Logan

Margin: Liberal National 4.8%
Region: Logan City
Federal: Forde/Rankin/Wright

Candidates in ballot paper order

	KIM SOUTHWOOD Greens DAVID PELLOWE Family First DANIEL MURPHY Independent LINUS POWER Labor (bottom) MICHAEL PUCCI Liberal National (top) PETER ERVIK Independent

Once held by Wayne Goss, the outer southern Brisbane seat of Logan was one of Labor’s most painful losses of the 2012 landslide, when a 13.9% margin from the 2009 election was swept aside by an 18.7% swing. The electorate covers suburbs to the immediate south of the Logan Motorway including Regents Park and Heritage Park, extending southwards through semi-rural outskirts from Maclean east to Logan Village. It ranks first in the state for number of mortgage payers, and fourth for families with children under 15.

A seat bearing the name of Logan has existed on-and-off since 1873, mostly returning conservative members until the area was given over to low-cost housing after World War II. When recreated at the 1986 election, Logan was won for Labor on a 6.8% margin by Wayne Goss, who had entered parliament at the 1983 election as member for Salisbury, which was abolished in 1992. Goss’s margin had blown out to 25.3% by the 1992 election, and on his retirement in 1998 he bequeathed a margin of 16.9% to his successor John Mickel. This was pared back in Goss’s absence to 8.4%, against the statewide trend, but Mickel thereafter retained the seat on margins well into the double digits. He rose to cabinet after the 2004 election, progressively serving in environment, energy, state development and transport, before receiving the consolation prize of the Speakership when he was dropped after the 2009 election.

After announcing in August 2011 that he would bow out at the election to be held the following March, Mickel and Anna Bligh decisively threw their support behind Linus Power, a party organiser and colleague of Mickel’s in the Labor Forum/AWU faction. However, what appeared to be a clear path to parliament was blocked at the election by Liberal National Party candidate Michael Pucci. Power will again contest the seat for Labor at the coming election.

Michael Pucci is American emigrant who moved to Australia after meeting the woman who is now his wife during a posting in Brisbane with the United States Marine Corps. Pucci was in fact his party’s second choice for candidate before the 2012 election, the first having been Peter Anderson-Barr, a police sergeant and Army Reserve warrant officer. Anderson-Barr withdrew early in the campaign after the circulation of media reports from 2004 concerning an incident in which he allegedly struck an offender who had spat at him.

Corrections, complaints and feedback to William Bowe at pollbludger-at-bigpond-dot-com. Read William’s blog, The Poll Bludger.

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