Mawson is a single-member electoral district for the

South Australian House of Assembly The House of Assembly, or lower house, is one of the two chambers of the Parliament of South Australia. The other is the South Australian Legislative Council, Legislative Council. It sits in Parliament House, Adelaide, Parliament House in the st ...

. It covers the entirety of

Kangaroo Island Kangaroo Island, also known as Karta Pintingga (literally 'Island of the Dead' in the language of the Kaurna people), is Australia's third-largest island, after Tasmania and Melville Island. It lies in the state of South Australia, southwest ...

, and parts of the local government areas of

Alexandrina Council Alexandrina Council is a local government area in the Fleurieu and Kangaroo Island region of South Australia. The Alexandrina Council was formed on 1 July 1997 by the amalgamation of the District Council of Port Elliot and Goolwa, the District C ...

, the

City of Onkaparinga The City of Onkaparinga () is a local government area (LGA) located on the southern fringe of Adelaide, South Australia. It is named after the Onkaparinga River, whose name comes from ''Ngangkiparinga'', a Kaurna word meaning women's river. It ...

, and the

District Council of Yankalilla The District Council of Yankalilla is a local government area centred on the town of Yankalilla on the Fleurieu Peninsula in South Australia. It was created on 23 October 1856, when the District Council of Yankalilla and Myponga was divided i ...

. Major localities in the district include Cape Jervis, Kingscote,

McLaren Vale McLaren Vale is a wine region in the Australian state of South Australia located in the Adelaide metropolitan area and centred on the town of McLaren Vale about south of the Adelaide city centre. It is internationally renowned for the win ...

, Port Willunga,

Sellicks Beach __NOTOC__ Sellicks Beach, formerly spelt Sellick's Beach, is a suburb in the Australian state of South Australia located within Adelaide metropolitan area about from the Adelaide city centre. It is an outer southern suburb of Adelaide and ...

, Willunga and Yankalilla. The electorate was created in the 1969 redistribution, taking effect at the 1970 election. It is named after Sir

Douglas Mawson Sir Douglas Mawson OBE FRS FAA (5 May 1882 – 14 October 1958) was an Australian geologist, Antarctic explorer, and academic. Along with Roald Amundsen, Robert Falcon Scott, and Sir Ernest Shackleton, he was a key expedition leader duri ...

, a geologist and explorer who made several expeditions to

Antarctica Antarctica () is Earth's southernmost and least-populated continent. Situated almost entirely south of the Antarctic Circle and surrounded by the Southern Ocean, it contains the geographic South Pole. Antarctica is the fifth-largest cont ...

. For the first three decades of its existence, it was a bellwether seat held by the party of government. This pattern was broken at the 2002 election, when

Robert Brokenshire Robert Lawrence Brokenshire (born 1957) is a South Australian dairy farmer and former member of the South Australian Parliament. He represented the Australian Conservatives from 26 April 2017 to election defeat in 2018, and Family First Party ...

held the seat for the Liberals amidst a

Labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the la ...

election victory. Although it was thought that Brokenshire had established a base in Mawson, it reverted to form at the 2006 election, when Labor candidate and former journalist Leon Bignell won amid that year's massive Labor landslide. Bignell went on to increase his seat margins at the 2010 and 2014 elections. In both cases, he not only bucked the statewide trend, but also decades of voting patterns in the electorate. The 2016 redistribution ahead of the 2018 election heavily redistributed Mawson from a 5.6 percent Labor seat to a notional 3.2 percent Liberal seat, taking in areas down the coast as far as and including

.Final Report (PDF): Electoral Districts Boundaries Commission 8 December 2016
/ref> However, Bignell picked up a swing of over four percent to narrowly retain the seat even as Labor lost government; he thus became its second opposition member.

Members for Mawson

Election results

Notes

References

ECSA profile for Mawson: 2018

ABC profile for Mawson: 2018

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mawson Electoral districts of South Australia 1970 establishments in Australia Kangaroo Island