Division of Macquarie

The Division of Macquarie is an Australian Electoral Division in New South Wales. The division was created in 1900 and was one of the original 75 divisions contested at the first federal election. It is named for Lachlan Macquarie, who was Governor of New South Wales between 1810 and 1821. Its best known member is Ben Chifley (ALP), who was Australian Prime Minister from 1945 to 1949.

It is located to the west of Sydney, and today it covers a large part of the Blue Mountains, as well as the Hawkesbury region. Voting patterns within the electorate vary significantly between these two areas. The two-party preferred vote favoured the Liberal candidate by more than 70:30 in the Hawkesbury region at the 2004 Federal election. The result was partially reversed in the Blue Mountains where the result was approximately 60:40, favouring the Labor candidate. This voting pattern was evident in the three previous Federal elections up to 2007.

It has changed hands many times during its long history, but in elections previous to 2007 Kerry Bartlett consolidated his 1996 win to make the electorate a fairly safe Liberal seat.

On September 13, 2006 however the Australian Electoral Commission announced that the seat was to be redistributed. The Hawkesbury towns moved to Greenway while Macquarie moved west as far as Bathurst. The seat then contained the rural service and university town of Bathurst and the working-class towns of Lithgow, Portland and Oberon. This restored the seat's...
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