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| Adam Carr's Election Archive
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Australian federal election, 2025
Division of Macnamara, Victoria
Named for: Dame Jean Macnamara (1899-1968), medical
scientist and children's health advocate
Inner Melbourne: Albert Park, Caulfield, Port Melbourne, South Melbourne, St Kilda
Enrolment at 2019 election: 113,809
Enrolment at 2022 election: 110,603 (-02.5)
1999 republic referendum: Yes 65.9
2018 same-sex marriage survey: Yes 82.0
2023 Voice referendum: Yes 64.6
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Sitting member: Josh Burns (Labor): Elected 2019, 2022
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2007 Labor majority over Liberal: 7.2% *
2010 Labor majority over Liberal: 7.6% *
2013 Labor majority over Liberal: 3.6% *
2016 Labor majority over Liberal: 1.3% *
2019 Labor majority over Liberal: 6.3%
2022 Labor majority over Liberal: 12.2%%
2025 notional Labor majority over Liberal: 12.2%%
* as Melbourne Ports
Status: Safe Labor
Labor two-party vote 1983-2022
2022 results
Statistics and history
Announced candidates:
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Josh Burns
Australian Labor Party |
Benson Saulo
Liberal Party |
Sonya Semmens
Australian Greens |
Division of Macnamara
Macnamara was created at the 2018 redistribution, when the Federation seat of
Melbourne Ports was renamed. By then it had become one of the most radically changed of the federation seats, both in terms of its boundaries and its social composition. As Macnamara, it
is now a wealthy, cosmopolitan, and highly-marginal inner-city seat. Once based in Melbourne's working-class heartland in the western
suburbs, after 1969 Melbourne Ports extended eastwards to St Kilda, while in 1990 the wealthy suburb of Caulfield was added. This put it
in the top 10% of electorates in terms of median income level and proportion of people in professional
occupations.
Despite this, the seat continues to elect a Labor member, as it has done since 1906, although since 1990 it has been highly marginal.
This is partly because many of its high-income residents in suburbs like St Kilda hold left-wing views, and partly because the electorate
is about 15% Jewish, and
many Jewish voters who would otherwise vote Liberal have supported successive Jewish Labor members, Michael Danby and Josh Burns.
Members for Melbourne Ports included Labor Cabinet ministers
Jack Holloway,
Frank Crean (Deputy Prime Minister in the Whitlam
Government) and
Clyde Holding.
Michael Danby, who was first elected in 1998, was a Parliamentary Secretary in the last year of the Rudd-Gillard Government.
The Green vote in Melbourne Ports rose from 5.2% in 1996 to 23.9% in 2016. At that election Danby polled 26.9%, the lowest primary vote
ever polled by a successful Labor candidate. He narrowly avoided being pushed into third place by the Greens, and only just held off the
Liberals. He retired in 2019.
Josh Burns, Labor MP for Macnamara since 2019, worked as an adviser to Danby and then to Premier
Daniel Andrews. At the 2019 election
he maintained most of Danby's support in Caulfield while gaining a large swing to Labor in the western half of the seat. In 2022 he gained
a further two-party swing, making the seat notionally safe for Labor. But the Greens vote rose further, again threatening to push Labor
into third place.
The Liberal candidate in 2025 will be Benson Saulo, managing partner of First Australians Capital, an Indigenous-led investment fund manager, and former Consul-General in Houston. The Greens candidate will be Sonya Semmens, described as "an NGO consultant, educator and small business owner." In 2025 Macnamara will be the Labor seat at greatest risk of falling to the Greens.
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