Berowra – Australia 2022

Missed opportunity for a teal. Julian Leeser needs to become leader or a very prominent front bencher if the Liberals want their path back to government to include the teal seats.

Greens also seem to have underperformed considering their strength on Hornsby council. I was half expecting a Liberal vs Green 2PP

I am not sure if this is teal territory much of this is electorate is more like Menzies especially the Southern and Western end and more nouveau riche than old money like Ku-ring-gai. The Pacific highway corridor from Hornsby to the Hawkesbury River such as Cowan, Asquith etc is not like Manningham.

This is both geographically and politically what you could call the borderlands of “Teal territory”. As I pointed out in my previous comment, the Liberal vote has become very soft in both the “nouveaux riches” areas and the Pacific Highway corridor. It’s only the five-acre block district that has this look like it’s still a very safe Liberal seat. The result in Bradfield was unexpectedly close and could be repeated here. I’d love to see a Teal independent run here in the future.

With Julian Lesser quitting the Dutton front bench, will Matt Kean seize this opportunity to transfer to federal politics and challenge Leeser for preselection here?

Quitting the front bench but staying in parliament it seems. The state Liberal Party supports the Indigenous Voice. I don’t think the Liberal Party would be too keen on replacing a voice supporter with another one.

Matt Kean couldnt win preselection to run a Hot Dog stand at this point. hes toxic to the liberal brand. once the Voice referendum is over he should come back

Kean running in Berowra will depend on Branch support. The biggest branch in the area is Fox Valley, which is controlled by Julian Leeser directly and I can tell you now that it is a Monster of a Branch.

Lesser quiting the front bench over the Voice should increase his vote here

@Hawkeye_au does that branch have more than a hundred members?

Don’t know now but when I was active (about 6 years ago) yeah it was about 100 members.

Membership trends have been down but I’ve no reason to believe it is still a monster branch.

With a major redistribution on its way – especially in Northern Sydney – it is hard to see anybody making a play for any particular seat until it is all sorted.

Agree with Redistributed. It’s just not Leeser, Fletcher or Kean but also Hawke in Mitchell as factors in the equation regarding the fall-out both in party terms and who still has a seat/who needs to move and who misses out.

Northern Sydney is one of the prime candidates for a seat loss and being a “hodge podge” of a seat with 3 very differing voting demographics and very much declining communities of interest; Berowra should be first on the list for either “the chop” OR being renamed and shifting out of Hornsby entirely and moved west.

Abolition seems the tidiest with regards to the North Shore/transport corridors areas with:
– North Sydney moving north to take in all of Chatswood/Willoughby; could possibly go as far north as Lindfield if you could find a suitable boundary road.
– Warringah moving further north to facilitate Mackeller moving west to take in St Ives and all areas east of Arterial Road north of Chatswood/Willoughby.
– Bradfield moving north and west to take in all of Hornsby and the corridor north to the Hawkesbury River and south to at least Pennant Hills.

Where it does get problematic is the flow on effects with Mitchell and it’s boundaries. Thus this could be better massaged by still having the changes listed above but renaming it and moving it into the semi-rural areas of Hornsby Shire plus Cherrybrook/WPH and conceivably some of the northern parts of Mitchell with Castle Hill as it’s hub (as it is in reality for much of this area).

At the next redistribution, Berowra will grow geographically (most likely westward), to get more electors, or get axed. It seems that almost every electorate east of Liverpool and Parramatta are under quota and so I expect the next electorate to be on the chopping block to be in metro Sydney. The last few abolished seats were solid Labor seats. Labor may or may not be lucky next time.

Methinks that the AEC might keep both Berowra and Blaxland so that they can easily rename them to Howard and Keating when the time arises.

@commonwombat

How about arranging Macquarie, Berowra and Mitchell as:
– Mitchell as the relatively urban parts of Hornsby/Hills LGA that did not make it to your Bradfield. (Cherrybrook, West Pennant Hills, Castle Hill, Baulkham Hills and some other random stuff in the general area. maybe Cherrybrook/Beecroft too depending on how Bennelong goes though i assume Benenlong will stay the same again)
– Remove Berowra
– Make a new seat consisting of Hawkesbury LGA plus the rural parts of The Hills and Hornsby, which is basically Hawkesbury (State) but larger (This means Hornsby/Hills would become a North-South split instead of the current East/West-ish split)
– Make Macquarie basically 2007 boundaries (with BM, Bathurst and Lithgow)
– Pray that Andrew Gee won’t try to hunt me/AEC down (Knock-on effects causing half of Calare 2025 to never have had Gee as MP, hence making it virtually un-retainable as an Independent)

@commonwombat

What happens to East Killara if Mackellar takes in St Ives? The boundary would look a bit funny if East Killara is still in Bradfield in that case.

As for what happens to Mitchell, I think it’s possible that the next redistribution will see an electorate crossing Old Windsor Road (either Mitchell or Greenway), and IMO that’s not a bad thing.

@Leon

There aren’t enough electors in Hawkesbury plus the rural parts of The Hills and Hornsby for that to be a district. Unless you consider Rouse Hill to be rural – in which case as a former resident of Rouse Hill I’m a little upset! I liked the 2007 Macquarie but I think given the population and demographic situation nowadays, the current configuration of Macquarie is here to stay. As I said in response to @commonwombat, I think an electorate crossing Old Windsor Road is completely acceptable and would be the solution in this case.

The Macquarie seat as suggested by Leon is interesting….

@Nicholas

My eastern boundary for Bradfield is Arterial/Archbold Road so east Killara, east Lindfield etc would be in Mackellar.

Do agree with you that there would be insufficient voters for a new seat out of northern/rural Macquarie plus rural parts of Hills & Hornsby Shires. This is why I am slightly moving away from my earlier ‘abolish Berowra’ position to one of ‘move it west and rename it’.

Re your proposition of an existing seat crossing Old Windsor Road; the time may be coming that this is indeed viable. Fully concur that resurrecting 2007 Macquarie is no longer feasible.

@Leon

Would be flexible with the southern boundary of my reconstituted Bradfield. All of Pennant Hills would be in this seat but WPH/Cherrybrook would be grouped with Castle Hill/Rogans Hill into the “Berowra replacement”. Would be open to including Beecroft and Cheltenham in Bradfield with the western boundary in that area being Pennant Hills Road but would be flexible regarding some boundary tinkering with Bennelong.

Resurrecting the 2007 configuration of Macquarie is a live option if NSW keeps its 47 seats, but unlikely otherwise. In a 46 seat scenario, Greater Sydney will be about 1.3 quotas short. The most straightforward solution is to abolish a Greater Sydney seat and shift Macarthur south and west.