Summer Hill – NSW 2023

ALP 21.6%

Incumbent MP
Jo Haylen, since 2015.

Geography
Inner west of Sydney. Summer Hill covers the suburbs of Ashbury, Ashfield, Dulwich Hill, Haberfield, Hurlstone Park, Summer Hill and parts of Marrickville and Petersham. The seat covers most of the Ashfield council area and about half of the Marrickville council area, along with a small part of the City of Canterbury.

Redistribution
Summer Hill lost the remainder of Lewisham to Newtown and gained Hurlstone Park from Canterbury. These changes reduced the Labor margin from 22.3% to 21.6%.

History
The seat of Summer Hill was created in 2015, mostly replacing the former seat of Marrickville.

There had been an electoral district named Marrickville from 1894 until 2015, with the exception of three elections in the 1920s when the seat was merged into the multi-member district of Western Suburbs. The seat continuously elected Labor members from 1910 until it was abolished in 2015.

The original district of Marrickville covered a smaller area, with the other seats of Newtown-Camperdown, Petersham, Darlington, Newtown-Erskine and Newtown-St Peters covering parts of the modern seat.

The seat was won in 1917 by the ALP’s Carlo Lazzarini, who defeated Thomas Crawford, a former Labor member who had joined the Nationalists over the issue of conscription.

In 1920 Lazzarini moved to the multi-member district of Western Suburbs. He briefly served as a minister from 1921 to 1922, and in 1927 he returned to the seat of Marrickville.

Lazzarini was opposed to Jack Lang’s leadership of the NSW Labor Party, and he was expelled from the ALP in 1936. He rejoined in 1937, but later joined the dissident Industrial Labor Party. Following Lang’s departure he served as an assistant minister in the new Labor state government from 1941 to 1944. He held Marrickville until his death in 1952.

Marrickville was won at the February 1953 election by the Mayor of Marrickville, Norm Ryan. He served as a minister in the state Labor government from 1959 to 1965, and retired in 1973.

Ryan stepped aside in 1973 in favour of Tom Cahill. The son of NSW Premier Joseph Cahill, Tom had won his father’s seat of Cook’s River after his father’s death in 1959. Cook’s River was abolished at the 1973 election, and he moved to Marrickville. He held that seat until his death in 1983.

The 1983 by-election was won by Andrew Refshauge. Following the ALP’s election defeat in 1988 he was elected Deputy Leader. He served in this role until 2005. Refshauge became Deputy Premier when the ALP gained power in 1995. He served in a variety of ministerial roles over the next decade.

In 1995, the Liberal Party was pushed into third place behind the No Aircraft Noise party, who polled over 23% of the primary vote. The Greens came second after preferences in 1999, and the Liberals have never again come in the top two in Marrickville.

When Premier Bob Carr announced his retirement in 2005, Refshauge also announced his retirement, along with senior minister Craig Knowles. The Marrickville by-election was held alongside by-elections in Maroubra and Macquarie Fields.

The ALP ran Carmel Tebbutt, a former Marrickville councillor who had been a Member of the Legislative Council since 1998 and a minister since 1999. The Greens ran Deputy Mayor of Marrickville, Sam Byrne. The ALP’s 10.7% margin was cut to 5.1% in the by-election.

Tebbutt was re-elected in 2007, winning with a 7.5% margin over the Greens, less than in the 2003 election, but more than in the 2005 by-election. Tebbutt served as Labor deputy leader and Deputy Premier from 2008 to 2011.

At the 2011 election, Tebbutt again faced strong opposition from the Greens. Her margin was cut to 0.9%.

Tebbutt retired in 2015. The redrawn seat of Summer Hill was won by Labor candidate Jo Haylen. Haylen was re-elected in 2019.

Candidates

  • Jo Haylen (Labor)
  • Michael Swan (Sustainable Australia)
  • Bowen Cheng (Liberal)
  • Sandra Haddad (Animal Justice)
  • Izabella Antoniou (Greens)

    • Assessment
    Labor is in a strong position in Summer Hill, although the two-party-preferred margin exaggerates the safety of the seat. The seat would be significantly more marginal on a Labor vs Greens basis, but the Greens are still some distance away from winning here.

    2019 result

    Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
    Jo Haylen Labor 22,639 46.4 +3.1 46.4
    Leo Wei Liberal 11,380 23.3 -0.5 24.0
    Tom Raue Greens 10,055 20.6 -6.7 20.3
    Andrea Makris Keep Sydney Open 2,791 5.7 +5.7 5.3
    Teresa Romanovsky Animal Justice 1,227 2.5 +2.5 2.3
    Dale Sinden Sustainable Australia 693 1.4 +1.4 1.3
    Others 0.2
    Informal 1,451 2.9

    2019 two-party-preferred result

    Candidate Party Votes % Swing Redist
    Jo Haylen Labor 32,023 72.3 +2.2 71.6
    Leo Wei Liberal 12,271 27.7 -2.2 28.4

    Booth breakdown

    Booths in Summer Hill have been split into four parts, based on the major centres of the electorate: Ashfield, Dulwich Hill, Haberfield and Marrickville.

    Labor won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all four areas, ranging from 58.9% in Haberfield to 79.7% in Marrickville.

    The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 17.2% in Haberfield to 22.8% in Marrickville.

    Voter group GRN prim % ALP 2PP % Total votes % of votes
    Ashfield 21.1 69.8 9,598 19.7
    Marrickville 22.8 79.7 8,427 17.3
    Dulwich Hill 21.5 77.3 5,719 11.8
    Haberfield 17.2 58.9 4,542 9.3
    Pre-poll 15.0 69.7 10,401 21.4
    Other votes 23.6 70.9 9,950 20.5

    Election results in Summer Hill at the 2019 NSW state election
    Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Liberal Party and the Greens.

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    22 COMMENTS

    1. I think the Greens’ performance in Victoria come Novermber will tell us whether the Greens NSW have the ability to get seats like Summer Hill or Heffron. This electorate is quite weird because it marries up Marrickville in its south with Ashfield/Haberfield in its north, which are quite different communities. Will definitely be an interesting one.

    2. Labor should hold here in 2023. The margin between first and second is too large for Labor to lose. If Albo’s local star power remains then it would help the Labor brand and Jo Haylen would get a swing to her. This seat would probably be the NSW Greens’ next lower house target in the long term.

    3. i can see the Greens doing well longer term in the Eastern Part of the electorate. However, the western Part of the seat is quite suburban especially Haberfield and Ashbury where the Libs do quite well.

    5. Very good Green vote.. is this demographics similar to Newtown state seat. but a different point in time,? The right vote is liberal only 23%.. could liberals miss the final 2 candidates and thus their preferences are distributed.? Labor could expect to get a general swing here which means alp could get over 50% so preferences would be irrelevant? Labor hold with increased margin

    7. I don’t understand why other state Greens branches are so unbelievably slow to preselect candidates in target seats. This was probably their best hope for a new lower house MP and there’s absolutely no chance of it happening now. Fully expect Greens NSW to have an even worse election than Vic Greens did.

    8. Furtive, I would say Summer Hill is actually a low priority target for the Greens as their vote barely cleared 20% last time and was even below the Liberal vote.

      Also, demographically the suburbs covered by Summer Hill are still considered more ‘old money’ or established compared to adjacent districts such as Newtown, Balmain and Sydney which have been massively gentrified featuring large numbers of young people moving in.

      As a comparison I would say Summer Hill would be akin to somewhere like Greenslopes in Brisbane, not as well developed to a place such as West End/South Bank which are more gentrified.

    9. Well Greenslopes is absolutely on Qld Greens’ hitlist in 2024. They won most of the booths at the federal election. Summer Hill arguably has even better demographics for the Greens, with slightly more renters even before the boundary change (which I believe took out a chunk of Canterbury LGA?). They got 27% of the vote in 2015. But seats don’t just fall in your lap because of demographics.

      I don’t see any better target than Summer Hill for NSWG. Sydney could have been if there was a sitting Labor MP but Alex Greenwich will be very hard for them to dislodge.

    10. Fair point Furtive, if trends are changing quite rapidly. Looking at 2022 polling place results, the Greens’ vote surge in Griffith appeared to be all over the district, even in the outer edge suburbs like Greenslopes and Holland Park so you may be right that seats that were not seen as targets in previous election cycles will be targeted heavily next time around.

      I have observed that Brisbane is not immune to the gentrification seen in Sydney and Melbourne, with new developments across many inner suburbs. I think this is also the case for Sydney, with the outer parts of Inner West including Ashfield and Summer Hill now going through the gentrification phase.

    11. I think another factor that might explain why NSW Greens haven’t had much success compared to their interstate counterparts is that they lack a formal state-based structure, instead having most of their strength from local branches. This also results in lack of vetting for some candidates, with the result is that those who are nominated can be seen as too extreme/socialist like.

    13. Agree Dan, I think Anthony Green or another election analyst identified that lack of a top-down structure will play poorly in terms of attempting to organise campaigns for winnable seats.

    14. I don’t think that’s it either. Qld Greens don’t have a formal leader. Jono Sriranganathan, Michael Berkman and Amy MacMahon are every bit as radical as Jenny Leong. The main difference as I see is Qld Greens know how to organize.

    15. Jonno is radical and says very dumb things occasionally, but he treats being a city councillor like it’s the most important job in the world and goes to the wall for his community.

      Meanwhile I’d argue that all the other left Green incumbents seem like reasonable, likeable, approachable people even if they do hold quite radical views in parts. Nobody cares about words ending in “ism” when you’re focused on outcomes.

      Tom Raue seemed to take pride in being off-putting, and reminded me of the worst campus socialists. Everything was an ism. Hall Greenland and Jim Casey less so but still just not really likeable unless you’re a radical socialist. They grandstand a lot and don’t care if you are on board with their more extreme framing. They’d likely get reelected easily as incumbents for the same reason as Sriranganathan, but coming from outside they’re just too much.

      I think Rachael Jacobs and now Izabella Antoniou are much better choices. Could be sexism on my part if I’m being honest but they’re just less intimidating.

    16. That might all be broadly true. ‘Candidate quality’ obviously matters. But it’s a separate issue from the fact that Antoniou has had no chance to actually build a winning campaign machine.

    17. Summer Hill is more suburban, has a higher median age and has more nuclear families than Newtown. It has less renters, less students and less young professionals. Summer Hill would vote for someone more in tune with bread and butter issues rather than a university campus activist.

      The electoral boundaries benefit the Greens a lot at NSW state elections, more so than at federal elections. For example, the federal boundaries cut through Newtown and both Grayndler and Sydney (the federal seat) contain old-money, waterfront suburbs as well as relatively, low-density suburbs.

    18. It’s not often mentioned, but this is still a surprisingly multicultural and working class seat in places, which makes life easier for Labor and tougher for the Greens. Suburbs like Haberfield, Hurlstone Park, Ashbury and even parts of South Marrickville contain large numbers of Italian, Greek, Vietnamese and Chinese migrants whose politics and outlook are more classically “Western Sydney”.

      Until these suburbs get fully gentrified out, the seat will probably retain a strong Labor base of support which could be enough to hang onto it for a while yet.

    19. Agree, LD this seat is where the inner city and suburbia meat. Haberfield like you mentioned is very Italian and Catholic it is quite leafy and some say was the birthplace for Australian suburbia. This area is quite ethnically diverse and parts of the electorate would be more socially conservative. The Upper Inner West(Canada Bay, Strathfield and Burwood LGAs) as i call it is more a classic Lib/Labor contest compared to the Lower Inner West around Newtown, Glebe etc.

    20. Summer Hill most likely will be the next Labor vs Greens seat. Last election, KSO and AJP’s entrance split the left-wing vote. I can see the Green PV surpassing the Liberal PV.

    22. Greens have ended up in the 2CP, compared to what the 2CP would have been between Labor and the greens in 2019 however, greens have actually gone slightly backward atm

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