Division of Cunningham

The Division of Cunningham is an Australian Electoral Division in New South Wales. The division was created in 1949 and is named for Allan Cunningham, a 19th century explorer of New South Wales and Queensland. It is located on the coast of New South Wales between southern Sydney and Wollongong, and takes in parts of the city of Wollongong, including Corrimal, Figtree and Unanderra. It also includes several suburbs on the southern outskirts of Sydney, such as Heathcote and Bundeena. It has always been won by the Australian Labor Party, except at the 2002 by-election when it was lost to the Australian Greens, the first time that the Greens had held a seat in the House of Representatives. Labor recovered the seat at the October 2004 election. Its most prominent members have been Rex Connor, a senior minister in the Whitlam government, and Stephen Martin, who was Speaker 1993–1996. The main products and means of livelihood in the area are tourism, tertiary education, steel production, coal mining, brick manufacturing, textiles and dairy farming.

Although the region is primarily rural, the vast majority of the population is located in the northern outskirts of Wollongong and along the eastern seaboard.