Seat of the week: Brisbane

With the change in the state’s political breeze recently, Labor is hungrily eyeing Queensland as a potential source of seats to counterbalance anticipated losses in Sydney. An inner-city seat with the LNP’s lowest margin represents an obvious target.

The electorate of Brisbane has existed without interruption since federation, and presently covers the north shore of the Brisbane River from Milton through the CBD to Eagle Farm, extending northwards to Stafford at its western end and Hendra in the east. It was the most surprising of the Liberal National Party’s eight gains in Queensland at the 2010 election, as Labor had held the seat since 1931 outside of the interruption of 1975 to 1980, holding on even in the face of the 1996 disaster which reduced Labor to two Queensland seats. The defeated Labor member was Arch Bevis, who had held the seat since 1990 when he succeeded Manfred Cross, whose tenure went back to 1961. Peter Johnson held the seat for the Liberals from 1975 until 1980, when Cross recovered his old seat on the second attempt.

Brisbane’s complexion was changed somewhat by redistributions in 2004 and 2010, the more recent of which cut the margin from 6.8% to 3.8% by adding 26,500 voters at the eastern end of the electorate at the expense of territory out to Ferny Grove and Upper Kedron in the west and Stafford in the north. The former area included Clayfield and its highly affluent surrounds, which have contributed to the electorate’s current status as the highest-income electorate in Queensland. This proved doubly damaging for Labor as the swings around Clayfield were especially strong, in keeping with a national trend in which the air went out of the Howard-era “doctors’ wives” balloon. The effect was to counterbalance a relatively static result in the inner city, contributing to a decisive 5.7% swing to the LNP. The result was also notable for the 21.3% vote for the Greens (compared with a Labor primary vote of 30.4%), whose candidate was former Democrats Senator and party leader Andrew Bartlett.

The LNP victory facilitated a return to parliament for Teresa Gambaro, who had held the northern Brisbane seat of Petrie from 1996 until her defeat in 2007. Gambaro is a member of a family famous in Brisbane for its seafood business, its restaurant being located in the electorate at Petrie Terrace. Nonetheless, Brisbane did not seem an especially strong prospect for her at the time of preselection, which occurred at the peak of the Rudd government’s fortunes in the opinion polls. Gambaro held parliamentary secretary and assistant minister positions in the final term of the Howard government, and has served as shadow parliamentary secretary for international development assistance and citizenship and settlement throughout the current term. She made headlines in January 2012 when she called for migrants to be given hygiene lessons, for which she subsequently apologised.

Labor has preselected Fiona McNamara, an organiser with the Queensland Teachers Union, of which Arch Bevis was also an official before entering parliament. The union is not affiliated with the ALP, but is said to wield influence in the Labor Unity faction. McNamara has been twice unsuccessful as candidate for Peter Dutton’s northern Brisbane seat of Dickson, falling short by 0.1% in 2007 and 5.1% in 2010.

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.

2,333 comments on “Seat of the week: Brisbane”

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  1. [there is a company with add on tv saying you can
    get paid for opinions i have take note of the name
    and i thought it was a different company]

    Its Your Opinion which if you click enough on Essentials Site they will eventually link to them.

  3. Listening to “the story” on 7.30, I remembered that the first time I heard the supposed Queen on the phone, I knew it was a poor spoof. Quite apart from the dreadful accent imitation, the expression “Could I please speak to…” is what a child would say, not QE.

  7. Any poll taken at this time of year will be proven to be quite insignificant in my view.

    People when questioned during the silly season will think back over the course of the whole year.

    Who can they recall with the most negative sound bites in that time?

    Labor of course.

    This (Newspoll) should be a good poll for the LNP.

    Only the simple like a Mod Lib could think that the tide is swinging back to the monkey :mrgreen:

  8. ruawake – The cost of finding out all was good was $225, all kool, confirmed lucky choice.

    After deciding $540 for a spare key had to be endured what does it matter that a floor mat cost $186 and all had to be Flown’ (the cost of a German passport must be ferocious)?

    Reason for mechanics interest turns out to be that all 16 Harmon Kardons were doing Greenday’s American Idiot on arrival. (Sh8t, more confirmation that my choice of “mussick” is bad). So they actually wanted to see the idiot who turned up in it.

    And I think that Ciara was very afraid I’d buy an SLK. So she is in the relieved class. (Do ‘R’ classes come with the V8 option).

    I thought the 4 wheel-drift was the reason.

    I must be ‘on drugs’.

  9. I have come across some low lifes in my life but this is one of the most objectionable I have come across

    ”Thornleigh Labor Man
    Bruce Wilson, Ralph Blewitt, John McTernan: note the similarities, and Julia Gillard has been associated with all 3 at one time or another in her career.
    What does that say about her ethics & morality?
    And it’s got nothing to do with gender or sexism, which I’ll no doubt be accused of by the likes of Confessions”

    Guilt by association.

    If this was to be applied across the board not many of us if any (except the few that live in a cave and never meet anyone) would be blameless.

    This is childish and mean and speak a lot about TLM and nothing at all about Gillard or in fact any of the others mentioned all of who are miles ahead of TLM on any assessment.

  11. It’s the end of the year. People will recall that Abbott has led for most of the year and will get the nod.

    It’s like asking the question; which team has been the best performed throughout the regular season?

    We want to know who is going to win the grand final 😎

  13. What has Mc Ternan done besides working for the ALP? I know that is a capital ofence in the brainless eyes of the Libs but how about in the real world>

    ”Thornleigh Labor Man
    How does it feel, supporting a woman who employs a scumbag like John McTernan?”

  16. [Dear ru,

    As a 23 year old young woman, a lot of things are important to me. My friends, my family, my music, my afternoon jog. And my right to vote.

    I think we’d all agree that voting is important, and the more people aged 18 or over who participate in our great democracy, the better.

    But Christopher Pyne and the Liberal Party seem to disagree. They don’t want more young people on the electoral roll. In fact, they called it “rorting”.

    And this is after they changed the rules to have fewer young people vote in 2007.

    Well, I don’t consider my vote a rort. I consider it my democratic right and the right of all young people, no matter who they choose to vote for.

    If you think it’s important that more young people get the opportunity to vote too, go here and click share to let your friends know.

    Claire

    PS. You can also spread the word on Twitter. Click here and retweet to let the world know that voting is important to you.]

    Do nothing Labor Machine. 🙂

  17. poroti

    So I get to be drunk, objectionable and demand very ratshit musik before dropping a wheelie in the driveway and crashing into the next door nieghbours house?

    This is real Genius, thank you.

    The crowd will applaud.

    Extra funds to you follow and also rummel’s scalp – fox pelt’s still are worth money so scalp worth at least 30c. You owe me.

    I’m feeling the need to move north.

  19. “Harry “Snapper” Organs
    Posted Monday, December 10, 2012 at 8:00 pm | PERMALINK
    Ratsars, do keep up.
    TLM is a Liberal troll. And a fairly nasty one.
    Ignore him. He contributes nothing.”

    Thanks for nothing Harry

    Generally a good rule but something you can’t let go by without challenging it. And this excursion by TLM was one of the lowest I can remember.

  22. deblonay @# 2218

    “The Repubs in the USA are coming to see the Tea Party nasties as a political hazard

    They are slow learners !!”

    But they seem to be well ahead of the Libs in this country.

  24. Harry “Snapper” Organs
    [
    poroti, the Hall of the Mountain King was fabulous. Thank you]
    Vote 1 Apocalyptica. It’s amazing what bored young people come up with during months of arctic winter darkness 😆
    For all youse PB cellists here is a lesson on how to play.

    [Apocalyptica “Cello Lesson #1” Video Webisode 8/11 of “7th Symphony]
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0OrnKcQs5TY

  26. Diogenes@2095


    Fran

    And by way of comparison, I have friends who regularly have neighbours/friends pick up their kids from school. Their policy is to give their kids a security question (via SMS if you please!) to ask anyone who says they are there to pick them up that day.


    Quite a few have a password that the person picking the kid up has to say.

    The date of birth or middle name check wouldn’t have worked in this case as I assume that Kate Middletons details are all on wiki.

    Dio, we are not talking about the sharpest knives in the drawer here. Any delay to look things up, and you put the phone down.

  27. My favourite PB Liberals are Davidwh, Rummel and Glen when he is around.

    My most disliked are Spur212, Mod Lib and by far the worst, Evan Thornleigh Wangker.

  28. That’s an interesting link, Deblonay. Wonder if it will translate here, before or after the next Fed. election.

    As objectionable some of the current ALP policy is to me, though I must say I’ve no idea how to do it any better, e.g., asylum stuff, there is no doubt in my mind that the LNP would be an absolute disaster for all of us.

    For this outcome, the defeat of the Tea Party wanna bees, we need to work together.

    The planet is cooking.

  30. “Prepare to fire.”
    “Sir, which weapons?”
    “All of them!”

    Kind of sums up what Labor needs to now do.

    (and the quote is stolen from the movie Battleship)

  33. I must confess to Bludgers that I am in love. It is real, true and deep.

    Play this from 30.00 and see if youse don’t fall in love too.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ItSJ_woWnmk

    Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1, played my Martha Agerich (complete).

    Where have you been all my life Martha?

    The speed and the precision are just add-ons to the passion.

  36. Thornleigh Wangker pretends that he has the best interests of the Labor Party at heart and tries to move heaven and earth for Labor supporters to realise that unless they reinstate Rudd as leader, the Party will face oblivion under Gillard at the election.

    Yeah well I want leadershit in the Liberal Party for the best interests of my pocket, the LNP can go to hell 😈

  39. 7two now reporting on ‘Quk’ accidents – Auckland viewers will be impressed on NZ international reputation.

    NZ Herald editors ecstatic.

  40. [Thornleigh Wangker pretends that he has the best interests of the Labor Party at heart ]

    centre, that applies to all of them painful pavvy doggys

  43. Finns, you can categorise the Ruddites into three groups,

    – the attention seekers (like Bemused),
    – the ignorant (like Rosemour), and
    – the Liberals (like Wangker Man).

    😯

  45. “Bushfire Bill @# 2233

    I must confess to Bludgers that I am in love. It is real, true and deep.

    Play this from 30.00 and see if youse don’t fall in love too.”

    Why wait till the 30.00 mark?

  46. Don

    True, it probably would work quite well.

    As it turns out, the hospital had quite a good policy of not putting any calls through that went to the publicly listed number. Only people who had the private number could ring the ward.

    That would work OK in a toffy private hospital that doesn’t have emergency admissions but you’d never get away with that at a big public hospital.

    You couldn’t say to a wife who had just heard her husband had had a heart attack that you’d leave a message at the ward for her husband to say he’d called.

  49. Tomorrow morning I will be doing volunteer tree watching for CSIRO.

    Very restful, once you tramp to the assigned viewing spots. I have six trees to watch for a half an hour each. All I have to do is identify the species and number of birds that fly in and out of the tree and the direction they came from and the direction in which they leave.

    The trees are at measured distances between remnant patches.

    There are around 30 of us volunteers and by the time we finish there should be enough data to tell the distances birds will fly from patch to patch, provided there are some trees along the flyways.

    The output will be technical advice on the most efficient design for paddock plantings to promote connectivity between remnant patches.

    The thing is this. Evidence of absence is as important as evidence of presence. For my first two mornings I had six trees. Two trees had no birds in their half hour, two trees had one bird in their half hour, and one tree had several birds in its half hour. If the other thirty-times-six trees findings are the same as that, then paddock tree regeneration is going to have to be closer together than are the trees we are watching.

    But that will be for the scientists to calculate from all the good data the volunteers are gathering.

    It is a good example of citizens and professionals joining up to do useful science.

    I have to be up with the birds, so good night all.

  50. cud chewer:

    “Prepare to fire.”
    “Sir, which weapons?”
    “All of them!”

    Kind of sums up what Labor needs to now do.

    (and the quote is stolen from the movie Battleship)

    The order “Utmost Fish!” means launch all torpedoes at once…..

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