Port Stephens – NSW 2011

LIB 0.1%

Incumbent MP
Craig Baumann, since 2007.

Geography
Hunter. Port Stephens covers most of Port Stephens local government area and small parts of the City of Newcastle and Great Lakes local government area. The seat covers Mayfield, Raymond Terrace, Nelsons Bay, Shoal Bay, Hawks Nest and Tea Gardens. It covers the entire shore of Port Stephens itself.

History
Port Stephens has existed as a district since 1988. It was held by the ALP continuously from 1988 to 2007, when it was won by the Liberal Party.

The seat was won in 1988 by the ALP’s Bob Martin. He won the seat by only 90 votes, and the result was thrown out later in 1988. The court considered the handing out of government cheques to local community groups to be bribery. The ensuing by-election saw Martin win with 63% of the two-party vote.

Martin served as a minister in the Labor government from 1995 to 1999, when he retired.

Martin was succeeded by former Port Stephens mayor John Bartlett, running for the ALP. He was re-elected in 2003, and retired in 2007.

In 2007, the Liberal candidate, Port Stephens mayor Craig Baumann, defeated Labor candidate Jim Arneman by 68 votes. It was the closest result in the entire state.

Candidates

Political situation
While Port Stephens was won by an extremely slim margin in 2007, the swing to the Liberals should make this an easy seat for the Liberals to retain.

2007 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Craig Baumann LIB 17,881 42.5 +8.7
Jim Arneman ALP 17,536 41.7 -6.2
Charmian Eckersley GRN 2,541 6.0 -0.3
Paul Hennelly FISH 1,972 4.7 +4.7
Margaret Higgins CDP 1,235 2.9 +1.4
Lawrence Wood AAFI 912 2.2 +2.1

2007 two-candidate-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Craig Baumann LIB 19,369 50.1 +7.3
Jim Arneman ALP 19,301 49.9 -7.3

Booth breakdown
Booths in Port Stephens have been divided into five areas. “North Shore” covers the four booths on the north shore of Port Stephens, including Hawks Nest and Tea Gardens. “Port Stephens” covers those towns on the peninsula itself, including Nelsons Bay, Anna Bay, Fingal Bay and Salamander Bay. “Raymond Terrace” covers the four booths in the town of the same name. “Mayfield” covers the three booths in the City of Newcastle. “Central” covers the area between Raymond Terrace and Port Stephens, including Medowie and Lemon Tree Passage.

The Liberal Party won a majority of 58% on the north shore and 55% in Port Stephens. The ALP won a majority in all other areas, varying from 66% in Mayfield to just over 50% in the centre of the seat.

Polling booths in Port Stephens at the 2007 state election. North Shore in orange, Port Stephens in blue, Central in red, Raymond Terrace in green, Mayfield in yellow.
Voter group GRN % LIB 2CP % Total votes % of votes
Port Stephens 6.2 55.6 12,462 29.6
Central 5.0 49.6 9,922 23.6
Raymond Terrace 4.5 42.4 5,234 12.4
Mayfield 12.0 34.0 3,677 8.7
North Shore 3.6 58.0 3,112 7.4
Other votes 6.3 50.9 7,670 18.2
Two-party-preferred votes in Port Stephens at the 2007 state election.

6 COMMENTS

  1. Compare this to seats like Ferntree Gully in Victoria, narrowly won by the Libs one term before they won government. I’d expect to see one of the biggest swings of the election here.

  4. Hah. Well for the seats further north they’re basically devoting no resources at all. They’re not running a single TV ad on the north coast. I can’t believe polls are saying Labor doing better in regional NSW than in Sydney – they’re not campaigning at all in regional NSW!

  5. Regional NSW includes Hunter and Wollongong and you can bet they’re campaigning like crazy there…….

  6. Well, my prediction up the top there wasn’t completely wrong. A 12% swing actually compares pretty well to Ferntree Gully… it’s just that this was one of the smaller swings in NSW. Labor actually did (relatively) OK here, considering the Libs even managed to win Newcastle.

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