Seat of the week: Leichhardt

Electorally volatile in recent times, the far north Queensland seat of Leichhardt has generally gone the way of the winning party at elections in the modern era, an exception being present incumbent Warren Entsch’s win for the Liberal National Party after he returned from retirement in 2010.

Teal and red numbers respectively indicate booths with two-party majorities for the LNP and Labor. Click for larger image. Map boundaries courtesy of Ben Raue at The Tally Room.

Leichhardt consists of the northernmost part of Queensland, including Cairns at its southern extremity along with Cape York Peninsula and the Torres Strait Islands. Naturally marginal Cairns provides it with about two-thirds of its voters, the remainder coming from conservative-leaning rural areas along the coast immediately to the north, and Labor-voting indigenous communities beyond. The electorate ranks sixth out of the nation’s 150 electorates for the highest proportion of indigenous persons, behind the two Northern Territory electorates, neighbouring Kennedy, Durack in northern Western Australia, and Parkes in interior New South Wales. Another distinguishing features is a large number of voters over 55, reflecting the popularity of Cairns as a retirement haven.

The electorate was created with the expansion of parliament in 1949, prior to which its area was mostly accommodated by Herbert until 1934 and Kennedy thereafter. Herbert and then Kennedy were in Labor hands from 1928 to 1949, but Leichhardt was narrowly won by the Country Party at its inaugural election, which saw the Menzies government come to power. However, Labor won the seat at the subsequent election in 1951, and it remained in the party fold until David Thomson gained it for the National Country Party amid Labor’s statewide debacle of 1975. Warren Entsch became the seat’s first Liberal member when he unseated Labor’s Peter Dodd with the defeat of the Keating government in 1996, polling 31.8% to the Nationals candidate’s 20.4%. Entsch suffered only a 0.5% swing at the 1998 election, compared with a statewide swing of 7.2%, and subsequently built his margin up to double figures with swings of 2.3% in 2001 and 3.6% in 2004.

Entsch’s local popularity was further illustrated when he bowed out temporarily at the 2007 election, Labor gaining the seat in his absence with a towering swing of 14.3%, the second biggest of that election after Forde in Brisbane’s outer south. The result also underscored the local eclipse of the Nationals, whose candidate polled only 4.0%. Incoming Labor member Jim Turnour managed only a single term before falling victim at the 2010 election to the combined impact of a statewide Labor rout, which cost them seven out of their existing 15 Queensland seats, and the return from retirement of Warren Entsch. Labor’s margin of 4.1% was easily accounted for by a swing of 8.6%, to which Entsch added a further 1.2% at the 2013 election.

Warren Entsch came to politics after serving in the Royal Australian Air Force from 1969 to 1978, then working as a maintenance fitter and welder, real estate agent, farmer and grazier and company director. After winning election in 1996 and re-election in 1998, he was promoted to parliamentary secretary but thereafter rose no higher, and went to the back bench upon announcing his retirement citing family reasons in 2006. During his subsequent three-year interregnum he was director of Cairns construction company CEC Group and the Australian Rainforest Foundation, but talk soon emerged of a political comeback, first in relation to the 2009 state election and then for his old seat. With this accomplished he served for a term as the Coalition’s chief whip, before relinquishing the position to Philip Ruddock after the 2013 election victory.

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.

669 comments on “Seat of the week: Leichhardt”

Comments Page 4 of 14
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  1. “@GrogsGamut: Pyne: “Latin is of course the root of the English language” Cripes. Hope that isn’t the first lesson on the curriculum..”

  2. I don’t support Laborism, I support Whiggery. Of course, the GRNs need a better leader than Milne as she turns too many people off compared to Saint Bob.

  3. psyclaw@141

    Bemused, Comrade

    You’re going great this arvo……..two things spot on now.

    What you say about “counsellors” and registration is true.

    But there are a few quite large peak associations which offer some level of guarantee that the practitioner is not a total shonk. And some of them have membership eligibility criteria which are of some substance.

    And they do in the main make pretty fair attempts to define what “counselling” is and is not.

    The point remains however that if schools are to have operatives which are formally or even nominally described as “counsellors”, they just can’t do it on the cheap, ethically or legally.

    The minimum standards would require formal qualification criteria, and a system of professional supervision for the protection of the clients and the practitioners.

    In the case of the chaplains, this minimum standard seems to be outsourced to religious groups.

    Sadly I await the first coroners inquest, the subsequent ones, and the 2017? RC into the school chaplaincy service when this shonk program fails to prevent a preventable death, or indeed causes a death.

    That’s a bit patronising isn’t it?

    Place no faith in Coroner’s. When a government department or agency is involved the inquest becomes a cover-up. I can provide excellent examples.

  7. Is secrecy the mark of the scoundrel?

    [The Immigration Department refused access to documents about boat arrivals earlier this year. In an unusual decision the department relied on the immigration minister’s claim of public interest immunity, which has already come under scrutiny by a Senate committee, to refuse access to documents.

    Ludwig referred the matter to the Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC), but information commissioner John McMillan declined to investigate the matter. The complaint has now been referred to the commonwealth ombudsman, Colin Neave.

    The OAIC is to be disbanded as part of the government’s budget announcements, with its roles split across different agencies.

    Ludwig said the government was “wedded to secrecy” and compared the refusal of the documents to past practice of using conclusive certificates to allow ministers to declare information to be secret.

    “They are now trying to use false claims of parliamentary privilege to hide documents and information. This is a return to the dark old days of the Howard government using executive privilege or ‘conclusive certificates’ to refuse access to information,” he said.]

    http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jun/19/immigration-departments-creeping-culture-of-secrecy-alarms-labor-senator?CMP=twt_gu

  10. [ guytaur

    Posted Saturday, June 21, 2014 at 4:10 pm | Permalink

    Ctar

    Abbott is spending a week in Arnhem land. Maybe he is going native
    ]

    —————————————————

    going troppo more likely …..

  12. Won’t link but barf bags at the ready for the GG’s headline for the Abbott visit

    [‘Indigenous PM’ Tony Abbott to keep his promise in Arnhem Land]

  19. guytaur

    It’s a damn shame we can’t get him to go up during the Wet. A lot of remote places get cut off for days and weeks in the NT during that season.

  20. “That’s a bit patronising isn’t it?”

    What????

    That you’re going great this arvo.?????

    Just reflecting on your first sentence in #126, if that’s what you’re referring to. No offence or patronisation intended.

  21. CTar1

    Thanks for referencing Friesian cows. Until then I had not connected Frisian with Friesian moo cows . Doh.

    And yep those big boned ladies could certainly take out a few LNPers.

  22. Guytaur

    [“@GrogsGamut: Pyne: “Latin is of course the root of the English language” Cripes. Hope that isn’t the first lesson on the curriculum..”]

    Although we have mostly been discussing Latin, Classical Greek is also in the mix. I guess they won’t be touting that language the same way.

    😉

  24. poroti

    [And yep those big boned ladies could certainly take out a few LNPers.]

    If they were in a hurry they’d take out most Things.

  25. [“To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death freely chosen, death at the right time, brightly and cheerfully accomplished amid children and witnesses: then a real farewell is still possible, as the one who is taking leave is still there…”]

    and is why I joined exit international. ..Having a choice removes fear and the need to take it…having no choice leads to taking it..

  26. [The United Kingdom paid for a chlorine factory that was intended to be used for manufacturing mustard gas]

    I watched a BBC doco on Sadaam’s chemical weapons.

    The screen scrolled through volumes of serial batch numbers, all originated from the UK.

  27. Fran Barlow

    This guy has a look at it.

    [Philip Durkin, Principal Etymologist at the Oxford English Dictionary, chooses five events that shaped the English Language

    It’s never easy to pinpoint exactly when a specific language began, but in the case of English we can at least say that there is little sense in speaking of the English language as a separate entity before the Anglo-Saxons came to Britain. Little is known of this period with any certainty, but we do know that Germanic invaders came and settled in Britain from the north-western coastline of continental Europe in the fifth and sixth centuries. The invaders all spoke a language that was Germanic (related to what emerged as Dutch, Frisian, German and the Scandinavian languages, and to Gothic), ]
    http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/words/the-history-of-english

  28. psyclaw@170

    “That’s a bit patronising isn’t it?”

    What????

    That you’re going great this arvo.?????

    Just reflecting on your first sentence in #126, if that’s what you’re referring to. No offence or patronisation intended.

    No, was commenting on your first sentence in 141.

    It is a relatively sane day on PB.

  29. Thomas. Paine.@175

    “To die proudly when it is no longer possible to live proudly. Death freely chosen, death at the right time, brightly and cheerfully accomplished amid children and witnesses: then a real farewell is still possible, as the one who is taking leave is still there…”


    and is why I joined exit international. ..Having a choice removes fear and the need to take it…having no choice leads to taking it..

    Good on you TP. I might do the same when I get around to it.

  30. Dee

    There was a joke going around before the invasion that “We know Saddam had WMD’s because we have the receipts”. Apart from the Americans and poms the Germans also helped, from memory “delivery systems” for the weapons.

  31. [
    @MrDenmore 11m
    ‘News Corp is being particularly ferocious’ in Australia, ABC boss @mscott tells the BBC Media Show
    ]
    Well Mr Scott it would be really nice if you could avoid News hacks by listening to the ABC.

  32. Thomas. Paine.@175

    [and is why I joined exit international. ..Having a choice removes fear and the need to take it…having no choice leads to taking it..]

    There is a bit in Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment where a character muses that a “suicidal man” can often withstand far greater tragedies than a “non suicidal man” because he knows “He has a door though which may escape at any time”

  35. [ guytaur

    Posted Saturday, June 21, 2014 at 4:20 pm | Permalink

    badcat

    How would we tell Abbott has gone troppo as distinct from now?
    ]

    ——————————————————-

    Ignorance can be educated. Crazy can be medicated… But there is no cure for stupid.

  38. Prissius Pynus:

    “Latin is of course the root of the English language”

    as in

    Anglish am fukt under Coalition Skools R Us.

  40. Didn’t Psephos call most of you “South Yarra Bolsheviks” – and remember that it’s not “red-baiting” if it’s aimed at actual left wingers.

  41. Oh yea, and if you already hadnt LOL’d hard enough at the ALPs ludicrously hack-apologist 2013 election post-mortem, a friend just pointed out this recommendation:

    [“That the Labor Party incorporate the proven organising models of many of the unions.”]

    LOLLLLL!!!

    Would those be the same “models” that saw membership halve over the last 20 years?

    Seriously: this report is demented blame-shifting by the very same people who casued the Abbott government to exist through their own factional shenanigenans and political ineptitude.

    BURN IT,EXPEL THE AUTHORS FROM THE PARTY, DO THE OPPOSITE OF ANYTHING THEY SAID.

  43. In fact, I think Im on pretty safe ground here, despite quite a bit of competition:

    worst. election. post-mortem. ever.

  44. 190

    You are just sore about the end of property qualification and the start of payment of MPs that ended Whig-ism in the early 20th Century.

  45. [ poroti

    Posted Saturday, June 21, 2014 at 5:15 pm | Permalink

    CTar1

    I have just the Friesian for Mathias. He’s now 6 foot 6 in
    ]

    ————————————————–
    Terminator Mathias is 6 foot 6 ????? …… I didn’t know they could stack shit that high ….

  47. poroti

    [referencing Frisian cows.]

    6’6″ is a ‘big’ one.

    my sister has a house at south Kiama. Unless I can count 14 retired cows across the point the local council get a phone call from me. They must wish I’d die.

  48. No, no, peeps, this is all Labor’s fault 😉

    [From July 1, the Abbott Government will allocate an extra $1.8 million in its Budget for the development of new language curriculums for Latin, Classical Greek, Turkish, Hindi and AUSLAN on top of an existing 11 languages.

    The Government says the decision to choose Latin to be part of the national curriculum was made under Labor.

    But the Opposition says classical languages were only added to the national curriculum after the election.]

    http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/education-minister-christopher-pyne-defends-latin-class-push/story-fnihsrf2-

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