Chaffey spent most of the
Playmander era in the hands of independent
William MacGillivray. The
Liberal and Country League did not win it until
1956. Chaffey was won three times by
Labor's
Reg Curren as their most marginal electorate on a
two-party-preferred basis – in
1962 on 50.1%,
1965 on 50.7% and
1970 on 50.2%. Curren's 1965 victory helped put Labor in government in 1965 after 33 years in opposition, while his loss to the LCL's
Peter Arnold was one of two Labor losses that returned the LCL to government in
1968. Curren reclaimed it for Labor during his party's 1970 landslide victory after the end of the Playmander, only to lose it back to Arnold in
1973. At the
1975 election, Arnold picked up a massive 13.5 percent swing, and Labor has never come close to winning it since. Chaffey was one of several rural electorates where Labor suffered large swings in 1975; Labor suffered a swing of 15.5 percent in
Mount Gambier and a 16.4 percent in
Millicent. Chaffey remained in the hands of the LCL and its successor, the
Liberal Party, until 1997 when
Karlene Maywald narrowly won it for the
SA Nationals. Maywald picked up a large swing in
2002, boosting her
two-candidate preferred vote to 64 percent. She held the electorate without serious difficulty until she was defeated in
2010 by Liberal
Tim Whetstone, who still holds the seat. ==Members for Chaffey==