Camden – NSW 2015

LIB 22.8%

Incumbent MP
Chris Patterson, since 2011.

Geography
Southwestern Sydney. The seat of Camden covers all of the Camden local government area, including the suburbs of Camden, Narellan, Harrington Park, Leppington, Catherine Park and Mount Annan, as well as western parts of the City of Liverpool, including Austral, Badgerys Creek and Greendale, and Camden Park in Wollondilly Shire. These suburbs include newly-developing areas on the fringe of Sydney.

Redistribution
Camden lost the Campbelltown suburbs of Claymore, Eagle Vale, Kearns and Raby to Campbelltown and Macquarie Fields, and gained Camden Park from Wollondilly, Austral from Macquarie Fields and Badgerys Creek and Greendale from Mulgoa. These changes increased the Liberal margin from 18.9% to 22.8%.

History
The electoral district of Camden has existed for two different periods: from 1859 to 1920, and again since 1981.

The original district elected two MLAs from 1859 to 1889, and then three MLAs from 1889 to 1894. It continued as a single-member district from 1894 until its abolition in 1920.

Throughout that period Camden never elected a Labor MP, and was won by a variety of Protectionist and Free Trade MPs, becoming a safe Liberal/Nationalist seat by the time of its abolition.

Camden was restored at the 1981 state election, by which time Camden had become part of the fringes of the rapidly-expanding Sydney metropolitan region. Many of the most populous suburbs in the seat today developed throughout the 1980s and 1990s.

The latter seat of Camden has an unusual history of changing parties against the trend of state politics, on two occasions it was gained by a party while losing a state election, and on two other occasions a governing party gained the seat while losing ground statewide.

Camden was won in 1981 by Ralph Brading of the ALP, gaining power in a Labor landslide. In 1984 he was defeated by the Liberal Party’s John Fahey.

The original seat of Camden covered an area from Warragamba to Mittagong, and the redistribution before the 1988 election reduced the seat to a smaller area around Camden itself. The new redistribution was much improved for the ALP.

Following the redistribution, Fahey moved to the neighbouring seat of Southern Highlands. Fahey became a minister in the Greiner government in 1988. He went on to serve as Liberal premier from 1992 to 1995, and then resigning to contest the federal seat of Macarthur. He held Macarthur from 1996 to 2001, serving as Minister for Finance in the first two terms of the Howard government.

In 1988, while the Labor Party was suffering a massive defeat statewide, Peter Primrose managed to gain the seat of Camden, defeating Liberal candidate John Ryan by only 31 votes. Ryan went on to serve as a Liberal member of the Legislative Council from 1991 to 2007.

Primrose only held Camden for one term, losing in 1991 to the Liberal Party’s Liz Kernohan. Another redistribution had expanded Camden to cover most of Wollondilly Shire, a shape it maintained until the 2003 election. Primrose was elected to the Legislative Council in 1996 and now serves as a minister in the Labor government.

Kernohan was a former Mayor of Camden, and she held Camden for three terms, retiring in 2003. She then returned to Camden Council in 2004, but died only seven months later.

Camden was won in 2003 by the Mayor of Camden, Geoff Corrigan, who was running for the ALP. Corrigan was re-elected in 2007. His margin in 2003 had been 5.4%, which expanded to 8.7% in the redistribution, with parts of the seat in Wollondilly Shire removed from Camden. He held on with a reduced 3.9% margin.

In 2011, Corrigan lost his seat with a 22.8% swing, and the Liberal Party’s Chris Patterson was elected.

Candidates

• Danica Sajn (Greens)
• Colin Broadbridge (Christian Democratic Party)
• Chris Patterson (Liberal)
• Mario Tabone (No Land Tax)
• Cindy Cagney (Labor)

Assessment
Camden has a recent tradition of being a marginal seat, prior to the huge swing to the Liberal Party in 2011. Since that election, Camden became substantially safer for the Liberal Party in the redistribution, due to the removal of suburbs in the City of Campbelltown. So while you would expect a swing back to Labor, the unfavourable redistribution makes it hard to see Labor managing a big enough swing to win Camden.

2011 election result

2011 two-party-preferred result

Booth breakdown
Booths in Camden have been split into three parts. Most of the electorate’s population is in the urban area at the southern end of the seat, and these booths have been split into Camden in the west and Narellan in the east, with the remainder of the seat grouped as “north”.

The Liberal Party’s two-party-preferred vote ranged from 70.5% in Narellan to 75% in Camden.