ALP 8.6%
Incumbent MP
Matt Thistlethwaite, since 2013. Previously Senator for New South Wales 2011-2013.
Geography
South-eastern Sydney. Kingsford Smith covers southern parts of the Eastern Suburbs of Sydney, including all of the former Botany Council and most of Randwick Council. Kingsford Smith includes the suburbs of Coogee, Randwick, Maroubra, Mascot, Malabar and Kensington.
History
Kingsford Smith was first created for the 1949 election after the House of Representatives was expanded. The seat has always been held by the ALP, originally being a marginal seat in its early years before gradually becoming safer, and it has been solidly safe since at least the 1960s.
Gordon Anderson (ALP) won the seat in 1949 with a bare 50.9% margin over the Liberal Party, and only won a 50.5% margin upon reelection in 1951. Anderson won with 54.2% in 1954, before retiring in 1955.
The seat was won in 1955 by Daniel Curtin (ALP), who had previously held the seat of Watson since 1949. Curtin won in 1955 with 55% of the vote, and the seat’s has only dipped below 5% once since 1955, in the 1966 landslide.
Curtin held the seat until 1969, and in that time solidified the ALP’s hold on the seat, but was almost defeated at his last election in 1966.
Curtin retired in 1969 and was succeeded by the state member for Randwick, Lionel Bowen, who won the seat with a margin over 10% for the first time. Bowen was a minister in the Whitlam government and became a senior member of the ALP in opposition in the late 1970s.
Bowen served as Deputy Prime Minister for the first three terms of the Hawke government, from 1983 until his retirement at the 1990 election.
He was succeeded in 1990 by Laurie Brereton. Brereton had briefly succeeded Bowen as member for Randwick from 1970 until the seat was abolished in 1971, when he moved to the seat of Heffron. Brereton served as a minister in the Wran and Unsworth governments before switching to the federal arena in 1990, after the Liberals won a landslide victory in New South Wales.
Brereton served as a federal minister in the final term of the Keating government and served as Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs from 1996 until 2001, when he moved to the backbench.
In 2004 Brereton retired and was succeeded by Peter Garrett, former lead singer of Midnight Oil and President of the Australian Conservation Foundation. Garrett had also previously run for the Nuclear Disarmament Party in the Senate at the 1984 election, losing due to the Labor and Liberal parties preferencing each other over the NDP.
Garrett joined the ALP frontbench upon the election of Kevin Rudd as Labor leader in late 2006. Garrett served as Environment Minister in the first term of the Labor government, and as Minister for School Education from 2010 to 2013.
Peter Garrett retired in 2013, and he was replaced in Kingsford Smith by Matt Thistlethwaite, who had served as a Labor senator since 2011. Thistlethwaite was re-elected in 2016.
Candidates
Assessment
Kingsford Smith is a reasonably safe Labor seat.
2016 result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Matt Thistlethwaite | Labor | 43,642 | 47.4 | +5.4 |
| Michael Feneley | Liberal | 34,591 | 37.5 | -6.0 |
| James Macdonald | Greens | 9,698 | 10.5 | +0.7 |
| Andrew Weatherstone | Christian Democratic Party | 2,144 | 2.3 | +0.7 |
| Andrea Leong | Science Party | 2,059 | 2.2 | +1.4 |
| Informal | 4,849 | 5.0 |
2016 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Matt Thistlethwaite | Labor | 53,962 | 58.6 | +5.8 |
| Michael Feneley | Liberal | 38,172 | 41.4 | -5.8 |
Booth breakdown
Booths have been divided into three areas. Booths in the former City of Botany Bay have been grouped together. Booths in the City of Randwick have been split between Coogee in the north and Maroubra in the south.
Labor won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 56.1% in Coogee to 65% in Botany.
| Voter group | GRN prim % | ALP 2PP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| Maroubra | 7.3 | 58.5 | 25,360 | 27.5 |
| Coogee | 15.1 | 56.1 | 21,588 | 23.4 |
| Botany | 7.0 | 65.0 | 15,382 | 16.7 |
| Other votes | 13.6 | 55.7 | 10,600 | 11.5 |
| Pre-poll | 10.8 | 57.8 | 19,204 | 20.8 |
Election results in Kingsford Smith at the 2016 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and Greens primary votes.
I lived here some time ago (early Garrett era).
It’s a bit of a hard area to explain. The median house price here would be well over $1m and new residents are not of the same demographic as that moved to Botany and Hillsdale 20 years ago. But Labor is hanging on. In Mascot you’ve got huge high-rise development of mostly small units. In Coogee the housing market is becoming pretty boutique and not as overdeveloped as one may think – but the left vote is holding up. I suspect Coogee may become something of a rich lefty destination area, not dissimilar to Balmain or, say, St Kilda.
Matt T is a good fit for this seat. He’s super local – I believe was the captain of the Maroubra Lifesaving Club, and seems to cross the divide of bread and butter issues in the poorer areas with progressive identity or environmental issues of the wealthier areas. The Libs had a good candidate the last two times in heart surgeon Michael Feneley, but he seems to have given up the game, so their candidate will likely be weaker this time around.
Though the Libs came close in 2013, I suspect that the Labor strongholds in Botany Bay (Bayside) and around Malabar will keep this safe enough Labor for at least another decade and probably beyond. Even with the rampant gentrification one would expect in a bayside Sydney seat, the boundaries are pretty good for Labor – not unlike the state seat of Heffron – where there is a pretty solid Labor vote throughout and the Lib and Green challengers would only likely have strong booths in different pockets of the seat, but not enough to mount a challenge over a seat of 100,000+ people.
Anyway, safe Thistlethwaite hold.
Hey Ben, not related to Kingsford Smith, but the link to Paramatta (fed electorate) is broken.
This seat has always been a strange microcosm of Sydney. The northern areas are full of small l liberals, professionals, doctors, journalists, barristers and university professors. The southern areas more closely resemble the western suburbs with its large populations of Italians, Greeks, public housing tenants, Catholics, migrants from East Asia and even an Aboriginal community in La Perouse.
It has always been Labor heartland, especially around the Maroubra area. The liberals have thought they could win it for decades because they only see things in terms of property values, but the area has always been progressive in its values.
Matt thistlethwaite is a highly visible local member and should extend his majority even further.
i live in maroubra & i’m mostly a labor voter + i’m a gambler
This is a seat where a high gentrified leftie vote seems to exist, with rich progressives continuing to vote Labor and keep the seats out of Liberal hands. Matt is a great local member and always appears to be very visible out in the community, doing his best to represent the interest of a diverse electorate.
Liberal candidate is Amanda Wilmot.
Safe ALP retain
Wishing Matt another win, he deserves it. Works hard and is very approachable.
COME ON LABOR
My local seat. I agree with what others have said, Matt is a really good local member who appeals both to the more suburban & industrial areas around Botany/Mascot and to the small l liberal voters in the Coogee area of the seat. He’s really local and I see him around a fair bit, so he should extend his margin even further this election. I don’t see many Wilmot signs up around the place, much more Thistlethwaite signs.
It’s hard to see this seat ever going liberal if it keeps both Botany and Mascot in the seat, those areas are still quite working class and do feel much more like Western Sydney than the Coogee area, which has gentrified a lot. There’s quite a few developments going up around the Eastern, Randwick local government region of the seat (huge apartment complexes going up in Eastgardens and La Perouse to name 2), so if in the redistribution they start cutting into the mascot area of the seat than it could definitely become a more marginal seat into the future, but it’s hard to see Matt losing it unless labor do really badly in a coming electoral cycle.
Interestingly I got robopolled today in this seat, which I found strange since I wouldn’t think either party would waste money polling this seat given an expected labor electoral win.
Thistlethwaite is from Labor Right and has none of the leftie charms of Albanese and Plibersek. I’m a little surprised the “gentrified leftie” vote isn’t going more Green here. Since the last election they managed to get a mayor in City of Randwick, Lindsay Shurey, but she did not do very well running in Coogee this year.
I expect a more confident and organised Greens to have a real go at this seat in future elections, but they have real work to do building things up.
I was going to write about how Light rail will change the demographics in Maroubra, but the light rail goes nowhere near as far along Anzac Parade as I thought it did.
Thought i’d re-post from 2016 for the benefit of MATT fans. Nothing has changed or improved
winediamond April 26, 2016 at 9:58 pm
Matt, what an arrow !!!. I’ve yet to hear him deviate from the party line. He must have a photo graphic memory !!!.
This drone embodies everything i despise in scripted politicians. An incredible waste of space.
pj & Boaty
Whilst i found your perspectives not only legitimate, but interesting. I guess i expect a hell of a lot more. If local representation is important, then that is state mp domain, at least mostly. so what is required of a fed MP ?.
Well FUNDAMENTALLY to represent the views & interests of the electorate nationally. The requirement is to be you’re own person, make noise, & kick heads at every opportunity. I’d give the prize to Bob Katter. Worthy mentions : Adam Bandt, Ed Husic, Linda Burney, Nick Champion, Josh Wilson, Andrew Wilkie, Craig Laundy, Barnaby, Keith Pitt, Warren Entsch. Ken wyatt. Certain ministers have used their profiles well, but that is easier.
Spectacular failures : most labor MP’s Zimmerman, Falinski, Ramsay, Melissa Price,Ken O’Dowd, Alex Hawke , Rebekkah Sharkie & many , many others. I’ll leave the senate alone