Electorate: Brisbane

Margin: Liberal National 1.1%
Location: Inner Brisbane, Queensland

In a nutshell: The seat of Brisbane was lost to Labor at the 2010 election for the first time since 1980, and the party desperately needs to win it back again to counterbalance anticipated losses elsewhere.

The candidates (ballot paper order)

brisbane-lnp

JOHN ROLES
Stable Population Party

TONY ROSE
Secular Party of Australia

TERESA GAMBARO
Liberal National Party (top)

CONNIE CICCHINI
Katter’s Australian Party

VERONICA MARY ANN FORD
Palmer United Party

RACHAEL JACOBS
Greens

SHARYN JOYNER
Family First

FIONA McNAMARA
Labor (bottom)


brisbane-alp

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 while removing territory out to Ferny Grove and Upper Kedron in the west and Stafford in the north. The former area includes Clayfield and its highly affluent surrounds, which contribute to the electorate’s current status as the highest-income seat in Queensland. This proved doubly damaging for Labor at the 2010 election 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, powering a decisive 5.7% swing to the Liberal National Party. 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.

cuLaura Tingle of the Financial Review wrote at the start of the campaign that “both sides presume Teresa Gambaro’s seat of Brisbane will fall to Labor”. That presumption has almost certainly faded since then, but Kevin Rudd has likely had half an eye on the seat in seeking to elevate same-sex marriage as an election issue. Patricia Karvelas of The Australian reports that Australian Marriage Equality has distributed 70,000 flyers in the electorate calling on Gambaro to declare her support. A JWS Research poll with a sample of approximately 600 at the end of the second week of the campaign showed Gambaro with a comfortable lead of 54.1-45.9 on two-party preferred, and a primary vote of 50% against 36% for Fiona McNamara.

Analysis written by William Bowe. Read William’s blog, The Poll Bludger.

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