Psephos - Adam Carr's Election Archive

Adam Carr's Election Archive

Australian federal election, 2025
Division of Watson, New South Wales

Named for: Hon Chris Watson (1867-1941), NSW MP 1894-1901, federal MP 1901-10, Prime Minister 1904 (first Labor Prime Minister)


< Warringah previous seat | next seat Wentworth >
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Inner western Sydney: Bankstown, Chullora, Georges Hall, Lakemba, Punchbowl

Enrolment at 2019 election: 107,810
Enrolment at 2022 election: 108,714 (+00.9)
1999 republic referendum: Yes 54.4
2018 same-sex marriage survey: No 69.6
2023 Voice referendum: No 57.9

Sitting member: Hon Tony Burke (Labor): Elected 2004, 2007, 2010, 2013, 2016, 2019, 2022

Minister for Home Affairs
Minister for Immigration and Multicultural Affairs
Minister for Cyber Security
Minister for the Arts


2007 Labor majority over Liberal: 20.3%
2010 Labor majority over Liberal: 9.1%
2013 Labor majority over Liberal: 6.8%
2016 Labor majority over Liberal: 17.6%
2019 Labor majority over Liberal: 13.5%
2022 Labor majority over Liberal: 15.1%
2025 notional Labor majority over Liberal: 15.1%

Status: Safe Labor
Labor two-party vote 1983-2022


  • 2022 results
  • Statistics and history

  • Announced candidates:

    Hon Tony Burke
    Australian Labor Party

    Division of Watson

    Watson was created in 1993, when the old seat of St George was renamed. (There was an earlier seat of Watson from 1934 to 1969, orginally Prime Minister Chris Watson's seat of South Sydney, in much the same area.) It was initially based in Sydney's inner southern suburbs, a heavily working-class and multi-cultural area, and the centre of Sydney's large and growing Muslim community. The seat has one of the highest proportion of people born in non English speaking countries of any electorate. It has the second-highest proportion of Muslims of any seat (after Blaxland). This explains Watson's No vote on marriage equality.

    The 2007 and 2010 redistributions moved Watson to the north and west, so that it shed some of its working-class territory and gained more middle-class areas in Ashfield, Burwood and Strathfield. As a result, the Labor two-party vote fell from 20.3% in 2007 to 6.8% in 2013. The 2016 redistribution partly reversed this, removing parts of Strathfield and Burwood and adding some Labor territory in Canterbury and Punchbowl, and increasing the Labor margin. The 2024 redistribution has moved the seat even further west, taking in Bankstown and Yagoona.

    Members for St George included Bill Morrison, a minister in the Whitlam Government. Members for Watson have been Leo McLeay, a legendary powerbroker in the right-wing faction of the NSW Labor Party, and Tony Burke, who succeeded him in 2004.

    Tony Burke, Labor MP Burke since 2004, was an organiser with the Shop Distributive and Allied Employees Association before being elected to the NSW Legislative Council in 2003. He went straight onto the opposition front bench in 2004 and was a senior minister throughout the Rudd-Gillard Government. He is now Minister for Home Affairs, Immigration and Multicultural Affairs, Cyber Security and the Arts.

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