Jones was born in Wollongong and was a trade union official before first being elected to Parliament in 2010.

[2] The division, previously named Throsby, was renamed in honour of Gough Whitlam, the Prime Minister of Australia from 1972–75, in a February 2016 electoral distribution.

ABC election analyst Antony Green estimated that boundary changes to Throsby would reduce the Australian Labor Party's notional two-party-preferred margin from 7.8 to 6.9 percentage points.

[4] Despite this, the last member for Throsby, Stephen Jones, easily retained the seat with a healthy swing of over six points.

Whitlam has a strong working-class character due to the presence of industries such as steelmaking, coal mining and stevedoring in the Illawarra.