Marginal NSW seat of Coogee: a contest between major parties

By SASHA FOOT

The state seat of Coogee is currently held by Labor on a margin of just 1.6%, making it one of the most marginal seats in NSW.      

The electorate, created in 1927, covers the suburbs of Bondi Junction, Tamarama, Queens Park, Waverley, Bronte, Clovelly, Coogee, South Coogee and parts of Randwick, Kingsford and Maroubra.     

Compared to Vaucluse, a Liberal heartland seat, or the safe Labor seat of Maroubra, the Coogee electorate — wedged between both — swings between the two major parties.     

Labor’s Dr Marjorie O’Neill currently represents the seat after defeating Bruce Notley-Smith of the Liberal Party in 2019. Notley-Smith held the seat for nine years and proved immensely popular.   

Based on AEC data, the 2019 results show that while O’Neill won the two-party preferred result, Notley-Smith obtained more first-preference votes than O’Neill. Notley-Smith secured 41.14% of the votes, while O’Neill claimed just over 34%.     

Before Notley-Smith’s 2011 win, Labor held the seat for nearly four decades, from 1974. Earlier history shows consistent electorate swings between Labor and Liberal.    

North South divide

One reason the seat of Coogee swings between Labor and Liberal is that voting patterns differ between the northern and southern halves of the electorate.     

Randwick, Coogee, and parts of Clovelly, Maroubra, and Kingsford make up the southern half of the seat. These suburbs cover a portion of the federal electorate of Kingsford Smith, which is a traditional Labor seat.   

The northern suburbs of the electorate Bondi Junction, Queens Park, Waverley, Bronte, Tamarama and parts of Clovelly make up the federal seat of Wentworth, represented by teal independent Allegra Spender. These suburbs polled in favour of Spender in this year’s federal election.     

Spender won the formerly safe Liberal seat by campaigning on climate change and parliamentary integrity.     

As of yet, no independent candidates are challenging the marginal seat. But given Spender’s success, the chances of an independent contesting the seat is high, especially if a potential independent candidate were to adopt values synonymous with the teal wave.     

Coogee’s current member, O’Neill, also focused much of her 2019 campaign on climate action, as it was a key priority for Coogee voters.    

O’Neill has been pushing climate advocacy in the past month: she organised an online community meeting with the Shadow Climate Change Minister, Jihad Dib. As well as this, she opposed the Matraville incinerator due to air pollution concerns.   

While there is no known Liberal candidate for the seat of Coogee, the member will likely be of the moderate faction.  

According to the AFR, Daisy Turnbull, the daughter of former prime-minister Malcolm Turnbull, decided against running for the seat after being approached by the Liberal Party.