Division of Barker

Barker Australian House of Representatives Division
300px 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

Member		Party	Term
	Sir Langdon Bonython	Protectionist	1903–1906
	John Livingston	Anti-Socialist	1906–1909
		Commonwealth Liberal	1909–1917
		Nationalist	1917–1922
	Malcolm Cameron	Liberal Union	1922–1925
		Nationalist	1925–1931
		United Australia	1931–1934
	Archie Cameron	Country	1934–1940
		United Australia	1940–1944
		Liberal	1944–1956
	Jim Forbes	Liberal	1956–1975
	James Porter	Liberal	1975–1990
	Ian McLachlan	Liberal	1990–1998
	Patrick Secker	Liberal	1998–2013
	Tony Pasin	Liberal	2013–present

Election results

Main article: Electoral results for the Division of Barker

Australian federal election, 2013: Barker

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

References

• ABC profile for Barker: 2013
• AEC profile for Barker: 2013
• Poll Bludger profile for Barker: 2013

External links

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