It is named after Pittwater, a body of water the district roughly surrounds.
Independent Jacqui Scruby was elected at the 2024 by-election, following the resignation of incumbent Liberal MP Rory Amon on 30 August 2024 after he was charged with child sex offences.
History
The electoral district of Pittwater was created in 1973. Located in the traditional Liberal stronghold of Sydney's Northern Beaches, it was a comfortably safe Liberal seat for most of the first half-century of its existence. Its first member was Sir Robert William Askin, then Premier of New South Wales. It had been created out of a large chunk of Askin's old seat of Collaroy, and was thus a natural place for Askin to transfer when the seat was abolished.
The seat was held by New South Wales Opposition Leader John Brogden until his dramatic resignation in 2005. The Liberal stranglehold on the seat was lost in the resulting by-election when the Mayor of Pittwater Council, Alex McTaggart, standing as an Independent candidate, defeated the Liberal Paul Nicolau in a landslide.
The seat reverted to form at the 2007 general election, with new Liberal candidate Rob Stokes comfortably regaining the seat for his party with 61% of the two-party vote to McTaggart's 39%. Stokes actually won just over 50% of the primary vote, just a few thousand votes over the threshold to win the seat without the need for preferences. Stokes won every booth in the district with the exception of Scotland Island, whose few hundred offshore voters traditionally buck the trend. Stokes held the seat without serious difficulty until the 2023 NSW state election, when he retired on a majority of 20.8 percent, the third-safest in the state for a Coalition-held metropolitan seat.
At the 2023 election, Liberal Party newcomer Rory Amon was nearly defeated by teal independentJacqui Scruby, surviving by only 606 votes.
While Labor usually runs dead in northern Sydney, Pittwater is especially unfriendly territory for Labor even by northern Sydney standards. Labor has only come reasonably close to winning the seat once, when it scored a 14-point swing in the "Wranslide" of 1978. However, Labor has not won more than 20 percent of the primary vote since 1984, and not placed better than third place since 2007. Underscoring this, even with the large swing against the Liberals in 2023, Amon would retained the seat with a 13.2 percent majority in a "traditional" contest with Labor.
Amon was forced out of politics in 2024 after being charged with child sex offences. Scruby took the seat off the Liberals at the ensuing by-election.
The seat is entirely within the federal seat of Mackellar, which was a longstanding Liberal stronghold until it was won by teal independent Sophie Scamps.
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