Seat of the week: Moreton

Before I proceed, a plug for the Westpoll WA state poll post, which this post is bumping from the top of the page.

Moreton extends from the southern Brisbane riverside suburbs of Oxley, Sherwood and Yeronga out to Runcorn and Acacia Ridge in the south, the latter area being the more favourable for Labor. It was one of nine Queensland seats gained by Labor at the 2007 election, of which it and two others stayed with the party in 2010. The seat has existed in name since federation, but was based on the Gold Coast and Brisbane’s southern outskirts until the creation of McPherson in 1949. It then began a long drift north into the inner suburbs, making marginal a seat that had once been safely conservative. The first near-miss came with Jim Killen’s famous 130-vote win in 1961, achieved with help from Communist Party preference leakage, which allowed the Menzies government to survive with a one-seat majority. Labor would not get over the line until 1990, when Liberal veteran Don Cameron was unseated by Garrie Gibson.

Gibson suffered a small adverse swing in 1993 before succumbing to a further 4.9% swing amid the Queensland tidal wave of 1996. The new Liberal member was Gary Hardgrave, a former children’s television host and media adviser to Senator David MacGibbon. Hardgrave held junior ministry positions from 2001 to 2005 while maintaining a tenuous grip on his seat, surviving a 4.2% swing in 1998 and an unfavourable redistribution in 2004. Redistribution further chipped away at his margin before the 2007 election, and he was unseated by a 7.5% swing to Labor in 2007. He has since kept in the public eye as the drive presenter on Fairfax Radio’s Brisbane station 4BC.

The seat has since been held for Labor by Graham Perrett, previously an adviser to the Queensland Resources Council and earlier a state ministerial staffer and official with the Queensland Independent Education Union. Perrett enjoyed what proved to be a decisive 1.4% boost at the redistribution before the 2010 election, at which a 4.9% swing cut his margin to 1.1%. He made the news in his first term with the publication of his “erotic novel”, The Twelfth Fish, and in his second when he threatened to quit parliament if Labor changed leaders again, a position he backed away from when Kevin Rudd was marshalling his unsuccessful leadership challenge in February 2012.

The Liberal National Party has gain preselected its candidate from 2010, Malcolm Cole, a former Courier-Mail journalist and late Howard-era staffer to Alexander Downer and Santo Santoro. For the 2010 election the LNP initially preselected Michael Palmer, the 20-year-old son of Clive, which was seen as a measure of the Coalition’s bleak electoral prospects at the time. This together with the preselection of Wyatt Roy in Longman drew considerable derision, and some skepticism was expressed when Palmer withdrew on health grounds.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

2,169 comments on “Seat of the week: Moreton”

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  1. BBS

    But wont be done. A 2014/15 DD election?

    Three years after the tax was introduced?

    After two years of unpopular decisions and broken promises?

    An election that would certainly mean the loss of MPs from a near-record high number?

    Not going to happen.

  2. I think the FWA brief of evidence is dolphin food.

    Anyone reporting suspected criminal activity does not have the obligation to prepare a brief of evidence. That is what police/prosecutors do.

  3. Ess, is a u must be enrolled to be polled.

    You get an email fron an opoion co mpany not ess. Tne first few times i got it i ignored it,

    I had no idea it was essetial even though i enrolled to be polled with ess,

    U get ask questions, on retail- then lumped in the middle is one political question , then bavkwards and forwrds retail , politics, comes every wenesday, ive given up takes me 20 mins, the polital questions would take me 5 if they where on there own .
    I cannot imagine who enrolls to be pollled. But i doubt many labor people would i only did becauce i saw it here, may be swinging voters, but would people e roll becauce tney are
    Intrested in retail , who knows, for a hobby , something to do. It would be of great interest to know wny they do.

    And young people doubt it, , , tbe company offer points, not. Essetial the company that sends the poll,
    but i dont know what the point are for or what they give you for them no one says,
    But there is nothing to stop any of u from enrolling to be pollled.

    Ive often wondered why they judt dont do the pollig themselves.

  4. @lynlinking @GenGusface @GeorgeBludger a group mums in UK protesting against a no breastfeeding cafe called themselves “Mothersucker” classy

  5. Puff, the Magic Dragon.

    [The losers get the drop! Of course if they don’t let go of the rope, they could pull the winners down with them.]
    That was the “cunning plan” 🙂

  6. It’s pretty obvious what happens from here:

    Time goes on, polls remain where they are, MP’s panic, Rudd gets drafted, ALP win

    Rudd’s trust rating will go through the roof the longer Gillard remains PM and Abbott remains opposition leader

  7. Bronnie Bishop is being thoroughly obnoxious at the current hearing on HSU, etc. There is another word I could use, but it woul offend some female dogs.

  8. [Oh. ABC radio refers to PM’s speech but then says it’s overshadowed by more important issues from conference, and segues into discussion about political donations.

    Which – if it was discussed at NSW Conference – doesn’t seem to have been a major point of discussion…

    Anyone noticed glowing media reports (or indeed, any) of Julia’s speech?]

    Sky’s was just that she didn’t mention the Greens ‘war’.

  9. [2133
    lizzie
    Posted Monday, July 16, 2012 at 1:39 pm | Permalink
    This is a problem. Peeps don’t believe pollies, therefore Coal voters don’t really believe anything Abbott says, so will vote for him with ears covered and eyes blindfolded.

    The Coalition will call a double dissolution election if it wins government but is prevented by the Senate from getting rid of the carbon tax, says frontbencher Christopher Pyne.

    Mr Pyne was responding to a report in The Australian Financial Review that research by both major parties showed voters don’t believe Tony Abbott will be able to repeal the tax if he becomes prime minister.

    The Opposition Leader has repeatedly made a “blood pledge” to scrap the price on carbon, saying “such political future as I have got rests entirely on beating this tax”.

    Focus group research revealed that Coalition voters are less inclined to trust promises by politicians – a scepticism that was ironically accelerated by the Prime Minister’s change of policy on the carbon tax.

    Separate research conducted by Labor showed that the participants overwhelmingly believed the tax was here to stay.]

    It seems to me that if Blood Oaf and his lot make Government all this talk of DDs to get rid of the Carbon Price will go out the window quick smart.

    Once both the punters and Business have accepted that the scheme is here to stay(as they overwhelmingly seem to have done), calling further elections to get rid of it will just piss people off.

    This is a country where people don’t like having to get out and vote. Weird, but true. We crap on a lot about democratic traditions and the like, but don’t seem to like exercising them much.

    And if Abbott persists in going down that road, he could well come a gutser and actually lose seats. His own backbench Nellies will be fully aware of the risks.

    I think the Blood Oath will be quietly forgotten. Oh, he might have a half hearted go at some repeal Legislation, but if it fails to pass the Senate, he’ll let it drop.

  10. [It seems to me that if Blood Oaf and his lot make Government all this talk of DDs to get rid of the Carbon Price will go out the window quick smart]

    The government can get some mileage out of this.

    The idea that if the Coalition can’t get its way in parliament it will just keep calling elections is an astonishingly arrogant thing to promise.

  11. TheFinnigans天地有道人无道 ‏@Thefinnigans
    It wont be long before you will hear Tony Abbott says, yes i will Turn Back IR when it is safe to do so #auspol

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