Originally, Werriwa was a large and mostly rural electorate that stretched from south-west Sydney to the northern part of what is now the ACT, and included the Southern Highlands, Goulburn, and part of the South West Slopes. In succeeding years, with demographic change and electoral redistributions, Werriwa began to shrink and, from 1913 onwards, no longer included Lake George. It underwent several other major changes to its borders over the years. The 1949 expansion of Parliament saw Werriwa lose most of its remaining rural territory to the newly created Division of Macarthur and move to approximately its current position in south-west Sydney, over 150 kilometres (93mi) away from Lake George. However, it has retained the name of Werriwa, primarily as it is an original Federation electorate—the Australian Electoral Commission's guidelines on electoral redistributions require it to preserve the names of original Federation electorates where possible.[2]
It is a very safe seat for Labor, which has held it continuously since 1934 and for all but nine years since 1906.
Werriwa is best remembered for being the electorate of former Prime MinisterGough Whitlam, who held it from 1952 to 1978. It was represented from 1994 to 2005 by one of Whitlam's former aides, Mark Latham, the leader of the ALP and Leader of the Opposition from 2003 to 2005. In more recent times, a by-election in March 2005 resulted in Labor's Chris Hayes elected with over 55% of the vote, in a 16-candidate race which saw no other candidate poll above 8%.
Demographics
Werriwa is a heavily working class electorate and is considered part of Labor's Western Sydney "Red Wall" (seats that are reliably safe for Labor).[3]
Werriwa is home to relatively large immigrant communities. According to the 2021 census, 68.3% of residents had both parents born outside of Australia.[4] 37.6% of people only speak English at home.[4] Other languages spoken at home include Arabic at 11.4%, Vietnamese at 6.4%, Hindi at 3.6%, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic at 2.5% and Spanish at 2.2%.[4]
Alluvial diagram for preference flows in the seat of Werriwa in the 2022 federal election. Y indicates at what stage the winning candidate had over 50% of the votes and was declared the winner.
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