Nudgee

Margin: Liberal National 3.1%
Region: Northern Brisbane
Federal: Lilley

Candidates in ballot paper order

	EDWARD MONAEI Independent PETER DUFFICY Palmer United Party CLAIRE OGDEN Greens JASON WOODFORTH Liberal National (top) LEANNE LINARD Labor (bottom)

Among the worst of Labor’s many defeats at the 2012 election was its failure to carry the inner northern Brisbane seat of Nudgee, which it had held since its creation in 1960, including amid the debacle of 1974. The electorate is located immediately to the north of the airport about ten kilometres of the city centre, extending from from Toombul north through Virginia to Boondall, and from Chermside east to Nudgee Beach.

Labor’s members over the years were John Melloy from 1960 to 1977, Ken Vaughan from 1977 to 1995, and then Neil Roberts, who went on to spend Labor’s final term in office as Police, Emergency Services and Corrective Services Minister. On his retirement at the 2012 election, Labor preselection went to one of his ministerial advisers, Leanne Linard, who had previously worked for Anna Bligh and Andrew Fraser. However, Linard’s nascent political career promptly hit the wall of the 2012 election result, at which the 14.3% Labor margin was smothered by a swing of 17.4%.

Nudgee has since been held for the Liberal National Party by Jason Woodforth, an importer and seller of bodybuilding supplements and a figure in the International Natural Bodybuilding Association. Leanne Linard will again contest the seat for Labor, as part of an arrangement her Labor Unity faction brokered with the AWU-dominated rival Right sub-faction, Labor Forum. According to a Courier-Mail report in early 2013, the latter faction had “seized control” of preselections in Nudgee and Sandgate, but in the interests of peace was unlikely to field a candidate in the former.

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

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