998–2013
  Tony Pasin Liberal 2013–present

Election results

Australian federal election, 2016: Barker[6]
Party Candidate Votes % ±
Liberal Tony Pasin 44,001 46.59 −6.02
Xenophon James Stacey 27,452 29.07 +29.07
Labor Mat O'Brien 14,363 15.21 −3.16
Family First Yvonne Zeppel 5,458 5.78 −2.18
Greens Mark Keough 3,171 3.36 −2.29
Total formal votes 94,445 95.72 +1.10
Informal votes 4,228 4.28 −1.10
Turnout 98,673 93.40 −1.22
Two-party-preferred result
Liberal Tony Pasin 61,566 65.19 −1.36
Labor Mat O'Brien 32,879 34.81 +1.36
Two-candidate-preferred result
Liberal Tony Pasin 51,698 54.74 −11.81
Xenophon James Stacey 42,747 45.26 +45.26
Liberal hold Swing N/A

See also

References

Notes

  1. ↑ Bourke, Latika (2015-04-06). "Subs backlash: Nick Xenophon sets sights on Liberal-held seats in Adelaide". The Sydney Morning Herald. Fairfax Media. Archived from the original on 2 September 2015. Retrieved 2015-12-29.
  2. ↑ Election Guide (SA) - 2016 federal election guide: Antony Green ABC
  3. ↑ Election 2016: Malcolm Turnbull could lose another seat to independent Nick Xenophon’s team - Herald Sun 20 June 2016
  4. ↑ "Election 2016: Results in close South Australian seats will take time, AEC says". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 5 July 2016. Retrieved 5 July 2016.
  5. ↑ http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-20499-180.htm
  6. ↑ Barker, SA, Virtual Tally Room 2016, Australian Electoral Commission.

External links

Coordinates: 35°31′55″S 140°12′14″E / 35.532°S 140.204°E / -35.532; 140.204

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