Electoral district of Chaffey

Chaffey South Australia—House of Assembly
Interactive map of electoral district boundaries from the 2022 state election
State	South Australia
Created	1938
MP	Tim Whetstone
Party	Liberal
Namesake	George Chaffey and William Chaffey
Electors	26,677 (2026)
Area	30,124 km2 (11,630.9 sq mi)
Demographic	Rural
Coordinates	34°32′16″S 140°16′14″E
Electorates around Chaffey: Stuart Stuart N. S. W. Ngadjuri Schubert Chaffey N. S. W. Victoria Hammond MacKillop Victoria
Footnotes

Chaffey, created in 1936, is a single-member electoral district for the South Australian House of Assembly. It covers the Riverland region of South Australia including the towns of Renmark, Berri, Barmera, Loxton and Waikerie. The seat is named after brothers George and William Chaffey who established the irrigation area along the Murray River from 1886.

History

Chaffey spent most of the Playmander era in the hands of independent William MacGillivray. The Liberal and Country League did not win it until 1956. Chaffey was won three times by Labor's Reg Curren as their most marginal electorate on a two-party-preferred basis – in 1962 on 50.1%, 1965 on 50.7% and 1970 on 50.2%. Curren's 1965 victory helped put Labor in government in 1965 after 33 years in opposition, while his loss to the LCL's Peter Arnold was one of two Labor losses that returned the LCL to government in 1968. Curren reclaimed it for Labor during his party's 1970 landslide victory after the end of the Playmander, only to lose it back to Arnold in 1973. At the 1975 election, Arnold picked up a massive 13.5 percent swing, and Labor has never come close to winning it since. Chaffey was one of several rural electorates where Labor suffered large swings in 1975; Labor suffered a swing of 15.5 percent in Mount Gambier and a 16.4 percent in Millicent.

Chaffey remained in the hands of the LCL and its successor, the Liberal Party, until 1997 when Karlene Maywald narrowly won it for the SA Nationals. Maywald picked up a large swing in 2002, boosting her two-candidate preferred vote to 64 percent. She held the electorate without serious difficulty until she was defeated in 2010 by Liberal Tim Whetstone, who still holds the seat.

Members for Chaffey

Member		Party	Term
	William MacGillivray	Independent	1938–1956
	Harold King	Liberal and Country	1956–1962
	Reg Curren	Labor	1962–1968
	Peter Arnold	Liberal and Country	1968–1970
	Reg Curren	Labor	1970–1973
	Peter Arnold	Liberal and Country	1973–1974
		Liberal	1974–1993
	Kent Andrew	Liberal	1993–1997
	Karlene Maywald	Nationals SA	1997–2010
	Tim Whetstone	Liberal	2010–present

Election results

Main article: Electoral results for the district of Chaffey

This section is an excerpt from 2026 South Australian House of Assembly election § Chaffey.[edit]

2026 South Australian state election: Chaffey

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Liberal	Tim Whetstone	7,839	35.4	−19.2
	One Nation	Jenny Troeth	7,506	33.9	+24.0
	Labor	Oscar Harding	3,420	15.4	−4.5
	Greens	Alice Kuersch	1,018	4.6	−1.5
	Independent	Jason Perrin	842	3.8	+3.8
	Australian Family	Tim Oakley	593	2.7	+2.7
	Legalise Cannabis	Jeff Knipe	550	2.5	+2.5
	National	Imelda Adamson Agars	190	0.9	−4.9
	Independent	Jakob Gamertsfelder	183	0.8	+0.8
Total formal votes			22,141	94.2	−1.3
Informal votes			1,367	5.8	+1.3
Turnout			23,508	88.1	−1.4
Two-party-preferred result
	Liberal	Tim Whetstone	15,182	68.6	+1.4
	Labor	Oscar Harding	6,959	31.4	−1.4
Two-candidate-preferred result
	Liberal	Tim Whetstone	12,392	56.0	−11.2
	One Nation	Jenny Troeth	9,749	44.0	+44.0
	Liberal hold

References

• ECSA profile for Chaffey: 2018 Archived 1 April 2018 at the Wayback Machine
• ABC profile for Chaffey: 2018 Archived 20 March 2018 at the Wayback Machine
• Poll Bludger profile for Chaffey: 2018 Archived 1 April 2018 at the Wayback Machine