Division of Barker
| Barker Australian House of Representatives Division | |
|---|---|
 Barker (dark green) in the state of South Australia | |
| Created | 1903 |
| MP | Tony Pasin |
| Party | Liberal |
| Namesake | Collet Barker |
| Electors | 103,321 (2013) |
| Area | 63,886 km2 (24,666.5 sq mi) |
| Demographic | Rural |
The Division of Barker is an Australian Electoral Division in the south-east of South Australia.
The 63,886 km² seat currently stretches from Morgan in the north to Port MacDonnell in the south, taking in the Murray Mallee, the Riverland, the Murraylands and most of the Barossa Valley, and includes the towns of Barmera, Berri, Bordertown, Keith, Kingston SE, Loxton, Mannum, Millicent, Mount Gambier, Murray Bridge, Naracoorte, Penola, Renmark, Tailem Bend, Waikerie, and parts of Nuriootpa and Tanunda.
The division was established on 2 October 1903, when South Australia's original single multi-member division was split into seven single-member divisions. It is named for Collet Barker, an early explorer of the region at the mouth of the Murray River. It is the only one of South Australia's remaining original six divisions that has never been held by the Australian Labor Party. It has been in the hands of the Liberal Party and its predecessors for its entire existence, except for a six-year period when Country Party MP Archie Cameron held it; however, Cameron joined the United Australia Party, direct forerunner of the Liberals, in 1940. The conservative parties have usually had a secure hold on the seat. This tradition has only been threatened twice, both at high-tide elections. Labor came within 1.2 percent of winning the seat at the 1929 election, and within 1.7 percent of winning the seat at the 1943 election. In the latter election, Barker was left as the only non-Labor seat in South Australia, and indeed the only Coalition seat outside the eastern states.
Barker was originally a hybrid urban-rural seat that extended for some distance into the Adelaide area, around Glenelg and Holdfast Bay. However, it became an entirely rural seat after parliament was expanded in the redistribution prior to the 1949 election, making this strongly conservative seat even more so. It has always been based in the south-eastern rural areas of South Australia, centred on Bordertown and Mount Gambier, but in recent years with the redistribution of Wakefield, Barker's boundaries have been extended to the north to include Riverland towns such as Renmark.
The seat's most prominent members have been Cameron, a former leader of the Country Party and later Speaker of the House in the Menzies Government, Jim Forbes, a minister in the Menzies, Holt, Gorton and McMahon governments, and Ian McLachlan, Minister for Defence from 1996 to 1998 in the Howard Government.
Members
Election results
| Party | Candidate | Votes | % | ±% | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liberal | Tony Pasin | 48,678 | 52.61 | −2.47 | |
| Labor | Phil Golding | 16,993 | 18.37 | −9.62 | |
| Family First | Kristin Lambert | 7,368 | 7.96 | +1.78 | |
| Independent | Richard Sage | 6,617 | 7.15 | +7.15 | |
| Greens | Mark Keough | 5,224 | 5.65 | −3.39 | |
| National | Miles Hannemann | 4,021 | 4.35 | +4.35 | |
| Palmer United | Balwinder Singh Jhandi | 3,623 | 3.92 | +3.92 | |
| Total formal votes | 92,524 | 94.62 | +0.12 | ||
| Informal votes | 5,259 | 5.38 | −0.12 | ||
| Turnout | 97,783 | 94.63 | −0.35 | ||
| Two-party-preferred result | |||||
| Liberal | Tony Pasin | 61,571 | 66.55 | +3.54 | |
| Labor | Phil Golding | 30,953 | 33.45 | −3.54 | |
| Liberal hold | Swing | +3.54 | |||
