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 9 of 14
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  2. MTBW

    That was unkind. GG’s significant other isn’t here to speak for herself. I regard GG’s reference as ill-considered but others ought not to pile on, IMO, whatever one thinks of GG.

    Best to move on.

  8. I hope things work out for you, Returned Turkeys.Don’t worry about what the doctor or anyone at Centrelink might think, get the help and support you need.

    Oh, and in reply to your earlier comment, men do most of the paid work in the world, but women do most of the work.

  9. guytuar @ 370

    Quote from Manne following HC ruling on Visa cap
    “”The law of Australia is that there is only one protection visa, and that’s a permanent protection visa for refugees. What this means is that the government must get on with the grant of a visa which our client is entitled to as a refugee,”
    If the Senate opposes Temp Visa again the whole ugly mess that is Lib policy will unravel

    There will only be permanent Visa class & it will be WITHOUT limit, Morrison will have no choice but to allow valid processing all visa claims, where ever that are made from.

    I assume Tony will move him on as a sign of defeat

  10. The federal government is using spurious arguments about “green tape” to hand over environmental planning powers to state governments.

    [What the federal government plans to do is hand over planning authority to state governments, through bi-lateral agreements, under the spurious guise of reducing “green tape” and creating a “one-stop-shop” for environmental approvals.

    Handing over planning powers to state governments, many of whom are beholden to fossil fuel interests, amounts to a betrayal of Australia’s natural heritage and environment.]

    http://www.theguardian.com/environment/southern-crossroads/2014/jun/21/environmental-protection-act-law-referral-abbott-betrayal

  11. And further…
    [The enormous environmental risk is that state governments are given the power to make decisions of national significance when they lack the capacity to adequately consider the national interest, or have a reasons to act in their own interest. This is exemplified by the controversial rise of coal-seam gas, where “fracking” has the risk of injecting toxic chemicals into the Great Artesian Basin, and where state governments receive royalty payments from fracking companies.

    On a practical level, state planning, industry, and environmental public service departments have neither the resources nor the scope to consider major and complex issues. This has been demonstrated with the debacle of the Murray Darling Basin; successive state governments and their departments from New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia have been incapable of developing a policy that extends beyond their own borders. This is for any number of reasons, including lack of resources. Simply, history and common sense have shown that we need a national government to consider and manage national issues.]

  12. [Today’s Mumble on Labor’s country vote in opposition and in govt.]

    I always like Mumble’s writing, I hope he realises he is writing for a much bigger audience than the clowns that put comments on the bottom.

  13. Returned Turkeys is merely (and finally) seeking medical help for a condition which has long been obvious to regular readers here.

    Seeing as he’s faked just about everything else, he’s probably faking this too.

  15. poroti

    Todays ‘History of WW1 in a hundred moments’ is on Allenby –

    [He was a scholar of antiquity and must have known that he was the 34th conqueror of Jerusalem. One of his biographers was to list his predecessors, among them David, Nebuchadnezzer, Alexander, Antiochus the Great, Judas Maccabeus, Pompey, Herod, Titus, Omar, Godfrey de Bouillon and Saladin.]

    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/world-history/history-of-the-first-world-war-in-100-moments/a-history-of-the-first-world-war-in-100-moments-a-conqueror-shows-his-respect-for-the-holy-city-9554331.html

  16. Here is the ATO definition of what is a religion with respect to the receipt of tax concessions. There will be many religions that qualify to this that one could reasonably say – even Abbott and Co. – wold be “unsuitable” for providing school chaplains.
    The Opposition should pick the most outrageous qualifying religions and one by one ask Abbott/Pyne whether they would qualify for supplying chaplains. Obviously an Islamic religion would be one of these and be proscribed. Then ask whether C of E or Catholic would be OK.
    From this the Opposition could say that obcviously the government has drawn a line so could it please explain the basis for this line. They would have difficulty in doing so and having it hold up to legal challenge I would think.

  17. Bolt is of course basking in an op-ed by the Washington Post’s weather editor, claiming that, in turn, a recent paper in Nature has conceded that global warning is slowing, or has stopped altogether.

    It’s a complicated paper, worth reading. It does NOT say global warming has stopped forever, but DOES say that there appears to be a hiatus that can’t just be explained by climate “noise”.

    Apparently it has something to do with an incomplete understanding of the way the Pacific absorbs and emits energy, a phenomenon called the “Pacific Inter Decadal”.

    There are explanations given as to just why this Pacific Ocean phenomenon happens, but at the moment climate scientists are still theorizing.

    There are elements of a “scramble” to account for it.

    Meanwhile climate skeptics and deniers are having a field day.

    The Nature article: http://www.nature.com/news/climate-change-the-case-of-the-missing-heat-1.14525

    The Washington Post article: http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/capital-weather-gang/wp/2014/06/20/global-warming-of-the-earths-surface-has-decelerated-viewpoint/

    No link to Bolt’s blog (there are limits).

  20. Meanwhile, UK Government risks breaking it’s own promise on welfare spending cap:
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/government-at-risk-of-breaking-its-own-welfare-spending-cap-9552850.html

    “Ministers had hoped that more regular “fitness for work” tests would reduce the bill. But reports say that people are remaining on ESA for longer than expected because their illness and disability has been underestimated. Claimants are moving off Jobseeker’s Allowance and on to ESA, which has fewer sanctions. There have also been problems with the private firm Atos, which is withdrawing from its contract to carry out health assessments.”

    Be prepared for the same mess here in Australia.

  21. CTar1

    Ta muchly. I had forgotten to check the 100 moments article today. Monty Python lives.

    [The real surrender of Jerusalem, of course, had occurred three days earlier …… the Turkish Mayor of Jerusalem, Hussein Salim al-Husseini approached a series of British soldiers with a white flag; two were lost cooks from the 2/20th London Regiment who declined the honour]

  22. Do churches, like the Catholic Church really fit the ATO definition?

    Look at the billions they have in Bank Accounts operated by the Vatican…

  23. More info:
    http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-politics-27926419

    “”The Department for Work and Pensions has let down some of the most vulnerable people in our society, many of whom have had to wait more than six months for their claims to be decided.”

    “In one case, a claimant required hospital intervention as a result of the stress caused by the delays.”

    “Elsewhere, claimants had been forced to turn to food banks, loans and charitable donations to support the extra costs of living associated with their disability, the MPs said.”

  24. While our government bangs on about costs of the DSP being blown out, they continue on with their 200K or 500K pay packets, along with golden handshakes and donars.

  25. poroti

    Douglas Haig hated Allenby with a passion. He would do anything to trip him up.

    Lloyd George, after attempting to mediate, decided it would be best that they be on separate continents!

  26. zoidlord

    The nasty bastards , Atos, they put in charge of assessing disability pensions are legendary for their cruelty. Minister for Grecian 2000 would love them.

    [Bedridden farmer suffering from diabetes had benefits cut and told he was fit to work… then was refused reassessment when diagnosed with terminal cancer]

    http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2474772/Farmer-David-Coupe-refused-Atos-healthcare-reassessment-diagnosed-terminal-cancer.html

    [A former Government scientist with a severe heart condition died after an Atos assessment deemed he was deemed fit for work and stripped him of benefits.
    Robert Barlow lost the right to free prescriptions on the NHS when his benefits were withdrawn in 2012]
    http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/family-demands-end-of-atoss-traumatic-fitnesstowork-tests-after-death-of-scientist-with-heart-condition-9249750.html

    [Benefits clawback firm ATOS call back cancer patients and dementia sufferers

    The government say the scheme helps weed out cheats, but the Department of Work and Pensions are asking people with incurable, life-threatening conditions to undergo multiple checks in order to keep benefits.]
    http://www.dailyrecord.co.uk/news/politics/benefits-clawback-firm-atos-call-1442310

  27. Global warming ‘hiatus’?
    Nope.

    http://web.archive.org/web/20100327034958/http://www.giss.nasa.gov/research/news/20100121/

    [2009 was tied for the second warmest year in the modern record, a new NASA analysis of global surface temperature shows. The analysis, conducted by the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) in New York City, also shows that in the Southern Hemisphere, 2009 was the warmest year since modern records began in 1880

    The past year was only a fraction of a degree cooler than 2005, the warmest year on record, and tied with a cluster of other years — 1998, 2002, 2003, 2006 and 2007— as the second warmest year since recordkeeping began.

    January 2000 to December 2009 was the warmest decade on record.

    Throughout the last three decades, the GISS surface temperature record shows an upward trend of about 0.2°C (0.36°F) per decade.]

  28. [E.J. Dionne, Jr. at The Washington Post on Dick Cheney’s Iraq op-ed.

    “The infinitely valuable Yiddish word chutzpah is defined as ‘shameless audacity’ or ‘impudence.’ It’s singularly appropriate for the astonishing op-ed from former vice president Dick Cheney and his daughter Liz that was published in the Wall Street Journal on Wednesday. It’s not every day that a leader of the previous administration suggests that the current president is a ‘fool’ and accuses him of intentionally weakening the United States. ‘President Obama seems determined to leave office ensuring he has taken America down a notch,’ the Cheneys write. Are they charging our president with treason? ‘President Obama,’ they write, ‘is on track to securing his legacy as the man who betrayed our past and squandered our freedom.’ Squandered our freedom?” Dionne Jr. writes. “The Cheney polemic would be outrageous even if our former vice president’s record on Iraq had been one of absolute clairvoyance. As it happens, he was wrong in almost every prediction he made about the war. Thanks to the Cheney op-ed, we can see how Obama’s hawkish critics are out to create a double standard.”]

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/ej-dionne-dick-cheney-reveals-his-chutzpah-in-iraq-op-ed/2014/06/18/756bce06-f713-11e3-a606-946fd632f9f1_story.html

  29. CTar1

    I think the ANZAC forces in the ME got the best of the deal. Liked the name the Turks gave the Light Horse and Mounted Rifles.

    [In conversation with two Turkish officers who were on the Sinai front, they told me that the Anzacs were always referred to by the Turkish soldiers as ‘ devils on horses’ , the reason for this being that they never knew where they would strike next. The Turks’ reconnaissance planes would report no movement at enemy camps at sundown, yet by daybreak the Anzacs would be attacking a position twenty miles away from their base, which the Turks had never thought possible]
    http://www.nzmr.org/brigade.htm

  30. Disgraceful penalty to the whingers (Storm) for holding player down in tackle.

    Check that Cameron Smith. All he does is hold tackled player down in his own 20m.

    That’s the difference – that is all.

  31. Bushfire Bill@413

    Returned Turkeys is merely (and finally) seeking medical help for a condition which has long been obvious to regular readers here.

    Seeing as he’s faked just about everything else, he’s probably faking this too.

    My reaction as well.

    The *revelation* about him not voting for abbott gave me a hearty giraffe.

  32. poroti – Allenby had a a very quick temper. But once he’d delivered a bollocking to someone it never mentioned afterwards.

    He was popular with his fellow officers, troops, the Press and general public.

    He became even more popular with the troops after Beersheba as he had the British and ANZAC mounted infantry equipped with sabres.

  35. [Returned Turkeys is merely (and finally) seeking medical help for a condition which has long been obvious to regular readers here.
    Seeing as he’s faked just about everything else, he’s probably faking this too.

    My reaction as well.

    The *revelation* about him not voting for abbott gave me a hearty giraffe.]

    I had similar thoughts on both counts. On the first,I think the balance of evidence is he is unhinged, an hope he gets help. On the second, I’m sure his argument is that he voted for some other further right party first before his preferences went to his local LNP rep – but not abbott. It is a sign of the times that someone such as turkey says ‘ I did not vote for abbott’ – reminds me of a song by the 80s melb band ‘Wild pumpkins at midnight’ that had the lines “I finally met an american/who said he voted Reagan in./He says he won’t do that again/if the world lasts that long.” Even my ‘aspirational LNP voting’ bogan-in-laws opinion fast and free how much they hate abbott and hockey. Problem is, they are likely to vote PUP or further to the nationalist right in the future. I’m encouraging them to not vote/vote informal to show their disgust at the system.

  36. Sir SF
    [I’m encouraging them to not vote/vote informal to show their disgust at the system.]
    😆

  38. [Sir SF

    I’m encouraging them to not vote/vote informal to show their disgust at the system.

    :lol:]

    thanks Puff. However, I really am encouraging them to vote informal and urge them tell all their mates to do the same. I recall Latham urged this before the 2010 election and I recall the high number of bogans at the polling booth I was on storming past all of us with HtV cards, and some loudly declaring they were voting informal. Abbott’s treatment of refugees comes from wanting the votes of these sorts, so I have no qualms in encouraging them to disenfranchise themselves. Is that wrong?

  40. Nah.

    That’s Clive’s dinosaur.Mmm.

    If Dave thinks that too, then I guess it must be harsh but true.

    Don’t worry about responding, Bushfire. Wouldn’t want to take up your valuable time.

    Though short responses, like ‘yes’ or ‘no’ still fall under the 500 words or less category.

  42. crikey whitey

    We are rarely here together. I would like to tell you I agreed with your post on the educated mind.

  44. Latham is another one I would like to see sentenced to scraping pubic hairs off sewerage filters.

  48. I’ve always assumed the turkey iterations were simple old-fashioned attention-seeking driven trolling. Battle Turkey and Battle Troll are not that far apart. The author admitted at one point that one of the identities had ‘run its course’. I figured it was probably Leisure Suit Larry or GP or that other dill allegedly from WA who affects connections with the ADF.

    I do feel sorry for those whose lives are so poor that their principal human contact must come from tricking people into engaging with them. They’d be better off working on their deficits and trying to acquire insight. Sadly, those who are culturally impoverished tend to find their way to the anti-social side of the cultural smorgasbord rather than the one offering all the best human community has to offer.

  49. Fran.

    I just hope that my well intentioned words to Turkey may have had a small, at least, effect for good.

    Even if he is what they say.

  50. [culturally impoverished tend to find their way to the anti-social side of the cultural smorgasbord]

    Beautiful turn of phrase Fran!

    Sometimes your writings are too verbose for me, but on occasion you do come out with some fantastic pithy lines, which I enjoy.

    Long may you post here.

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