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
Division of Port Adelaide (green) in South Australia
Created:	1949
MP:	Mark Butler
Party:	Labor
Namesake:	Port Adelaide
Area:	253 km² (98 sq mi)
Demographic:	Inner Metropolitan

The Division of Port Adelaide is an Australian Electoral Division in the state of South Australia. It is located in the northern suburbs of Adelaide, covering the area around the Barker Inlet, part of the Gulf St Vincent. It stretches from St Kilda in the north down to Grange Road, and is roughly bounded on the east by the Gawler railway line. It also includes the Mawson Lakes area. It includes the suburbs of Findon, Woodville, Hendon, Croydon, Exeter, North Haven, Wingfield, Salisbury, Buckland Park, St Kilda and Port Adelaide itself.

The Division was named after the suburb of Port Adelaide, the working port of Adelaide. It was proclaimed at the redistribution of 11 May 1949, and was first contested at the 1949 Federal election. The seat is currently a very safe Australian Labor Party seat with the closest the ALP has ever come to losing it was at the 1988 by-election, where Labor candidate Rod Sawford received 55.2 percent of the two-party vote. It currently stands, after the 2010 vote, at 70.03 percent, making it the safest Labor seat in the state and the sixth-safest Labor seat in Australia. Port Adelaide remains the only electorate in South Australia to have voted Labor at every federal election in its existence.

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 less than 1 percent of the vote on each occasion.

The sitting member, Labor's Rod 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, 2010: Port Adelaide
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Labor	Mark Butler	48,638	53.82	-4.42
	Liberal	Nigel McKenna	21,615	23.92	-1.29
	Greens	Kalyna Micenko	13,659	15.11	+6.35
	Family First	Bruce Hambour	6,467	7.16	+1.38
Total formal votes			90,379	92.82	-2.22
Informal votes			6,991	7.18	+2.22
Turnout			97,370	93.35	-1.52
Two-candidate preferred result
	Labor	Mark Butler	63,295	70.03	+0.28
	Liberal	Nigel McKenna	27,084	29.97	-0.28
	Labor hold		Swing	+0.28

External links

• Division of Port Adelaide - Australian Electoral Commission