Division of Barker

The 63,886 km² seat currently stretches from Morgan in the north to Port MacDonnell in the south, taking in the Murray Mallee, the Riverland, the Murraylands and most of the Barossa Valley, and includes the towns of Barmera, Berri, Bordertown, Coonawarra, Keith, Kingston SE, Loxton, Lucindale, Mannum, Millicent, Mount Gambier, Murray Bridge, Naracoorte, Penola, Renmark, Robe, Tailem Bend, Waikerie, and parts of Nuriootpa and Tanunda.

File:Captain Sturt Monument, Hindmarsh Island.jpg, the division's namesake]]

Barker is the only one of South Australia's remaining original single member seven divisions, created in 1903, that has never been held by the Australian Labor Party and is traditionally the safest seat for the Liberal Party of Australia in the state. It has been in the hands of the Liberals and its predecessors for its entire existence, except for a six-year period when Country Party MP Archie Cameron held it; however, Cameron joined the United Australia Party, direct forerunner of the Liberals, in 1940. The conservative parties have usually had a secure hold on the seat. This tradition has only been threatened three times. Labor came within 1.2 percent of winning the seat at the 1929 election, and within 1.7 percent of winning the seat at the 1943 election. In the latter election, Barker was left as the only non-Labor seat in South Australia, and indeed the only Coalition seat outside the eastern states. It would be seven decades before the conservatives' hold on Barker would be seriously threatened again.

Though it has always covered the state's entire south-east, Barker was historically a hybrid urban-rural seat that extended for some distance into the Adelaide area. Until 1949, only three seats--Adelaide, Boothby and Hindmarsh were based primarily on the capital. For most of the first half-century after Federation, Barker included Glenelg and the Holdfast Bay area, and at times stretched as far as the inner metropolitan suburbs of Keswick and Henley Beach.

However, it became an entirely rural seat after parliament was expanded in the redistribution prior to the 1949 election when the new Division of Kingston was created based around Glenelg and the southern suburbs of Adelaide. {{Cite news |date=1949-11-21 |title=Federal election guide |url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/130768572 |access-date=2024-12-11 |work=News}} This made an already safely conservative seat even more so. Barker had always included Kangaroo Island and the connecting Fleurieu Peninsula until parliament was expanded in the redistribution prior to the 1984 election. Exchanged between Barker and Mayo since, Kangaroo Island and the Fleurieu Peninsula have been in Mayo since the redistribution prior to the 2004 election, where the massive redistribution of Wakefield, resulting from the abolition of Bonython, saw Barker absorb the Riverland from Wakefield.

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.{{cite web |last1=Muller |first1=Damon |title=The process of federal redistributions: a quick guide |url=https://www.aph.gov.au/About_Parliament/Parliamentary_Departments/Parliamentary_Library/pubs/rp/rp1718/Quick_Guides/FederalRedistributions |website=Parliament of Australia |access-date=19 April 2022 |date=14 November 2017}}

The seat's most prominent members have been Cameron, a former leader of the Country Party and later Speaker of the House in the Menzies government, Jim Forbes, a minister in the Menzies, Holt, Gorton and McMahon governments, and Ian McLachlan, Minister for Defence from 1996 to 1998 in the Howard government.

South Australian Senator Nick Xenophon confirmed in December 2014 that by mid-2015 the Nick Xenophon Team (NXT) would announce candidates in all states and territories at the 2016 election, with Xenophon citing the government's ambiguity on the Collins-class submarine replacement project as motivation.{{cite news|last=Bourke|first=Latika|author-link=Latika Bourke|title=Subs backlash: Nick Xenophon sets sights on Liberal-held seats in Adelaide|url=http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/subs-backlash-nick-xenophon-sets-sights-on-liberalheld-seats-in-adelaide-20150405-1mez7u.html|access-date=2015-12-29|newspaper=The Sydney Morning Herald|publisher=Fairfax Media|date=2015-04-06|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150902201151/http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/subs-backlash-nick-xenophon-sets-sights-on-liberalheld-seats-in-adelaide-20150405-1mez7u.html|archive-date=2 September 2015}} ABC psephologist Antony Green's 2016 federal election guide for South Australia stated NXT had a "strong chance of winning lower house seats and three or four Senate seats".[http://www.abc.net.au/news/federal-election-2016/guide/preview-sa/ Election Guide (SA) - 2016 federal election guide: Antony Green ABC]

A ReachTEL seat-level opinion poll in the safe Liberal seat of Barker of 869 voters conducted by robocall on 20 June during the 2016 election campaign surprisingly found NXT candidate James Stacey leading the Liberals' Tony Pasin 52–48 on the two-candidate preferred vote. Seat-level opinion polls in the other two rural Liberal South Australian seats revealed NXT also leading in both Grey and Mayo.[http://www.heraldsun.com.au/news/election-2016-malcolm-turnbull-could-lose-another-seat-to-independent-nick-xenophons-team/news-story/ce11710e8478383621a00218b1a91202 Election 2016: Malcolm Turnbull could lose another seat to independent Nick Xenophon’s team - Herald Sun 20 June 2016]

Election-night counting showed that Stacey was second to Pasin on first preferences, however the indicative two-candidate preferred count had been done between Pasin and Labor candidate Mat O'Brien, which meant there was no early indication of whether Stacey would receive enough preferences to beat Pasin before postal, absentee and provisional votes were counted and preferences distributed in the following two weeks.{{cite web |url=http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-07-05/results-in-close-sa-seats-will-take-time-aec-says/7568978 |title=Election 2016: Results in close South Australian seats will take time, AEC says |date=5 July 2016 |access-date=5 July 2016 |publisher=Australian Broadcasting Corporation}} Ultimately, it was confirmed that Stacey had not only overtaken O'Brien on first preferences, but reduced Pasin's margin in Barker to 4.7 percent—thus making Barker a marginal seat for the first time since Cameron's near-defeat in the 1943 landslide.{{cite web |url=http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-20499-180.htm |title=Barker, SA - AEC Tally Room |access-date=2016-08-02 |url-status=dead |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20160805050414/http://vtr.aec.gov.au/HouseDivisionPage-20499-180.htm |archive-date=2016-08-05 }} However, Barker remains a comfortably safe Liberal seat in a "traditional" two-party matchup with Labor; Pasin only suffered a one-percent swing against Labor.

{{main|Electoral results for the Division of Barker}}

{{Excerpt|Results of the 2025 Australian federal election in South Australia|section=Barker}}

{{reflist}}

• [http://www.aec.gov.au/Elections/federal_elections/2001/Profiles/sa/index.htm SA boundary map, 2001: AEC]
• [https://web.archive.org/web/20160310083801/http://www.atlas.sa.gov.au/images/4sa9politics1.jpg SA boundary map, 1984: Atlas SA]

{{Australian federal divisions of South Australia}}

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Category:Electoral divisions of Australia

Category:Electoral divisions of Australia in South Australia

Category:Constituencies established in 1903

Category:1903 establishments in Australia