Seat of the week: Wide Bay

Warren Truss’s seat of Wide Bay encompasses Noosa, Gympie and Maryborough, and has been in National/Country Party hands for most of an existence that dates back to federation.

Wide Bay has covered a variable area around Maryborough about 300 kilometres north of Brisbane since its creation at federation. Maryborough is currently at the northern end of an electorate that extends south along the coast to Noosa, which was gained at the redistribution before the 2007 election as its southern neighbour Fairfax was drawn southwards by population growth on the Sunshine Coast (which Wide Bay accommodated in its entirety for most of the period prior to 1949). The electorate also extends inland through Gympie to Murgon and Cherbourg.

Now a secure seat for the Liberal National Party, Wide Bay was one of 15 seats across the country won by Labor at the first election in 1901. Its member from then until 1915 was Andrew Fisher, who served three terms as prime minister and won the party’s first parliamentary majority at the election of 1910. Labor was narrowly defeated at a by-election held after Fisher retired due to ill health, and for the next 13 years the seat was held by Edward Corser, first as a Liberal and then in the Nationalist Party that succeeded it in 1917. The seat passed to the Country Party upon Corser’s death in 1928, when his son Bernard Corser was elected as the party’s candidate without opposition.

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

Brendan Hansen’s election in 1961 gave Labor its first win in Wide Bay in nearly half a century, and he retained the seat until defeated amid a statewide swing against the Whitlam government in 1974. The seat has has since had two National/Country Party members, the present incumbent Warren Truss succeeding Clarrie Millar in 1990. The general trend over this time has been for increasing Nationals margins, with Truss retaining the seat by 8.5% amid Labor’s strong statewide result in 2007 and boosting his margin to 15.6% in 2010, before a narrowing to 13.2% at the 2013 election.

Warren Truss emerged through local Nationals ranks as a councillor for the Shire of Kingaroy from 1976 to 1990, before winning the party’s endorsement to succeed Joh Bjelke-Petersen as member for Barambah at the by-election which followed his retirement in 1988. However, Truss suffered a shock defeat at the hands of Trevor Perrett, a candidate of the eccentric Citizens Electoral Council who joined the Nationals a year later. He was amply compensated with endorsement for Wide Bay at the federal election two years later, and was elected without incident despite a 3.9% swing to Labor.

Truss served as a junior shadow minister in the consumer affairs portfolio after November 1994, but was cut from the front bench when the Nationals’ reduced share of seats within the Coalition reduced its share of the spoils of the 1996 election victory. His opportunity came in October the following year when the travel rorts affair garnered three ministerial scalps including Nationals MP John Sharp, resulting in Truss’s return to the consumer affairs portfolio together with customs. After the 1998 election he was reassigned to community services, and he then attained cabinet rank in July 1999 with his promotion to Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry Minister. In July 2005 he secured his party’s deputy leadership and traded his portfolios for transport and regional services, and was again reassigned to trade in September 2006.

Truss was elevated to the leadership of the National Party when Mark Vaile resigned in the wake of the 2007 election defeat, although it has often been noted that his profile is a good deal lower than that of Barnaby Joyce, who moved from a Queensland Senate seat to the New South Wales lower house seat of New England at the 2013 election. As well as being Deputy Prime Minister, Truss has served as Minister for Infrastructure and Regional Development since the election of the Abbott government.

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.

1,168 comments on “Seat of the week: Wide Bay”

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  3. On Scandinavian Television. It will never be a television superpower until all its hit tv shows are done in english.

    There is a reason the US and Britain remake the stories in English.

  6. [So we’re going to end up paying international prices for gas, which means that, basically, once the investment phase is over, the gas will be shipped offshore and the profits will be shipped offshore, and we’ll get very little benefit (except a high exchange rate).]

    Yep. Free market and all that, it’s just a pity no one else does it. At least the PRRT is still in place.

  8. markjs
    Yes, I do think the Scandinavians are putting out good drama. Subtitles are so, so much better than dubbing.
    I couldn’t get your link to work unfortunately.

  11. Another Abbott broken promise. He said proper Cabinet processes, instead we have a sausage factory of Abbott Brainfarts ™ laundered through the Murdoch organs

    [Federal cabinet has been caught unawares by media reports of a national security committee plan to require telecommunications companies to retain customers’ metadata for at least two years.

    Cabinet is likely to be briefed on Tuesday morning about the plan, but had no knowledge a decision had been taken before it was revealed in the Daily Telegraph newspaper. The issue is not on the formal cabinet agenda.

    Telecommunications companies had not been briefed on the decision before it was revealed in the media and were frantically seeking information on Tuesday morning, although they have responded to several parliamentary inquiries on the issue.

    It is understood ministers hold strongly differing views about the practicalities of metadata retention, which has been proposed for several years and which the government argues is now needed to combat domestic terrorism threats.

    According to the Daily Telegraph the attorney general, George Brandis, and the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, will be asked to work up an urgent interim measure by as early as September, with legislation to be introduced later after the government has considered a report from a Senate inquiry.]

    http://gu.com/p/4vfhv/tw

  13. [On Scandinavian Television. It will never be a television superpower until all its hit tv shows are done in english.

    There is a reason the US and Britain remake the stories in English.]
    guytaur
    The British can do it but the Yanks are simply pathetic at it. As evidence I tender the original “The Bridge” The US “The Bridge” (of which I endured 15 minutes) and the UK “The Tunnel” currently showing on ABC on Sunday nights.

  14. The scandinavians should do their shows in English – after all they speak better English than us.
    I know someone who is studying to teach English as a second language and she’s having to actually learn some grammar, because all the new English speakers know more than her.

  16. good news – I wonder if they’ll invest in renewables over coal and nuclear.

    http://www.afr.com/p/business/resources/mining/coal/beijing_plans_to_ban_coal_use_by_irquV1igU160y4dlKG66YO

    I wonder if the sharemarket has responded to this? The fossil fuel industry must be angry that china is not a democracy so they can’t buy one of the parties as they have done here, canada and the US.

    you can see why the industry is desperate to get as much coal out now and set up infrastructure that commits us to coal while investors will still back them.

    On the down side, if the global dimming effect of china’s pollution falls, I wonder if we’ll see more rapid warming.

  17. Loved Q&A last night – Nova Peris and Ken Wyatt were excellent as were others.

    I was a little disappointed in Noel Pearson – guess he has been advocating so long he is a bit tired.

    Did any of you notice Jack Thompson and John Anderson in the audience?

  18. [@danielhurstbne: Ministers unaware of interim plan. Some gov officials claimed PM’s office appeared to have “gone rogue” @lenoretaylor http://t.co/mkqzgITqSN ]

    From the article, even the ministers responsible for drafting the legislation knew nothing:

    [According to the Daily Telegraph the attorney general, George Brandis, and the communications minister, Malcolm Turnbull, will be asked to work up an urgent interim measure by as early as September, with legislation to be introduced later after the government has considered a report from a Senate inquiry.

    Neither minister was aware of the interim plan, and some government officials claimed the prime minister’s office appeared to have “gone rogue”.]

  20. BK

    Sorry I forgot to mention ln that last post totally agree regarding the crap remaking of the US.

    Another good example of that is the failure of the US remake of Rake.

  22. MTBW

    Cave hermit might be a way to survive six months without money for our youth.

    This woman’s story is sad. An exception rather than the rule at the moment.

  23. [
    Sorry I forgot to mention ln that last post totally agree regarding the crap remaking of the US.

    Another good example of that is the failure of the US remake of Rake.
    ]

    The US remake of House of Cards is absolutely brilliant in my opinion, and I’ve seen the original series many times. A rare success it would seem.

  24. [1056
    Libertarian Unionist

    So we’re going to end up paying international prices for gas, which means that, basically, once the investment phase is over, the gas will be shipped offshore and the profits will be shipped offshore, and we’ll get very little benefit (except a high exchange rate).]

    Not to worry. LNG prices are collapsing as new supplies are offered to the East Asian market from Russia, central Asia and North America. Australian producers, notably including Chevron, have stopped writing new sales contracts because available prices are now down to break even or less. International LNG prices over the medium term horizon are going to fall. As a result, we will soon be paying higher prices in the domestic market than are obtainable in export markets – the situation that has existed most of the time in the gas market.

    The problem is with CSG, which has environmental issues and high ongoing investment requirements. The gas producers have probably overestimated their production capacity, underestimated their capital demand and assumed that high export prices will be stable. Large scale export of CSG is likely to falter before long.

    In the meantime, supplies for the domestic market should be mandated. Local industries and consumers should not be penalised for the mistaken speculations of would-be CSG exporters, who are now trying to recover their capital before it’s too late.

  25. ZOILORDS – Great article. So Turnbull is even destroy his OWN vision of the NBN (such as it is). So far as I can tell, instead of a world-class NBN we are:
    1. Going to have fibre to the node; and
    2. For that estimable privilege, pay Telstra a bucket-load of dosh to use the copper network AND maintain the copper network.
    Glorious Malcolm, glorious. What a Mountbank.

  30. [Not to worry. LNG prices are collapsing as new supplies are offered to the East Asian market from Russia, central Asia and North America. Australian producers,]

    As much / most LNG is presold decades in advance it is a little premature to say that the prices are collapsing.

    As I understand it there have been some Henry Hub price linked LNG sales rather than traditional oil based pricing. Buyers are rumored to be asking for Hub linked pricing rather than oil based pricing and they are of course waiting to see if there is a spate of US and Canadian LNG projects going into construction. The majors still expect an UNDER supply of LNG in the midterm.

    Apache is trying to bail out of its projects including kitimat and other projects will not go ahead without presales (approx 60%). In Australia expansions seem to be onhold and FLNG is still relatively untried – so Browse has some question over it. Even here in WA where a long term bipartisan domgas reservation policy (which has been under serious attack from clowns) still relies on the projects going ahead – no big LNG export project = no domgas.

    I would be very surprised if the east coast ever again has cheap domgas.

  33. BK @ 1063

    [guytaur
    The British can do it but the Yanks are simply pathetic at it. As evidence I tender the original “The Bridge” The US “The Bridge” (of which I endured 15 minutes) and the UK “The Tunnel” currently showing on ABC on Sunday nights.]

    I am hooked on Bron/Broen to the extent that I paid for season 2 from iTunes. 😀 This production has raised the bar so high,it reduces most US law enforcement dramas to badly written pulp.Only UK shows that come close are Spooks and Silent Witness.

  36. Tony thinks that data retention will let him spout national security, etc etc. But lots of voters will be sensationally pissed off.

  38. So it looks like there is some serious unravelling in the Federal LNP. It’s losing self discipline and making things up on the fly. Its budget is a disaster and it sounds like knives are being sharpened. What will the Great Leader Abbott do to turn this arounf?

  39. @K17/1086

    Voters need to think data rentention like DNA, would you like the goverment storing your DNA to do what they want with it?

  41. A great drama which has kicked off overseas is “Manhattan” which is about the race to build the bomb at Los Alamos. It looks like it’s going to be about the competition between the team working on Little Boy and the team working on Thin Man.

  46. Raaraa

    Nah. Sorry BK covers this area really well. Nothing to add to that.

    I have no problems with subtitles. SBS helped me there.

  47. Another study revolving around gaming:
    http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/gaming/want-better-adjusted-children-an-hour-of-video-gaming-a-day-and-no-more-might-help-9645834.html

    “Research undertaken by experimental psychologist Dr Andrew Przybylski suggested that young people who played video games for just a few hours a week were better adjusted, more likely to care about the welfare of their peers and presented fewer behavioural problems over all.”

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