ALP 17.7%
Incumbent MP
Cherie Burton, since 1999.
Geography
Southern Sydney. Kogarah includes parts of Kogarah, Rockdale and Hurstville local government areas, including the suburbs of Blakehurst, Connells Point, Allawah, Carlton, Kogarah, Bexley, Kingsgrove and Beverly Hills.
History
The electoral district of Kogarah has existed continuously since 1930. The seat was marginal in the first half of the twentieth century but has been held by the ALP since 1953.
The seat was first won by the ALP’s Mark Gosling in 1930. He had held one of the seats in the St George district from 1920 to 1927 and then Oatley from 1927 to 1930. He lost Kogarah after one term in 1932.
The United Australia Party’s James Ross held the seat from 1932 to 1941, when he lost to the Victoria’s Cross recipient William Currey, running for the ALP. Currey held the seat until his death in 1948.
The 1948 by-election was won by Liberal candidate Douglas Cross. Cross lost Kogarah in 1953, but he won the neighbouring seat of Georges River in 1956, holding it until his death in 1970.
Bill Crabtree held Kogarah for the ALP from 1953 to 1983. He served as a minister in the Wran Labor government from 1976 to 1981.
Kogarah was won in 1983 by Brian Langton. He became a minister when the ALP won power in 1995. In 1998, he was forced to resign as a minister after a scandal involving misuse of air travel expenses. He retired from Kogarah in 1999.
Kogarah was won in 1999 by Cherie Burton. She served as a minister from 2005 to 2007. Following the 2007 election she returned to the backbench.
Candidates
- Joseph Abdel Massih (Christian Democratic Party)
- Miray Hindi (Liberal)
- Cherie Burton (Labor)
- Simone Francis (Greens)
Political situation
Kogarah has previously been much more marginal than the current margin would suggest. While a seat with a 17.7% margin would normally considered to be safe, the seat can be expected to face massive swing, and could be vulnerable to the Liberal Party.
2007 result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Cherie Burton | ALP | 24,301 | 56.8 | -2.2 |
| Peter El Khouri | LIB | 11,534 | 27.0 | -0.9 |
| Therese Bolt | GRN | 3,042 | 7.1 | +0.5 |
| Marcus Ho | UNI | 2,172 | 5.1 | +0.6 |
| Chris Svolos | CDP | 1,708 | 4.0 | +4.0 |
2007 two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Cherie Burton | ALP | 26,448 | 67.7 | -1.4 |
| Peter El Khouri | LIB | 12,616 | 32.3 | +1.4 |
Booth breakdown
Kogarah has been divided into four areas: Beverly Hills in the northwest, Bexley in the northeast, Kogarah in the centre, and “South” covering the remaining booths in the south of the seat.
The ALP won majorities of 63-69% in the centre and north of the seat, but only 51% in the south.
| Voter group | GRN % | ALP 2CP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| Kogarah | 7.4 | 69.4 | 11,123 | 26.0 |
| South | 6.2 | 51.0 | 10,941 | 25.6 |
| Bexley | 7.3 | 67.9 | 6,836 | 16.0 |
| Beverly Hills | 6.6 | 63.9 | 6,336 | 14.8 |
| Other votes | 8.3 | 58.2 | 7,521 | 17.6 |
This seat was pretty marginal @ the 1999 state election, wasn’t it? The current margin is VERY inflated for my money.
There was a 1.5% margin in 1995 and a 7.5% margin in 1999. Burton gained a swing of over 11% in 2003.
It was won by only 1.5% for the first term of the Carr govt, and the coming election ain’t gonna be quite so friendly for Labor… I’d tip this as the highest seat on the pendulum won by the Liberals. An 18% swing would be difficult, but so was an 11% swing for Labor in 2003.
I wonder what margin that southernmost booth ends up with.
I reckon this will go – sorry Ben. Those blue and yellow areas will now end up about 50/50.
Thanks for the feedback. You all make strong points and I will probably go back and amend my assessment of the situation in Kogarah.
Certainly on federal results the margin is ridiculously inflated, and you’d think this would be very close in 2011.
Labor does very well out of the boundaries in this area. The relatively wealthy areas along the river would constitute a comfortable Liberal seat, but they are broken up into Rockdale, Kogarah and Oatley and lumped in with solid Labor areas inland to create 3 Labor-leaning seats.
problem is that in a bad year Labor could lose all 3. But Labor may be close to rock bottom on the federal figures Barton was a classic example of ethnic voters being very unhappy with federal Labor.
I think that this seat will definately be in play.
Will the scandal of Cherie Burton’s arrest for drink-driving and attempts to conceal it have a material effect on the result?
This seat is on and I actually predict this will be the seat with the highest margin to fall.
My prediction: Like Maroubra, another one to watch, whoever wins will have a margin less than 3%.
This seat includes area from the Federal seat of Banks, which swung to the Liberals by almost 9% at the Federal election, which made the seat marginal (1.5%) for Federal ALP, The Fed seat of Banks, which includes most of Kogarah also swung to the Liberals at 8.1% at the same election
Consisdering the popularity of the NSW Government about 12 points worse than the Federal ALP, this seat would be very marginal
Correction Kogarah is in the Federal seat of “Barton”, which swung to the Liberal at 8.1%
dovif – might be wrong, but I think it also includes parts of Banks (southern half of Kogarah seat) around Hurstville, Allawah, Carss Park. The seat basically takes in parts of Banks (south part) and Barton (north part).
Hi DB
thanks for confirming what I said 🙂
Drawing too much inference out of Banks results with Kogarah is of doubtful worth imo. Yes, the eastern fringe does overlap but these booths have been the perennial Lib booths in Barton for years.
With regards to Kogarah & Rockdale, these are possibles but not certainties to change hands. Beyond this election, I concur with DB ….. anything beyond one term hold is unlikely for the Libs.
A further declared candidate here is Sandi Bell for the CDP.
Antony’s analysis of past results based on the current boundaries is quite interesting here. The seat would’ve been won by the Libs in 1991, and the ALP margin would only be 3.3% based on 2010 federal results. It is hard not to see this as a massively inflated margin, but still a big ask for the Libs to win it.
DirkProvin
I live in this electorate and for the first time since the early 90s, the ALP are very worried about this seat. After doing very little for this electorate for the last 10 years, Cherie Burton is being seen in an election campaign for the first time, there is now even a shuttle service that was up for Kogarah, just 3 weeks prior to the coming election, which has caused a lot of amusement amongst the locals.
The reason I disagree with DB about this being a 1 term electorate is that I spoke with ALP campaign workers in my electorate Barton and neighboring Banks after the federal election, and they told me that never before have so many Asian voters walked straight pass them to the Liberal campaign workers.
Whether this is just a one off occurrence, or a changing of a trend remains to be seen.
The Liberals in NSW caught a lot of flak for the Federal election loss and rightfully so, the Liberals did not campaign in Banks, there was no door knocking, there was no handing out of election leaflets prior to the election date in Banks, despite this, the Liberal got within 1.5% of winning Banks and the federal election. I believe that going forward both the Federal electorate of Banks and Barton will be marginal seats for Federal elections, and the corresponding state seats, Kogarah, Rockdale, Oakley, East Hills, etc will also become marginal for the state of NSW
dovif – I agree that Banks is certainly winnable for the Liberals next time. Barton probably not.
In the last 2 weeks, I saw a lot of people handing out ALP materials on the street of Kogarah, this has completely stopped the last week.
Could the polling be that dire? Or is the ALP certain of holding here?
dovif, I don’t live in the area, but given the proximity of the election, we’ll have to wait and see.
dovif – poll done in the last week in East Hills/Oatley/Kogarah indicating a 25% on average swing to the co-alition (which means the co-alition would pick up all 3). Won’t be published. Low Green vote and all ‘other’ party votes split 50/50.
Ballot Draw hurt Cherie Burton. She has drawn 3rd, with CDP 1st and Liberal 2nd.
Hawkeye – I personally don’t believe it makes any difference in OPV elections.
Is this reported poll an internal party poll? View reports of any such with extreme suspicion unless the details including the sample size and methodology are released.
It does make a difference DB. On average, when a minor party recieves the number 1 ballot position, they get about a 4% swing in their favour (I use the minor parties because it is easier to see that swing). In a normal election, this seat wouldn’t even be worried about but 4% for this seat, in this environment, does make a difference.
I have not seen an ALP/Liberal campaign workers in the seat for a week now
So I am going to guess one of the 2 has given up
Is that 4% in absolute terms or 4% of what a minor party would normally get?
donkey vote following from having the top spot is normally worth a maximum of 1%.
2-4%, depending on the seat but it is absolute. It’s higher for the state election because you don’t have nearly as high an informal vote due to OPV.
Hawkeye – like to see the figures on that – my memory on a discussion on this on anthony Green’s blog some time back was that it was a maximum of 1%
Doug – I’d agree with that and in OPV I reckon it’s less. As for the poll, I believe it was for 800 persons spread across each of the seats. So probably a 5% MOE, but even so, can’t be good news for ALP supporters.
Polling is putting the Liberal candidate marginaly ahead of the ALP candidate before preferences.
After a 2 weeks hiatus the Cherie Burton posters had reappear in Kogarah town center
I agree with DB Cherie is goorn.
Yeah, Labor can write off Kogarah, Oatley, Heathcote & Kiama – the Southern suburbs look like a bloodbath.
I pre-polled in a Kogarah/Oakley booth (at border of the 2 boundry) and there was 4 Liberals handing out HTV, 2 Greens and 0 ALP, looks like ALP is not going to make efforts in these 2 seats
Evan – suggest every seat along the Georges River is in danger, including Campbelltown and Mac Fields.
Labor forced to admit a last-minute attack on Hindi, allegedly from a “life-long Liberal voter” was actually produced by them.
Final nail in the coffin, probably. Plus do parties really think that the public are that dumb they wouldn’t think a “lifelong Liberal” recommending voting Labor in 2011 (of all years) was extremely suss?
Terrible choice of candidate by the Liberal Party cost them this seat. Ironically Cherie is damaged goods with her driving history and will have to be replaced if not at a by-election or in 4 years time.