LIB 3.1%
Incumbent MP
Lucy Wicks, since 2013.
Geography
Robertson covers the southern half of the Central Coast. It covers most of Gosford LGA, with the exception of a few suburbs on the border with Wyong LGA including Wamberal, Matcham, Holgate and Mt Elliot. Major centres in the electorate include Gosford, Erina, Terrigal, Woy Woy and Umina.
Redistribution
Robertson expanded very slightly to gain parts of Wamberal from Dobell.
History
Robertson was first created in 1900 for the first federal election in 1901. The seat originally was an inland seat particularly covering Dubbo and Wellington and the Upper Hunter. It quickly moved towards the Central Coast, which it first covered in 1913.
The seat continued to shift and at one point also covered the coast to the north of Newcastle, before firmly settling on the Central Coast in 1974. The 1984 redistribution saw the seat take its current shape covering the southern half of the Central Coast.
For most of its history the seat was dominated by conservative MPs before mostly supporting the ALP over the last forty years. The seat was held by Henry Willis who won it for the Free Trade Party and maintained his hold until he lost it in 1910 to William Johnson of the ALP. Johnson only managed to hold the seat for one term, and was the only Labor member for the seat before the Second World War. He was succeeded by William Fleming of the Liberals, who proceeded to represent the Nationalists and joined the newly-formed Country Party in 1921. He ran for the seat as a Country Party candidate in 1922 and came third, with Sydney Gardner of the Nationalist Party holding the seat. Gardner maintained the seat until 1940, joining the United Australia Party in 1931.
At the 1940 election Gardner was one of two UAP candidates to run in Robertson, and came third on primary votes, and the other UAP candidate, Eric Spooner, won the seat on Gardner’s preferences in a close race with the ALP. Thomas Williams of the ALP won the seat in 1943 and held it until 1949, when he was defeated by the Liberal Party’s Roger Dean. Dean held the seat until he resigned in 1964 to become Administrator of the Northern Territory. His successor, William Bridges-Maxwell, won a by-election and was reelected in 1966 before being defeated by the ALP’s Barry Cohen in 1969.
Cohen held the seat for 21 years, serving as a minister from 1983 to 1987 in the Hawke government before retiring in 1990. He was succeeded by Frank Walker, who had been a minister in the state government before losing his seat in the 1988 state election. Walker served as a minister in the second Keating government from 1993 to 1996 before losing his seat to Jim Lloyd of the Liberal Party.
Lloyd held the seat for the entire length of the Howard government. He saw off Belinda Neal in 1998, when she resigned from the Senate to run for the seat. Lloyd was a minister from July 2004 until he lost his seat to Neal at the 2007 election. The seat was the ALP’s most marginal victory at the 2007 election, with Neal winning by 184 votes.
Belinda Neal was a controversial MP, and she lost preselection in 2010 to Deb O’Neill. O’Neill retained the seat for the ALP with an increased margin in 2010, but lost in 2013 to Liberal candidate Lucy Wicks.
Candidates
- Lawrie Higgins (Antipaedophile)
- Van Davy (Independent)
- Lucy Wicks (Liberal)
- Hillary Morris (Greens)
- Matthew Craig (Liberal Democrats)
- Robert Stoddart (Christian Democratic Party)
- Anne Charlton (Labor)
Assessment
Robertson is a marginal seat which has gone to the winning party at every election since the early 1970s, and should be a key battleground at the election.
Polls
- 51% to Liberal – Newspoll, 13-15 June 2016
2013 result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Lucy Wicks | Liberal | 38,704 | 43.4 | -0.1 | 43.6 |
| Deborah O’Neill | Labor | 31,046 | 34.8 | -4.9 | 34.2 |
| Lawrie McKinna | Independent | 7,763 | 8.7 | +8.7 | 8.5 |
| Kate Da Costa | Greens | 4,966 | 5.6 | -3.4 | 6.0 |
| Jake Cassar | Independent | 2,480 | 2.8 | +1.5 | 2.7 |
| Steven Spencer Whitaker | Palmer United Party | 2,082 | 2.3 | +2.3 | 2.3 |
| Holly Beecham | Christian Democratic Party | 1,115 | 1.3 | -0.6 | 1.3 |
| Douglas McFarland | Australian Independents | 510 | 0.6 | +0.6 | 0.6 |
| Paul Henry Sheeran | Democratic Labour Party | 474 | 0.5 | +0.5 | 0.5 |
| Others | 0.3 | ||||
| Informal | 5,604 | 6.3 |
2013 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Lucy Wicks | Liberal | 47,242 | 53.0 | +4.0 | 53.1 |
| Deborah O’Neill | Labor | 41,898 | 47.0 | -4.0 | 46.9 |
Booth breakdown
Booths have been divided into four areas.
Most booths are in the eastern part of the seat near the coast, and these have been divided between the three main centres of Gosford, Erina and Woy Woy. The remainder of booths in the sparsely-populated west have been grouped together as “West”.
The Liberal Party won a large 56.5% majority in Erina, the largest population centre. The Liberal Party also won a slim majority in Gosford, and a big 62% majority in the sparsely-populated west of the seat.
Labor won 52.6% of the two-party-preferred vote in Woy Woy.
Independent candidate Lawrie McKinna came third, with a vote ranging from 7% in the west and Woy Woy to almost 11% in Gosford.
| Voter group | IND % | LIB 2PP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| Erina | 8.3 | 56.5 | 24,766 | 27.0 |
| Woy Woy | 7.3 | 47.4 | 18,112 | 19.8 |
| Gosford | 10.9 | 50.3 | 16,043 | 17.5 |
| West | 6.8 | 62.1 | 1,865 | 2.0 |
| Other votes | 8.1 | 54.8 | 30,846 | 33.7 |
Looks like I will get the ball rolling.
Lucy has been targetting the Woy Woy big time, especially with the upgrade to the facilities at Woy Woy Oval.
What is interesting is the 2PP in Gosford, with Lawrie McKinna’s vote now up for grabs. 22.2% of the votes were spread around, with O’Neill winning the preference count 54.5:45.5.
The question will be whether Lucy’s gamble of targetting Woy Woy will pay off, given how tight the vote was in Gosford and whether O’Neill can take votes away in the boundary area between Gosford and Erina.
I’d suspect based on the history of this seat (and the margin of course) that the Libs have a better shot here than in Dobell.
W of S
The Libs will hold this quite easily in the end.
Hawkeye
The loathsome Deb O’Niel is now comfortably ensconced in the senate. Still doing (much )more harm than good, to the labor cause.
She represented the ALP against Karen McNamara in the PM live Central Coast debate. McNamara calmly, & efficiently,handed Deb her head. A truly talentless union hack, from the 50’s
This one will go to whoever wins government, neither side can get to 76 without this so I suspect that this will be tight especially considering the profile Lucy Wicks has now of a huge hack more interested in the liberal factions then the people she represents thanks to Alan Jones.
Dan
What interest does AJ have here ??
He hates Lucy Wicks didn’t you see the outburst he had saying no one should vote for the Libs in NSW and they are essentially corrupt. He will make sure he does all he can to get rid of Lucy just like he did with Campbell in QLD
Dan
No. News to me. I am interested, so please tell all .
I do know the story well and it is pure rubbish. It died as quickly as it rose up, after Alan was found to have only been provided one side of the story. But he will probably keep running with it anyway because one of his favourites is on one side of the story. Reason why the story is relevant is that the person going up against Alan Jones’ favourite is one of Lucy Wicks’s staffers.
He is the master of never letting the truth get in the way of a good story. I also love John Law’s comment that if hypocrisy was an Olympic Event, Alan Jones would win Gold, Silver and Bronze.
Newspoll 2PP for a must win seat for the ALP if they hope to form govt , Lib 51%, ALP 49%.
Underwhelming result for Labor here, although those numbers give them a good chance to win Dobell.
Morgan polls are small samples 500 to 600 margin of error 4.5%
However, Barrie Cassidy says that ALPs own internal polling has the ALP at 53%. He explains the diff between Newspolls 49% being down to the fact that ALP polling asks allocation of 2nd pref.
Take a look at @InsidersABC’s Tweet: https://twitter.com/InsidersABC/status/743991252589256704?s=09
@Yappo Kevin Bonham provides an outstanding rebuttal to Cassidy’s assertions.
Well Cassidy’s assertions do seem to be supported by ReachTEL poll out today. Six marginals all with big swings to Labor. I think Robertson might also be about to be covered by the red tide as well. Time will tell Wreathy!
@JH outliers. I will continue to remain skeptical until I see more polls back them up.
Nothing wrong with healthy scepticism Wreathy, but I am hearing that Robertson is becoming more probable by the day.
My prediction: Key contest, and like Lindsay, Gosford-based Robertson is a bellwether that has gone with the nation since 1984. At this point in time, I expect Robertson to stay blue.
Prediction: Liberals to retain, albeit unconvincingly
Interesting result here. As a bellwether, this is one of the few to have stuck with the Coalition. Others, like Eden-Monaro have readily fallen.
Incidentally, going back to 1931, Robertson has voted with the governing party in all but 4 elections, although of course on varying boundaries. That’s 4/33 elections, an 88% success rate over an 85 year period. Incidentally, those 4 elections were all with Barry Cohen as the MP.
wonder how baird’s greyhound ban would have impacted on seats like this and Gilmore if he’d announced it a couple of weeks earlier .. I suspect it would have been much more significant than the Firies in Vic seats