Division of Port Adelaide

This article is about the federal electorate. For the South Australian state electorate, see Electoral district of Port Adelaide.

Port Adelaide Australian House of Representatives Division
300px Port Adelaide (dark green) in the city of Adelaide
Created	1949
MP	Mark Butler
Party	Labor
Namesake	Port Adelaide
Electors	105,204 (2013)
Area	181 km2 (69.9 sq mi)
Demographic	Inner Metropolitan

The Division of Port Adelaide is an Australian electoral division in the state of South Australia. The 181 km² seat extends from St Kilda in the north to Grange Road and Findon in the south with part of Salisbury to the east. Suburbs include Alberton, Beverley, Birkenhead, Cheltenham, Findon, Kilkenny, Largs Bay, Mansfield Park, North Haven, Ottoway, Parafield Gardens, Paralowie, Pennington, Port Adelaide, Queenstown, Rosewater, Salisbury Downs, Semaphore, Woodville, West Croydon, and part of Seaton. The seat also includes Torrens Island and Garden Island.

The seat was named after the suburb of Port Adelaide, the working port of Adelaide, with the seat of Hindmarsh moving south as a result. The seat was proclaimed at the redistribution of 11 May 1949, and was first contested at the 1949 federal election. For most of its history, it has been a comfortably safe Labor seat. The closest Labor has ever come to losing it was at the 1988 by-election, where Labor candidate Rod Sawford won on a 5.2 percent two-party margin. The two-party margin currently stands, after the 2013 vote, at 14.02 percent, making it the safest Labor seat in the state. Port Adelaide remains the only electorate in South Australia to have voted Labor at every federal election in its existence. The former safe Labor seat of Bonython was abolished, with some southern parts transferred to Port Adelaide, however the majority of Bonython was transferred to Wakefield which contributed to Wakefield's change from a rural safe Liberal seat to a hybrid urban-rural notional marginal Labor seat.

A notable curiosity in recent years was that in the 1998 and 2001 federal elections, the seat was the only one in Australia where a Communist Party candidate, Michael Perth, stood for election. This was the only occasion when the Liberal Party did not preference the One Nation Party last. He achieved about one percent of the vote on each occasion.

Sawford retired at the 2007 election, which saw South Australian Labor's historically safe seat easily won by the newly endorsed Labor candidate, unionist and former head of the Left state Labor faction Mark Butler.

Members

Member		Party	Term
	Albert Thompson	Labor	1949–1963
	Fred Birrell	Labor	1963–1974
	Mick Young	Labor	1974–1988
	Rod Sawford	Labor	1988–2007
	Mark Butler	Labor	2007–present

Election results

Main article: Electoral results for the Division of Port Adelaide

Australian federal election, 2013: Port Adelaide

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Labor	Mark Butler	46,024	50.58	−3.98
	Liberal	Nigel McKenna	23,955	26.32	+3.32
	Greens	Dusan Popovic	7,834	8.61	−6.51
	Family First	Bruce Hambour	6,843	7.52	+0.29
	Palmer United	Chandy Huynh	5,227	5.74	+5.74
	Australia First	Terry Cooksley	1,116	1.23	+1.23
Total formal votes			90,999	93.80	+1.14
Informal votes			6,020	6.20	−1.14
Turnout			97,019	92.17	−1.16
Two-party-preferred result
	Labor	Mark Butler	58,261	64.02	−6.89
	Liberal	Nigel McKenna	32,738	35.98	+6.89
	Labor hold		Swing	−6.89

See also

• Australian federal election, 2016

References

• ABC profile for Port Adelaide: 2016
• ABC profile for Port Adelaide: 2013
• AEC profile for Port Adelaide: 2016
• Poll Bludger profile for Port Adelaide: 2013

External links

• SA boundary map, 2001: AEC
• SA boundary map, 1984: Atlas SA