Kogarah

Margin: Labor 5.4%
Region: St George
Federal: Barton (54%)/Banks (46%)

Outgoing member: Cherie Burton (Labor)

Candidates in ballot paper order

	ANNIE TANG Unity Party BRENT HEBER Greens NICK ARONEY Liberal (bottom) SONNY SUSILO Christian Democratic Party DAVID LIN No Land Tax CHRIS MINNS Labor (top)

Located about 10 kilometres south of central Sydney, Kogarah was one of 20 seats retained by Labor at the 2011 election, at which Labor member Cherie Burton’s margin of 17.7% was pared back to 1.9%. The electorate only contains the western part of Kogarah itself, which sits in its south-eastern corner, and extends northwards through Carlton, Bexley and Hurstville to the South-Western Motorway. Labor’s grip on the seat has been tightened with the latest redistribution, which cedes the Liberal-leaning area on the shore of the Georges River at Blakehurst and Connells Point to Oatley, from which the electorate also gains the western part of Hurstville. The changes respectively affect around 8000 and 9000 voters, and boost the Labor margin from 1.9% to 5.4%.

Kogarah was created in 1930 and has been in Labor hands since 1953, although the margin was well below 5% between 1988 and 1995. It was dramatically changed by the abolition of its erstwhile western neighbour Georges River at the 2007 election, prior to which it had encompassed the Botany Bay coast around Brighton-le-Sands and Sans Souci. That area came to form the basis of the new seat of Rockdale, while Kogarah assumed much of the territory formerly encompassed by Georges River.

Labor’s member for Kogarah throughout this period has been Cherie Burton, who came to the seat in 1999 after her predecessor, Brian Langton, resigned as Transport Minister after being found to have lied to the Parliamentary Accounts Department over travel payments. Burton was previously a Premier’s Office staffer and an official with the Right faction National Union of Workers, and came to be aligned with the “Terrigals” sub-faction of the right, associated with Eddie Obeid and Joe Tripodi.

Burton is retiring at the coming election and will be succeeded as Labor candidate by Chris Minns, a former Hurstville deputy mayor, assistant state secretary of the ALP and chief-of-staff to ministers Carl Scully and John Robertson in the previous government. In February 2014, Andrew Clennell of the Daily Telegraph reported that the party’s head office was widely held to have a long-term plan to draft Minns to the leadership during Labor’s second term in opposition.

Corrections, complaints and feedback to William Bowe at pollbludger-at-bigpond-dot-com. Read William’s blog, The Poll Bludger.

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