Banks Federal Election 2025 Results

Banks' boundary pushes north from the M5 to Milperra Road. It also gains Blakehurst and Carrs Park in the east from Cook while losing Allawah to Barton. Around 12,000 voters added north of the M5 voted 60% Labor, with half that number transferred from Cook voting 63% Liberal, the 10,000 voters transferred to Barton splitting evenly. Taken together the change cause the Liberal margin to decline from 3.2% to 2.6%. See polling place result map below for detail of the boundary change.

Banks was one of the electorates created on the expansion of the Parliament in 1949. It is named after Sir Joseph Banks, the botanist on Captain Cook's 1770 voyage of discovery and key advocate for establishing a colony at Botany Bay.

Banks was held by the Labor Party from its first contest in 1949 through to 2013 when it fell to the Liberal Party for the first time. Labor had only four members in those 64 years, the last being Daryl Melham who held the seat from 1990 until his defeat in 2013. New Liberal MP David Coleman has won Banks three times since though the seat has remained marginal.

(Victories by a party of government are indicated by thick coloured underlining.)

(Click on polling place for results)

For decades Banks has covered the same corner of south-western Sydney. Its position on the Georges River, with bushland on the opposite bank, has given it a strong natural southern boundary. The question for redistribution commissioners has usually been how far north and east to draw the boundaries.

Banks takes in the southern parts of the former Bankstown and Hurstville Council areas. Its southern and western boundaries have usually been the Georges River between the Illawarra rail bridge at Oatley and the Milperra Road Bridge. It has traditionally been bounded in the north by Milperra Road and in the east by King Georges Road and the Illawarra rail line. The boundaries to be used for the 2025 election are the same as those used at the 2001 and 2004 elections with the addition in the east of the area between the southern rail line and Carrs Park. (See changing boundaries map below)

At the 2010 and 2013 elections, the area around East Hills, Panania and Milperra was transferred to Hughes on the other side of the Georges River with Banks stretching east to include Hurstville, Allawah and Carrs Park. The electorate moved west again for elections from 2016 to 2022, but with a new northern boundary along the M5

The map below shows the boundary changes since 2001.Different boundaries can be brought on or taken off using the tick boxes.



Boundary changes might have played some part in loosening Labor's grip on Banks, but demographic change has been the more important factor. The distract was part of the post-WW2 suburban expansion of Sydney. It used to be an area of small houses on large blocks, primed for knock down re-builds or higher density re-development, and blocks along the Georges River were ideal for big houses with water views. And the district had the advantage of established rail links to central Sydney. Housing stock was going through generational change, and those moving in and re-building brought a new affluence to the district.

Banks, along with the local state seat of East Hills, had been held by Labor since the early 1950s. East Hills was won by the Liberal Party for the first time at the 2011 state election, and the Liberals gained the area covered by the state seat of Oatley at the same election. Banks was won by the Liberal Party for the first time at the 2013 Federal election. East Hills returned to Labor at the 2023 NSW electon but Oatley has been retained by the Liberal Party, as was Banks when the Coalition lost Federal office in 2022.

As the graph below suggests, boundary changes did not destroy Labor's position in Banks. Rather it was slow demographic change as tracked by the narrowing gap between the Liberal two-party preferred vote in Banks and Coalition support in NSW. On the Coalition's big win in 2013, the gap was narrow enough to deliver victory to the Liberal Party. And at three elections since, Liberal support in Banks has been above the NSW trend line for the first time.

Results 1983-2022