LIB 21.4%
Incumbent MP
Alex Hawke, since 2007.
Geography
North-Western Sydney. Mitchell mainly covers parts of the Hills, including Baulkham Hills, Castle Hill, Winston Hills and Kellyville.
Redistribution
Mitchell lost a small area between Castle Hill and Cherrybrook to Berowra, and gained part of Toongabbie from Parramatta. These changes cut the Liberal margin from 22.1% to 21.4%.
History
Mitchell was created for the 1949 election. It has almost always been won by the Liberal Party, except for two elections where the ALP won the seat, and it has become a solidly Liberal seat over recent decades.
Mitchell was won by Liberal candidate Roy Wheeler in 1949. Wheeler was re-elected at every election in the 1950s, but lost Mitchell to ALP candidate John Armitage. Armitage only managed to hold on to the seat for one term, losing it to Liberal candidate Leslie Irwin in 1963, although he later held the safe Labor seat of Chifley from 1969 to 1983.
Irwin held Mitchell from 1963 until the 1972 election, when he was swept aside with the election of the Whitlam government, with Mitchell being won by Labor candidate Alfred Ashley-Brown. Ashley-Brown lost in 1974 to Liberal candidate Alan Cadman.
Cadman held Mitchell for over thirty years without rising to much prominence in the Liberal Party, and by the mid-2000s was one of only three MPs remaining from the time of the Whitlam government, along with Prime Minister John Howard and Attorney-General Philip Ruddock. Cadman served as a Parliamentary Secretary in the final years of the Fraser government and the early years of the Howard government, but didn’t rise any further.
After narrowly surviving a preselection challenge in 2004, Cadman faced a challenge in 2007 from prominent right-winger Alex Hawke, and decided to retire. Hawke easily won election in 2007, and has been re-elected in 2010 and 2013.
Candidates
- Andrew Punch (Labor)
- Darryl Allen (Christian Democratic Party)
- Alex Hawke (Liberal)
- Michael Bellstedt (Greens)
Assessment
Mitchell is a very safe Liberal seat.
2013 result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Alex Hawke | Liberal | 56,706 | 65.5 | +2.8 | 64.9 |
| Andrew Punch | Labor | 17,775 | 20.5 | -5.8 | 21.0 |
| Michael Bellstedt | Greens | 5,554 | 6.4 | -1.2 | 6.4 |
| Darryl Allen | Christian Democratic Party | 2,794 | 3.2 | -0.2 | 3.2 |
| Murray Schultz | Palmer United Party | 2,792 | 3.2 | +3.2 | 3.2 |
| Nathan Dodd | Democratic Labour Party | 987 | 1.1 | +1.1 | 1.2 |
| Others | 0.1 | ||||
| Informal | 5,833 | 6.7 |
2013 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Alex Hawke | Liberal | 62,425 | 72.1 | +4.9 | 71.4 |
| Andrew Punch | Labor | 24,183 | 27.9 | -4.9 | 28.6 |
Booth breakdown
Booths have been divided into three parts: central, north and south.
The Liberal Party’s two-party-preferred vote ranged from 66% in the south to 75% in the north.
| Voter group | LIB 2PP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| South | 66.4 | 26,182 | 30.5 |
| North | 75.3 | 20,396 | 23.7 |
| Central | 72.3 | 16,814 | 19.6 |
| Other votes | 73.2 | 22,523 | 26.2 |
Hi Ben, it’s just a typo but you have “Assessment Mitchell is a very safe Labor seat.”