Grey – Australia 2025

Ramsey is retiring.

I think between Labor’s industrial heartland, rural independents doing well (see Geoff Brock), and more indigenous voters over the Voice, it could end up being close.

Hard to see it all coming together and Liberals win by “default” without momentum for something else here. But I think a teal could take it if Labor juices the vote in their areas as well.

@John you’re joking, right? A teal in Grey? Hahahaha!

Grey is a very remote and rural seat and a very safe Liberal seat. Although Whyalla has traditionally voted Labor due to it being industrial and working-class, that has decreased over the years and the Liberals are actually starting to win booths in Whyalla. It’s a similar trend that’s being seen in Broken Hill, a working-class industrial town that traditionally voted Labor but the Nationals are starting to gain more and more ground there, and a similar trend can also be seen in other industrial cities and towns.

As for the Voice referendum: the No vote in Grey was 79.44%, the highest No vote in South Australia, the highest No vote outside Queensland and the seventh-highest No vote in the entire country (only behind six regional Queensland seats: Maranoa, Flynn, Capricornia, Hinkler, Dawson and Kennedy).

Geoff Brock is the member for the state seat of Stuart which covers only part of Grey (the main towns there are Port Augusta and Port Pirie) and he’s more of a centrist independent.

A teal wouldn’t even come close to Liberal and Labor. Barring the 2016 federal election where the NXT did well in South Australia before being renamed to the Centre Alliance and dropping dead in 2019 (except in Mayo where Rebekha Sharkie is still the MP).

As for Giles: yes it includes some conservative remote towns such as Coober Pedy and some remote Aboriginal communities on Pitantjatjara country, but overall it’s mostly based on Whyalla.

Here’s a comparison of the Liberal TPP here, federal (2022, Grey) vs state (2022, Giles):

Rural booths:
Andamooka: 53.9% vs 44.9%
Coober Pedy: 53.0% vs 44.9%
Hawker: 63.4% vs 57.1%
Iron Knob: 56.3% vs 43.6%
Port Augusta West: 48.5% vs 32.2%
Quorn: 67.1% vs 51.4%
Roxby Downs: 55.8% vs 38.1%
Woomera: 71.1% vs 46.4% (note: the swing to the federal Liberals in Woomera was 11.8%, which is huge)

Whyalla:
Whyalla Central East: 45.8% vs 24.9%
Whyalla Central West: 38.6% vs 25.5%
Whyalla Norrie East: 40.0% vs 24.7%
Whyalla Norrie North: 38.5% vs 20.4%
Whyalla Norrie South: 38.7% vs 18.5%

One thing I will note is that the TPP swing to Labor in Giles in 2022 was relatively large (keeping in mind the statewide TPP swing to Labor was also relatively large), whereas the TPP swing to Labor in Grey was only average and it was similar to the nationwide and statewide trends. However, it is clear that the federal Liberals do much better than the state Liberals in these towns.

Centre Alliance (NXT) got 48% 2PP in 2016. It’s possible that a strong independent could prove competitive especially with a retiring member. Although a teal scored 48% 2PP in Cowper and made the final 2 in Wannon, I doubt a largely rural electorate with traditionally blue-collar port towns i.e. Whyalla, Port Pirie and Port Augusta would be teal-friendly.

A major headwind for independents is the LNP’s pro-nuclear agenda as there are huge uranium deposits. Uranium mining and the initiation of nuclear energy could be seen as a lifeline for rust-belt towns.

Labor even with a good vote
In the iron triangle towns… av of 60% which I’d unlikely. Cannot win here because these towns make up to little of the federal seat.

@Votante the teal in Cowper was only popular in Coffs Harbour, Nambucca and Bellingen. Port Macquarie and Kempsey voted strongly for the Nationals like always. The independent (Caz Heise) is from Coffs Harbour while the Nationals MP (Pat Conaghan) is from Port Macquarie. Though in saying that both times when Rob Oakeshott contested Cowper he didn’t win booths in Port Macquarie despite being from there (Luke Hartsukyer is from Coffs Harbour).

NXT would have won in 2016 if Labor didn’t do open ticket HTVs. Compared to teals NXT were better at getting the “disgruntled” vote that the far right has largely claimed in subsequent elections, but I don’t think it’s beyond a solid independent to get preferences from both PHON and Labor/Greens over the Liberals.

Looking at state seats, the path to get this out of the blue column is Labor getting something closer to their state vote, and an independent getting enough momentum in the rest of the electorate to win on Labor preferences. Independents hold 2 of the seats, are close on 2PP in a 3rd, and used to hold a 4th. The 5th seat making up Grey is ultra safe Labor seat Giles

@John the problem is you’d need the right independent to unseat the Liberals in Grey. Flinders covers the southern part of Grey and it’s a Liberal seat (marginal vs independent but very safe vs Labor). Labor has never held Flinders as a single-member seat. Flinders covers Port Augusta, Ceduna and the surrounding towns from the Eyre Peninsula all the way to the Nullabor Plain and the border with Western Australia.

Port Augusta which is about about 2-3 hour or so drive from Adelaide, does not belong in the same electorate as Ceduna and the border towns (Border Village) Geographically Port Augusta would be more suited in Geoff Brocks seat. There should be a Western SA seat instead of the weird boundaries rural SA currently has.

Daniel, the problem is that federal seats have to contain at least 100k voters to meet quota purposes. That can only be achieved by having geographically large rural seats like Grey and Maranoa. That is why Parliament should be expanded at least to 180 seats that would minimise the geographical extent of these rural seats.

Grey would have a swing towards Labor but they cannot win too much rural area in the seat

The Liberals have chosen Tom Venning, the son of former state MP Ivan Venning, as their candidate for Grey in 2025. The preselection was held 15 September 2024 in Port Augusta.

@James I saw that on Insta ages ago I just forgot to comment here.

@NP – All good 🙂

Would be interesting to see if Labor campaigned Whyalla, Port Augusta, Port Pirie and Port Lincoln if they could narrow the margin here or pick it up.

@ SpaceFish the issue is that redistributions have moved it into more agricultural areas as there is relative population decline in the Iron Triangle towns. Each time SA has lost a seat it is has got worse for Labor in Grey. An expansion of parliament is the only hope for Labor to pick up this seat.

Unless if Grey becomes an exclusive ‘Iron Triangle’ seat consisting of only Whyalla, Port Pirie and Port Augusta it’s extremely unlikely for Labor to get this back, and even then that sort of seat would be logistically impossible to draw out as you’ll have to draw a strange electorate to include Pt Lincoln which is south of Whyalla as well as surrounds. Even in places like Pt Augusta the Liberals have been gaining strength, whilst Whyalla and Pt Pirie are still holding strong along with some far north remote communities in the state (with a high Aboriginal population).

Grey is in fact one of the two ‘impossible’ seats for Labor, along with Barker, due to the presence of Agricultural and rural areas elsewhere in the state that heavily skews Liberal.

The Labor vote in Whyalla and to a lesser extent, Port Augusta and Port Pirie are no match for the Liberal vote everywhere else in Grey. An independent may have a better shot at winning as I alluded to in my previous post.

I agree with @Tommo9 and @Votante, Labor can’t win this. Industrial towns just aren’t as friendly for Labor as they used to be. Even Gladstone is now only a fairly safe seat.