The traditional Liberal Party heartland that has turned red

Daily Mail​

09-05-2025

The Labor Party now has a safe seat on Sydney 's wealthy north shore for the first time ever.
Areas east of the Lane Cove River had traditionally been Liberal Party heartland, producing conservative premiers and prime ministers.
Until the May 3 election, Labor had never held a federal electorate in this rich part of Sydney, and it had been more than four decades since the ALP held any state seat on the north shore.
But that has now all changed with Labor getting resoundingly re-elected in Bennelong, even with new boundaries covering Chatswood, Lane Cove and Greenwich.
This saw Jerome Laxale defeat his Liberal opponent Scott Yung, 59 per cent to 41 per cent, after scoring a nine per cent swing in his favour after preferences.
Labor now has constituents that had previously been represented by four Liberal Party leaders during the past three decades.
Even more surprisingly, Labor convincingly won upmarket polling booths that had traditionally been Liberal Party strongholds, with the two-party ALP vote in these leafy areas with water views well above the national average of 54.8 per cent.
A Chatswood booth, west of the Pacific Highway, delivered Labor a landslide 65.2 per cent to 34.8 per cent margin, with Mr Laxale getting 45.9 per cent of the primary vote.
Greenwich on the Lane Cove River was even more enthusiastic about Labor, with this booth voting for the ALP with a 69 per cent to 31 per cent margin, with Mr Laxale getting almost half or 49.6 per cent of first-preference votes.
Lane Cove was almost just as pro-Labor, with Mr Laxale having 67.4 per cent of of the vote, compared with just 32.6 per cent for the Liberal Party.
This area is far from working class, with Lane Cove now having a median house price of $3.1million, which is more than double greater Sydney's $1.5million mid-point, CoreLogic data showed.
Former Lane Cove mayor Andrew Zbik, who in 2017 became the area's first Labor representative since 1947 when he was elected to council, said the ALP was no longer regarded as socialist on Sydney's north shore.
'We've proven at a local level that we're not the extreme socialists that their grandparents affiliated the Labor Party as going back to the Cold War,' he told Daily Mail Australia.
'Labor was never a communist party but a lot of Liberal voters mistakenly thought that.'
Mr Zbik, a financial planner, said Labor representation on the Lane Cove and Ryde council areas had helped turn traditionally Liberal Party areas red, boosting the political fortunes of Mr Laxale, a former Ryde mayor.
Greenwich on the Lane Cove River was even more enthusiastic about Labor, with this booth voting for the ALP with a 69 per cent to 31 per cent margin, with Mr Laxale getting 49.6 per cent of first-preference votes
'We've definitely found at a local level, they're actually going, "You guys are quite sensible",' he said.
'I think that's where Jerome's built his profile as well - as local councillor, mayor, sensible, rational, makes good decisions; he's now the federal member for Bennelong.
'At the local level, we proved that you can trust voting Labor.'
The lower north shore also has some of Australia's highest registration numbers for new Teslas.
Mr Zbik said his council's embrace of charging stations for electric cars had proven popular with north shore voters, helping Labor win Bennelong as defeated Opposition Leader Peter Dutton pledged during the campaign to scrap EV tax breaks.
'Lane Cove council, about two years ago we had the most public charging infrastructure out of any council on the lower north shore,' he said.
'This is an area that government needs to help catch up on and very much an acute awareness that Australia is behind the world compared to Europe in particular on take-up of electric cars.'
The abolition of the former Teal-held seat of North Sydney saw Bennelong redrawn to cover 1970s boundaries that were in place when future prime minister John Howard first ran as a federal Liberal candidate in 1974.
The absence of a Teal candidate in Bennelong meant the left-wing vote went to Labor instead of the Liberal Party.
'I believe so and the minute the Liberals came out with a nuclear policy, my reading of that is they're not trying to win back these Teal seats,' Mr Zbik said.
Until Labor's victory on Bennelong, on new boundaries, the Labor Party hadn't held a seat on Sydney's north shore at a state or federal level since 1981, after the ALP had won Willoughby for a term in 1978 during popular premier Neville Wran's landslide re-election.
The federal seat of Bennelong overlaps with the Liberal state seat of Willoughby, previously held by former premier Gladys Berejiklian and Opposition Leader Peter Collins, and the state seat of Lane Cove, which Kerry Chikarovski held as state Liberal leader.
With Mr Howard thrown in the mix, Labor now represents an area held by four Liberal Party leaders during the past three decades.
While the betting markets had expected the Liberal Party to lose neighbouring Bradfield, Gisele Kapterian was leading her Teal opponent Nicolette Boele by 204 votes, having 50.1 per cent of the two-party vote on Thursday night.