Division of Warringah
The Division of Warringah is an Australian electoral division in the state of New South Wales. It is on the north shore of Port Jackson and the Tasman Sea coast, stretching from Wollstonecraft to Curl Curl, comprising North Sydney and Manly.
Since 2019 its MP has been Zali Steggall, an Independent. From 1994 to 2019, the seat was held by Tony Abbott, who served as Prime Minister of Australia from 2013 to 2015.
Geography
Centred on Mosman and the Northern Beaches region of Sydney, it covers most of the land between Middle Harbour and the Tasman Sea. It extends from Port Jackson in the south to the suburb of Curl Curl in the north.Warringah includes the suburbs of Allambie, Allambie Heights, Balgowlah, Balgowlah Heights, Balmoral, Beauty Point, Brookvale, Cammeray, Clifton Gardens, Clontarf, Cremorne, Cremorne Point, Crows Nest, Curl Curl, Fairlight, Freshwater, Kirribilli, Kurraba Point, Lavender Bay Manly, Manly Vale, McMahons Point, Milsons Point, Mosman, Neutral Bay, North Balgowlah, North Head, North Manly, North Sydney, Queenscliff, Seaforth, Wingala, Waverton and Wollstonecraft, as well as parts of Beacon Hill, Frenchs Forest and Narraweena.
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.
History
The division is named after the Warringah area of Sydney, which itself is named by an Aboriginal Australian word which translates into English as "rain", "waves" or "sea". The Division was proclaimed at the redistribution of 13 September 1922, and was first contested at the 1922 federal election. Most of its territory had been part of North Sydney from 1901 to 1922. The word "Warrin ga" was recorded as the local name for Middle Harbour in 1832.The electorate originally extended from Mosman to Pittwater. In 1949, it lost most of its territory in the north to the new Division of Mackellar. In 2025, it acquired an area around North Sydney from the abolished division of North Sydney.
Before 2019, the area covered by Warringah had been held by a conservative party without interruption since Federation. The Liberal Party of Australia and their predecessors held the seat without interruption from its creation until the 2019 federal election when Zali Steggall won the seat as an Independent. Even by northern Sydney standards, Warringah has been especially unfriendly territory for Labor Party|Labor]. For example, even in its 1943 landslide, Labor was only able to garner 39 percent of the two-party vote in Warringah.
The seat's most notable member was Tony Abbott, who won the seat at a 1994 by-election and served as Prime Minister of Australia from 2013 to 2015. He retained Warringah until being defeated by Steggall in 2019. That election also saw Warringah become a notional marginal seat in a "traditional" two-party contest against Labor for the first time; Abbott would have held the seat on 52.1 percent against Labor, down from 61 percent in 2016. At the 2025 landslide, Labor won the two-party vote in Warringah.