Sydney – Australia 2025

ALP 16.5% vs GRN

Incumbent MP
Tanya Plibersek, since 1998.

• Geography
• Redistribution
• History
• Candidates
• Assessment
• 2022 results
• Booth breakdown
• Results maps

Geography
Inner suburbs of Sydney. Sydney covers most of the City of Sydney except for the easternmost part of the City, as well as parts of the Inner West council area. The seat covers the Sydney CBD, Pyrmont, Ultimo, Surry Hills, Redfern, Waterloo, Alexandria, Erskineville, Glebe, Balmain, Rozelle, Lilyfield, parts of Newtown, and the southern parts of the City of Sydney, extending as far south as Rosebery. Sydney also covers Lord Howe Island.

Redistribution
Sydney shifted west, taking in the Balmain peninsula, including Lilyfield and Rozelle, from Grayndler. At the eastern border, Sydney lost Darlinghurst, Potts Point and Woolloomooloo to Wentworth. These changes reduced the Labor margin from 16.7% to 16.5%.

History
Sydney was created for the 1969 election by the merger of the seats of East Sydney and West Sydney, which had existed since federation.

Sydney has been held by the ALP ever since its creation, and its predecessors had almost always been held by Labor.

West Sydney (which, despite its name, actually covered inner city suburbs like Darling Harbour and Pyrmont) always elected a Labor MP, although it was briefly held by a conservative party from 1916 to 1917, as its first MP was Billy Hughes, who as Prime Minister left the ALP and formed the Nationalist party. He proceeded to move to a different seat at the 1917 election, and the ALP held West Sydney from 1917 until its abolition, although Jack Beasley, who held the seat for eighteen years, left the ALP to join a Lang Labor breakaway party on two occasions in the 1930s and 1940s.

The seat of East Sydney was first held by George Reid, a former NSW premier and leader of the Free Trade party, from 1901 to 1909, when he retired. John West (ALP) won the seat in 1910 and held it until his death in February 1931. The ensuing by-election was won by Eddie Ward, who left the ALP later that year when he was one of a number of supporters of NSW Labor leader Jack Lang to cross the floor and bring down the Scullin government.

East Sydney was won at the 1931 election by John Clasby (UAP) who benefited from a split Labor vote, with the two Labor parties gaining 55% of the primary vote but enough preferences from the official ALP leaking to Clasby to see Ward lose. Clasby died a month later without taking his seat and Ward won back the seat at a January 1932 by-election, less than a year after he had previously won the seat at a by-election. Ward returned to the ALP in 1936 and the ALP held the seat from then until its abolition in 1969.

The new seat of Sydney was first won in 1969 by Jim Cope. Cope had previously held the seats of Cook and Watson before their abolitions. Neither seats have any connection to the modern seats with those names. Both Cook and Watson had covered parts of South Sydney now covered by Sydney. Cope had won Cook at a 1955 by-election following the death of the previous member, but the seat was abolished at the general election in the same year. Cope then held Watson from 1955 until it too was abolished in 1969, at which point he moved to the new seat of Sydney.

Cope held Sydney until 1975, and served as Speaker of the House of Representatives from 1973 until a dispute with the Whitlam government saw him resign in protest in 1975.

Cope was succeeded in 1975 by Leslie McMahon (ALP), who served until he was defeated for preselection before the 1983 election.

The seat was won in 1983 by Peter Baldwin, previously a Member of the Legislative Council who had become a symbol of the conflict between the Left and Right within the ALP in the Inner West in 1980 when he was brutally bashed in his home. Baldwin served as a federal minister from 1990 to 1996 and retired at the 1998 election.

The seat has been held since 1998 by Tanya Plibersek. Plibersek has served on the Labor frontbench since 2004, including as a minister from 2007 to 2013 and since 2022, and as the party’s deputy leader from 2013 until 2019.

Candidates

• Rachel Evans (Socialist Alliance)
• Tanya Plibersek (Labor)
• Luc Velez (Greens)

Assessment
The seat of Sydney includes a lot of strong areas for the Greens but the party has generally underperformed at a federal level. On paper the seat is safe for the ALP but the Greens have potential in this area, possibly when Plibersek is no longer contesting the seat.

2022 result

2022 two-candidate-preferred result

2022 two-party-preferred result

Booth breakdown

Booths have been divided into four parts:

• North-East – Millers Point, Pyrmont Sydney CBD, Surry Hills, Ultimo
• North-West – Balmain, Glebe, Lilyfield, Rozelle
• South-East – Alexandria, Redfern, Rosebery, Waterloo, Zetland
• South-West – Camperdown, Darlington, Erskineville, Newtown

Labor won a majority of the two-candidate-preferred vote against the Greens in all four areas, ranging from 60.1% in the south-west to 67.5% in the north-east.

The Liberal Party came third, with a primary vote ranging from 9.3% in the south-west to 22.0% in the north-east.

Election results in Sydney at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Labor vs Greens), two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Liberal Party and the Greens.

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