ALP 7.2%
Incumbent MP
Paul Pearce, since 2003.
Geography
Eastern suburbs of Sydney. Coogee includes parts of Waverley and Randwick local government areas, including the suburbs of Randwick, Coogee, Clovelly, Bronte, Waverley, Tamarama and Bondi Junction.
History
The electoral district of Coogee was first created in 1927, following the abolition of proportional representation in New South Wales. Back in 1927, there were a much larger number of districts covering the eastern suburbs of Sydney, Coogee sitting alongside Botany, Randwick, Waverley, Bondi, Vaucluse and Woollahra.
As the number of seats has declined and Coogee has expanded in size, the seat has become stronger for the ALP and less so for the Liberal Party, and it has now been 37 years since the Liberals last lost Coogee.
The first member for Coogee, Hyman Goldstein, was a Nationalist MP who had previously served as a member for the proportionally-elected Eastern Suburbs district from 1922 to 1925. He was found dead in 1928 at the bottom of the Coogee cliffs in mysterious circumstances. It has been rumoured that his death was caused by the federal Member for Barton, Thomas Ley, who was suspected in the murder of his Labor opponent in the 1925 election, and was later convicted of murder after moving to London.
The Nationalists and the United Australia Party held Coogee until the 1941 election, when they lost to the ALP’s Lou Cunningham. He had previously served as the federal Member for Gwydir from 1919 to 1925 and again from 1929 to 1931. He held Coogee until his death in 1948.
The Liberal Party’s Kevin Ellis defeated Cunningham’s widow at the 1948 by-election. Ellis lost to the ALP’s Lou Walsh in 1953, and the two engaged in numerous election battle over the next decade. Walsh lost to Ellis in 1956, winning the seat back in 1962 for one final term. Ellis held the seat from 1965 until his retirement in 1973.
At the 1973 election, the Liberal Party’s Ross Freeman won by only eight votes. The Court of Disputed Returns overturned the result in 1974, and the by-election was won by former rugby player Michael Cleary of the ALP by 54 votes.
Cleary served as a minister in the Labor state government from 1981 to 1988, and retired at the 1991 election.
Coogee was won in 1991 by the ALP’s Ernie Page, who had been Member for Waverley since 1991, and moved to Coogee after Waverley was abolished. Page served as Minister for Local Government for the first term of the Carr Labor government from 1995 to 1999, and retired at the 2003 election.
Page was succeeded in 2003 by the ALP’s Paul Pearce, Mayor of Waverley. He was re-elected in 2007.
Candidates
- Stuart Burney (Independent)
- Andrew McGowan (Christian Democratic Party)
- Sue Doran (Greens)
- Bruce Notley-Smith (Liberal)
- Paul Pearce (Labor)
- Nathan Jones (Independent)
Political situation
Coogee ‘s 7.2% margin is definitely vulnerable to the Liberal Party. The seat is also strong for the Greens, and there is a possibility that the ALP could fall from first place into third place, turning Coogee into a Liberal-Greens contest. In that scenario, however, the Liberals would likely be too far out in front for the Greens to have a chance of winning. The Liberals are the favourite to win the seat.
2007 result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Paul Pearce | ALP | 15,623 | 39.0 | -6.9 |
| Jonathon Flegg | LIB | 14,323 | 35.8 | +5.0 |
| Kelly Marks | GRN | 8,457 | 21.1 | +3.2 |
| Nicole Tillotson | DEM | 1,138 | 2.8 | +0.5 |
| Yuan Wu | UNI | 488 | 1.2 | +0.2 |
2007 two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Paul Pearce | ALP | 20,775 | 57.2 | -6.4 |
| Jonathon Flegg | LIB | 15,521 | 42.8 | +6.4 |
Booth breakdown
Booths in Coogee have been divided into three areas. Booths in the northern end of the seat have been grouped as “Waverley”. Those along the coast in the southeast of the seat have been grouped as “Clovelly-Coogee”, with the southwest of the seat as Randwick.
The vote was fairly uniform across the seat. The Labor two-party vote was around 58% in the southern parts of the seat and 54% in Waverley. The Greens vote varied from just under 20% in Randwick to almost 23% in Clovelly-Coogee.
| Voter group | GRN % | ALP 2CP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| Randwick | 19.9 | 58.7 | 11,941 | 29.8 |
| Clovelly-Coogee | 22.7 | 58.6 | 10,246 | 25.6 |
| Waverley | 21.5 | 54.6 | 8,312 | 20.8 |
| Other votes | 20.6 | 55.8 | 9,530 | 23.8 |
If you look at Kingsford Smith’s 2PP results over time, you’ll see that the seat peaked for the ALP in the early 1980s and has steadily become less safe since. The obvious reason why would be gentrification. I suppose boundary changes might have caused some of it, but the boundaries of metro seats generally don’t change a whole lot.
In the 2010 Federal Election
Peter Garrett 35,957 votes 43.83% -8.93 Swing
Michael Feneley 33,836 41.25% +7.31
Lindsay Shurey 9,885 12.05% +1.63
I live in the electorate of Kingsford-Smith and I will tell you that Garrett is useless. Many people who voted for him are now sorry, as are those who voted Green
Next Federal Election will be a definite Liberal win
I am working on the State election on a pre-poll booth and I can tell you the mood of the people is very anti Labour
Remarks from voters who has always been left voters, say NO MORE
@Shirl in Sydney
Bring it on! It will be great to see Voldemort I mean Garrett lose his seat!
Thinking about it, Paul Pearce reminds me of Voldemort as well.
Paul Pearce is a useless idiot. He was the mayor of Waverley, when I lived in Vaucluse and I’m not kidding my dog would have done a better.job !!!
Ah, Peter the Lawyer: quite right about the demographics of Coogee changing – the question remains, will the people moving in be more like those in Petersham or Vaucluse? If its Petersham than it’ll be an ongoing Green vs ALP tussle, but at the moment its looking more like Vaucluse, so you’re probably right about Green vs Lib. However, as to Greens not valuing ‘our’ (I’m assuming you meaning European) culture, I find that a bit hard to take. Maybe a small number of people within the broad confines of the party, but that’s like saying all Liberals are like David Clarke or are members of Opus Dei. As to lacking a political philosophy (or a coherent one, at any rate), I think that would be true of many people, irrespective of their professed political leanings.
But what bugs me is this assumption that all Greens (or Laborites or Liberals) are cut from the same cloth. Yes, there are shared values and ideals, but beyond that a spectrum of beliefs, hopes and fears. Sure Greens think continued material consumption will have an unhappy ending, but wanting to curb that consumption is as much about people re-learning self-control (now there’s a conservative concept!!) as it is about conserving resources and so-on. That doesn’t have to be ‘wowserish’ excepting in terms of not agreeing with rampant self-indulgence. We could take the issue of booze-fueled violence down at Coogee for example – what is best to curb that? Short term measures could be closing the pubs early, but the best option would be for people to not drink until they lose control – or if they do, to do it in a controlled environment where they’re not about to hurt themselves or anyone else.
ok……. why doesn’t Malcolm Turnbull contest Kingsford Smith instead?
because he cannot win that seat
Stewart J, interesting point: is Coogee moving toward the Liberals or Greens? It’s moving away from the ALP, certainly, but it’s not clear if it’s moving toward the Liberals or Greens. There is, of course, no reason why it can’t move toward both at once.
So I’d have to agree when you say that’s it’s probably moving in the same direction as Vaucluse: a Lib/Green area.
Mick:: At this rate, Kingsford Smith will be a Liberal seat within another few federal elections. The Greens do worse in KS than I thought, though – only 12.05% at the federal election. Coogee, Maroubra and Heffron recorded Greens primary votes in 2007 of 21.1, 11.9 and 19.7 respectively. I would have expected the Greens to have done better in the area federally given those numbers.
In another thread, someone said that gentrification primarily benefits the Liberals, not the Greens. The underperformance of Kingsford Smith for the Greens would seem to corroborate that.
At any rate, let’s see what Saturday brings. I expect that the election will resolve some of these conflicting numbers.
Jim: Kingsford Smith has been seeing a rising Green vote, but lets not forget that the area has been labelled “the west in the east” – an area with high levels of old-style class voting (Maroubra-La Perouse), depressed housing commission areas (Coral Sea Estate etc) and a lot of industrial workers for the Port and associated bits (all of Botany Council area!). The Greens just don’t get a great vote down there in federal elections. That said, in the Council elections the Greens got 18% in Central Ward and 15% in South Ward (Central Ward is Maroubra, and South Ward everything past that), so the vote gets lower as you move further south, and higher as you go from federal-local elections. I would expect Murray Matson to get 15-20% in Maroubra at this election, but Sue Doran to get 25-30% in Coogee. If you look at Heffron you see a similar thing, especially as you move south through that electorate – high Green vote in Alexandria-Redfern-Erskineville (30+%) to Eastlakes-Mascot (10%). Gentrification is occuring, but its not even and it wont cover the whole of the electorate while the port and airport are there (and Long Bay gaol!). I also don’t think its an either/or situation on gentrification for Greens vs Liberals. The north shore has particular aspects to it (low housing density to start with) that make it attractive, while inner-city suburbs have very high densities – until you get to Vaucluse again. And then there’s the cultural aspects and so on.
Interesting tidbit – the liberals how to vote says to just vote 1. However, someone asked one of the liberal volunteers yesterday what to do with preferences.
The liberal volunteer recommended that if they must distribute preferences, that they put the ALP ahead of the greens. They liberals obviously believe that the greens could jump ahead of Labor and be the primary challenger.