Division of Wakefield

Wakefield Australian House of Representatives Division
Division of Wakefield in South Australia, as of the 2016 federal election
Created	1903
Abolished	2019
Namesake	Edward Gibbon Wakefield
Demographic	Rural

The Division of Wakefield was an Australian electoral division in the state of South Australia. The seat was a hybrid rural-urban electorate that stretched from Salisbury in the outer northern suburbs of Adelaide at the south of the seat right through to the Clare Valley at the north of the seat, 135 km from Adelaide. It included the suburbs of Elizabeth, Craigmore, Munno Para, and part of Salisbury, and the towns of Balaklava, Clare, Freeling, Gawler, Kapunda, Mallala, Riverton, Tarlee, Virginia, Williamstown, and part of Port Wakefield.

The division was named after Edward Gibbon Wakefield, who promoted colonisation as a tool for social engineering, plans which formed the basis for settlements in South Australia, Western Australia, New Zealand and Canada. The division was one of the seven established when the multi-member Division of South Australia was redistributed into single-member seats on 2 October 1903. At the 1903 federal election, the division (on very different boundaries) was won unopposed by the sitting speaker (following traditional Westminster convention), running as an independent. It was first contested by more than one candidate at the 1906 election. Two of the seat's former members of particular note have been the inaugural Speaker of the House and two-time Premier of South Australia, Frederick Holder, and Howard government two-term Speaker Neil Andrew.

Wakefield was abolished in 2019, following a redistribution triggered by a change in representation entitlement which saw South Australia's seats in the House of Representatives reduced to ten. The division has been mostly replaced by the Division of Spence.