, the division's namesake The electorate was created in the Western Australia redistribution of 10 August 1955, and was named after
Sir James Stirling, the 19th-century founding lieutenant governor and
governor of Western Australia. Stirling covered a demographically diverse area, including several affluent beachside suburbs, as well as working class areas further inland. As a result, Stirling was often a marginal seat, alternating between the
Australian Labor Party and the
Liberal Party of Australia. Unlike some marginal seats on the east coast, such as
Eden-Monaro, Stirling was not often seen as a reliable barometer for winning government. For example, longtime
Labor member
Harry Webb survived the massive
Coalition landslide of
1966, only to become one of two Labor MPs from the state to be defeated in
1972 even as Labor ended 23 years of Coalition rule. While it elected five government MPs, all but three of its members have spent at least one term in opposition. Besides Webb, who held the seat for all but one term from its creation in 1955 until his defeat in 1972, the seat's most prominent member was Labor's
Ron Edwards, who was Deputy Speaker of the House of Representatives from 29 August 1989 to 8 February 1993. It had been expected that if the 1993 election had not been called so soon after
Leo McLeay's resignation as Speaker or if Edwards had held his seat in the election upon the re-election of the Keating government, Edwards would have been elected Speaker. Opinion polls in the leadup to the
2004 election had suggested a close result in Stirling, leaning towards the possibility of sitting Labor member
Jann McFarlane retaining her seat. This was thought to have been more likely after
Paul Afkos, the original Liberal candidate, was forced to resign after he was revealed to have borrowed money from a convicted drug dealer. A local businessman,
Michael Keenan, was brought in as his replacement, and maintained the close difference in polling. However, on election day, the swing to the Liberal Party both statewide and nationwide was stronger than expected, and Keenan was ultimately successful in unseating McFarlane. The
Stirling Times, a local newspaper, speculated in October 2006 that McFarlane, at that time a
Stirling councillor, might contest the seat again in 2007. On 28 November 2006, former
SAS officer and outspoken opponent of the
Iraq War Peter Tinley accepted an offer from
Kim Beazley to run as the ALP candidate in the 2007 election. Ahead of the
2010 election, Labor preselected Louise Durack, a social worker and executive director of People With Disabilities (WA) and past candidate for the state seat of
Ocean Reef, to run for the seat. Keenan was re-elected at the 2010 federal election. It was confirmed in June 2021 that this division would be abolished at the
2022 federal election, with its area redistributed to the neighbouring divisions of
Cowan,
Curtin,
Moore and
Perth. ==Geography==