Springwood

Margin: Liberal National 15.4%
Region: Logan City
Federal: Forde/Rankin

Candidates in ballot paper order

	JANINA LEO Greens CHRIS LAWRIE Family First PETER CHAMBERLAIN Palmer United Party JOHN GRANT Liberal National (top) MICK DE BRENNI Labor (bottom)

Springwood is a conventionally marginal seat in south-eastern Brisbane that currently bears a margin inflated by the extraordinary result of 2012, when a 4.1% Labor margin was accounted for by a swing of 19.5%, high even by the standards of that election. Its western boundary runs for 12 kilometres along the Pacific Motorway in Brisbane’s south-east, from which it extends to the Logan City suburbs of Rochedale, Springwood, Shailer Park and Logandale.

The Nationals won Springwood on its creation in 1986 and it has since swung with the electoral breeze, switching to Labor in 1989, Liberal in 1995, Labor in 1998 and the Liberal National Party in 2012. The 1995 result was particularly noteworthy, with the electorate emerging at the epicentre of the “koala motorway” backlash that blindsided the Goss government. With both the Greens and Democrats directing preferences against Labor in protest against a motorway route which threatened harm to koala populations, Liberal candidate Luke Woolmer was able to unseat Labor member Molly Robson with a swing of 19.5%.

The seat was recovered for Labor at the 1998 election by Grant Musgrove, who picked up an 11.3% correction to defeat Woolmer by 0.6%. Musgrove was forced to stand aside at the 2001 election after the Shepherdson inquiry revealed his preselection had been secured with help from vote rorting, and he was succeeded as Labor candidate by Barbara Stone, one of a number of factionally unaligned candidates installed by Peter Beattie without a preselection vote as part of his highly effective management of the fallout from the scandal. It was a measure of the Shepherdson inquiry’s electoral non-impact that Stone enjoyed an easy victory on the back of a 10.1% two-party swing, assisted by a split in the conservative vote between competing Nationals and Liberal candidates. Stone’s 10.4% margin was worn down to 4.1% over the next three elections.

The successful LNP candidate in 2012 was John Grant, formerly a Logan councillor. He will be opposed at the coming election by Labor’s Mick de Brenni, a campaign officer at the Queensland Council of Unions and former assistant secretary of the Left faction United Voice union.

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

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