ALP 8.3%
Incumbent MP
Stephen Jones, since 2016. Previously member for Throsby 2010-2016.
Geography
Southern Illawarra and Southern Highlands of NSW. Whitlam covers the entirety of the Shellharbour council area along with southern parts of the City of Wollongong. These suburbs mostly surround Lake Illawarra, including Shellharbour, Dapto and Albion Park. It also covers the entire Wingecarribee council area in the Southern Highlands, including Bowral, Moss Vale and Mittagong.
Redistribution
Whitlam expanded to the west, taking in the remainder of the Southern Highlands including Exeter and Bundanoon. Whitlam lost the southern Wollongong suburbs of Berkeley, Cringila, Korongulla and Windang. These changes cut the Labor margin from 10.1% to 8.3%.
History
The seat of Whitlam was known as Throsby until 2016. Throsby was first created for the 1984 election, and has always been held by the ALP. It has always been won by the ALP by a large margin.
The seat was first won in 1984 by Colin Hollis. Hollis had previously been elected in Macarthur for one term in 1983. Hollis retired in 2001, and was succeeded by former ACTU President Jennie George. George held the seat from 2001 to 2010.
In 2010, Stephen Jones won the seat for the ALP upon Jennie George’s retirement. Jones has been re-elected four times.
Candidates
Sitting Labor MP Stephen Jones is not running for re-election.
Assessment
Whitlam is a reasonably safe Labor seat, alhough the redistribution slightly weakened Labor’s position.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Stephen Jones | Labor | 49,218 | 45.0 | -3.8 | 42.4 |
| Mike Cains | Liberal | 30,849 | 28.2 | +2.8 | 29.8 |
| Jamie Dixon | Greens | 11,779 | 10.8 | +1.6 | 10.4 |
| Colin Hughes | One Nation | 7,543 | 6.9 | +6.9 | 6.9 |
| Allan Wode | United Australia | 5,886 | 5.4 | -3.5 | 5.2 |
| Michael Wheeler | Liberal Democrats | 4,062 | 3.7 | +3.7 | 3.5 |
| Independent | 1.5 | ||||
| Others | 0.3 | ||||
| Informal | 5,637 | 4.9 | -2.4 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Stephen Jones | Labor | 65,683 | 60.1 | -0.8 | 58.3 |
| Mike Cains | Liberal | 43,654 | 39.9 | +0.8 | 41.7 |
Booths have been divided into three areas, along local government boundaries.
The ALP won large majorities of the two-party-preferred vote in Shellharbour (63.8%) and Wollongong (66.6%). The Liberal Party won 50.2% in Southern Highlands.
The Greens primary vote ranged from 11.1% in the Southern Highlands to 12.8% in Wollongong.
| Voter group | GRN prim | ALP 2PP | Total votes | % of votes |
| Shellharbour | 11.7 | 63.8 | 21,030 | 19.5 |
| Southern Highlands | 11.1 | 49.8 | 15,870 | 14.7 |
| Wollongong | 12.8 | 66.6 | 8,967 | 8.3 |
| Pre-poll | 9.1 | 57.5 | 50,720 | 47.0 |
| Other votes | 11.2 | 57.3 | 11,388 | 10.5 |
Election results in Whitlam at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Liberal Party and the Greens.
Yes, would agree with that assessment Tommo. The previous iteration of Hume (established 2016) could also qualify as it combined outer suburban Sydney (Camden) with the rural towns like Goulburn.
The Liberals have blown their chance to make in-roads in this seat. It had key ingredients for them such as traditional, working-class outer suburbs – the sort of demographic that the Liberals would hope to target longer-term. They also had the Nationals withdraw and hence removing the risk of splitting the non-Labor vote.
The southern suburbs of Wollongong are economically dependent on steelworks. I don’t think a candidate who reminds them of Trump would go well, since he is putting huge tariffs on aluminium and steel imports and US is a major export market of ours.
Ben Britton still using Liberal corflutes and has a bunch of Liberal volunteers still. Liberal campaign in serious trouble, hard to believe a campaign can implode at the level this one has.
Interesting to see how well the Liberals will go and how much all of the Britton stuff will impact upon voters.
AB, I think this might be like Gilmore 2019 where a preselection conflict (Warren Mundine vs Grant Shultz) caused the Liberal Party to kick away a winnable seat. Gilmore saw a swing of 3% to Labor so the result for Whitlam could well see Labor hold easily with little or no swing against them.
I’ve seen a photo of Ben Britton’s corflute. It’s the Liberal one with an Australian flag covering where the Liberal logo usually is.
Imagine getting after volunteering for and building a connection with Britton as a Liberal volunteer, you get a message that Nathaniel Smith is now your candidate.