Division of Blaxland

The Division of Blaxland is an Australian electoral division in the state of New South Wales.

Blaxland Australian House of Representatives Division
Interactive map of electorate boundaries from the 2025 federal election
Created	1949
MP	Jason Clare
Party	Labor
Namesake	Gregory Blaxland
Electors	116,745 (2025)
Area	59 km2 (22.8 sq mi)
Demographic	Inner metropolitan
Electorates around Blaxland: McMahon Parramatta Parramatta McMahon Blaxland Reid Fowler Watson Watson
Footnotes
[1]

It covers 59 square kilometres (23 sq mi) of Labor heartland in the Canterbury Bankstown, Cumberland, Fairfield, Parramatta and Strathfield areas in Sydney's west. It is just south of the M4 Motorway at Parramatta, stretching until the Hume Highway at Yagoona in the south, encompassing consequent Middle Eastern and East Asian communities. The Labor Party has continuously held the seat since its inception in 1949.

Since 2007 the MP for Blaxland has been Jason Clare, who has served as Minister for Education under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese since 2022. From 1969 to 1996, the seat was held by Paul Keating, who served as Prime Minister of Australia from 1991 to 1996.

History

Gregory Blaxland, the division's namesake

The division was created in 1949 and is named after Gregory Blaxland, a farmer and an early Australian explorer of the Blue Mountains in New South Wales.^[2] The division has been a comfortably safe seat for Labor since its creation; western Sydney has been a Labor heartland for over a century. Initially created as a notional Lang Labor seat, the official ALP narrowly won it over former NSW Premier Jack Lang. This is the only election at which (official) Labor has won less than 56 percent of the two-party vote, as well as the only one in which it did not win an outright majority on the first count.

Its most notable member has been Paul Keating, who was Prime Minister of Australia from 1991 until 1996 after having previously served as Treasurer of Australia from 1983 until 1991. In 2007, Keating's successor, Michael Hatton, lost preselection for this seat to current member Jason Clare, who was a staffer for former New South Wales Premier Bob Carr.^[3]

In 2017 the division had the highest percentage of "No" responses in the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey, with 73.9% of the electorate's respondents to the survey responding "No".^[4] The Survey had strong opposition from Muslim communities in the electorate.^[5][6]

Boundaries

Since 1984 federal electoral division boundaries in Australia have been determined at redistributions by a redistribution committee appointed by the Australian Electoral Commission. Redistributions occur for the boundaries of divisions in a particular state, and they occur every seven years, or sooner if a state's representation entitlement changes or when divisions of a state are malapportioned.^[7]

The division is based in the western suburbs of Sydney, and until 2025 ran from the M4 Motorway in the north to the M5 Motorway in the south, generally between Woodville Road in the west and Stacey Street in the east, including the suburbs of Bass Hill, Berala, Birrong, Chester Hill, Georges Hall, Lansdowne, Lansvale, Potts Hill, Regents Park, Sefton, and Yagoona; and parts of the business park and airport at Bankstown Airport; as well as parts of Auburn, Bankstown, Canley Vale, Carramar, Condell Park, Guildford, Lidcombe, Merrylands, South Granville, Villawood, and Yennora.^[8]

Demographics

Blaxland is a socially conservative^[5] and historically working-class electorate^[6] which includes sizable immigrant populations from China, Vietnam, and the Middle East. It has one of the highest Muslim populations in Australia at 29.2%.^[9] According to the 2016 census, 20.1% of electors spoke Arabic at home,^[9] the highest percentage in Australia. The electorate remains an electoral stronghold for the centre-left Labor Party.

Cultural diversity

2021 Australian census[10]
Ancestry
Response	Blaxland	NSW	Australia
Lebanese	15.0%	2.2%	1.0%
Chinese	13.6%	7.2%	5.5%
Australian	11.1%	28.6%	29.9%
Vietnamese	9.7%	1.5%	1.3%
English	8.8%	29.9%	33.0%
Country of birth
Response	Blaxland	NSW	Australia
Australia	42.9%	65.4%	66.9%
Vietnam	8.4%	1.2%	1.0%
China	6.6%	3.1%	2.2%
Lebanon	6.1%	0.8%	0.3%
Nepal	3.2%	0.8%	0.5%
Pakistan	2.1%	0.4%	0.4%
Religious affiliation
Response	Blaxland	NSW	Australia
Islam	31.7%	4.3%	3.2%
Catholic	17.0%	22.4%	20.0%
No religion	15.1%	32.8%	38.4%
Buddhism	7.8%	2.8%	2.4%
Language spoken at home
Response	Blaxland	NSW	Australia
English	24.3%	67.6%	72.0%
Arabic	20.0%	2.8%	1.4%
Vietnamese	10.0%	1.5%	1.3%
Mandarin	6.7%	3.4%	2.7%
Cantonese	4.2%	1.8%	1.2%
Urdu	3.3%	0.6%	0.4%

Members

	Image	Member	Party	Term	Notes
		Jim Harrison (1903–1976)	Labor	10 December 1949 – 29 September 1969	Previously a member of the New South Wales Legislative Council. Retired
		Paul Keating (1944–)		25 October 1969 – 23 April 1996	Served as Northern Australia minister under Whitlam and Hawke. Served as Treasurer and Deputy Prime Minister under Hawke. Served as Prime Minister from 1991 to 1996. Resigned to retire from politics
		Michael Hatton (1951–)		15 June 1996 – 17 October 2007	Lost preselection and retired
		Jason Clare (1972–)		24 November 2007 – present	Served as minister under Gillard and Rudd. Incumbent. Currently a minister under Albanese

Election results

Main article: Electoral results for the Division of Blaxland

This section is an excerpt from Results of the 2025 Australian federal election in New South Wales § Blaxland.[edit]

2025 Australian federal election: Blaxland^[11]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Labor	Jason Clare	40,001	46.04	−5.52
	Liberal	Courtney Nguyen	17,023	19.59	−7.58
	Independent	Ahmed Ouf	16,302	18.76	+18.76
	Greens	Omar Sakr	6,854	7.89	+1.07
	One Nation	Mitchell Klievens	3,086	3.55	−0.90
	Libertarian	Mike Luo	1,894	2.18	+1.08
	Family First	Jennifer Di Girolamo	1,726	1.99	+1.99
Total formal votes			86,886	87.14	−1.32
Informal votes			12,822	12.86	+1.32
Turnout			99,708	85.43	+3.41
Two-party-preferred result
	Labor	Jason Clare	62,474	71.90	+8.86
	Liberal	Courtney Nguyen	24,412	28.10	−8.86
	Labor hold		Swing	+8.86

This section is an excerpt from Results of the 2022 Australian federal election in New South Wales § Blaxland.[edit]

2022 Australian federal election: Blaxland^[12]

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Labor	Jason Clare	44,905	54.98	−2.80
	Liberal	Oz Guney	22,059	27.01	−1.81
	Greens	Linda Eisler	5,187	6.35	+0.99
	United Australia	Elvis Sinosic	5,105	6.25	+3.37
	One Nation	Adam Stepanoff	4,421	5.41	+5.41
Total formal votes			81,677	89.21	+2.51
Informal votes			9,884	10.79	−2.51
Turnout			91,561	85.37	−3.08
Two-party-preferred result
	Labor	Jason Clare	53,039	64.94	+0.22
	Liberal	Oz Guney	28,638	35.06	−0.22
	Labor hold		Swing	+0.22

Alluvial diagram for preference flows in the seat of Blaxland in the 2022 federal election. The winning candidate got over 50% of first preference votes, so this alluvial diagram is indicative only, and preference flows were not used to determine the final result. The preference flows were used to determine the two-candidate-preferred.