Maranoa – Australia 2019

LNP 15.9% vs ON

Incumbent MP
David Littleproud, since 2016.

Geography
Southwestern Queensland and the Darling Downs. Maranoa covers a large part of southern Queensland, stretching from Toowoomba council area (although not the city of Toowoomba itself) along the NSW border, all the way to the South Australian and Northern Territory borders. Major towns include Kingaroy, Nanango, Warwick, Dalby and Roma.

Redistribution
No change.

History
Maranoa is an original federation electorate, covering rural parts of southern Queensland. The seat was first held by the ALP, but has been held by the Country Party and its successors since 1921, only losing Maranoa at one election.

The seat was first won in 1901 by the ALP’s James Page. Page held the seat until his death in 1921.

The 1921 by-election was won by James Hunter, standing for the newly-formed Country Party. Hunter served as a minister in the Lyons government from 1934 to 1937, and retired in 1940.

Maranoa was won in 1940 by the ALP’s Frank Baker, a former school teacher and father of former MP Frank Baker Jr, who had died in 1939. The elder Baker held Maranoa for one term, losing to the Country Party’s Charles Adermann in 1943. Adermann retained Maranoa in 1946 before moving to the new seat of Fisher in 1949. He served as a minister from 1958 until 1967, and retired in 1972.

The Country Party’s Charles Russell won Maranoa in 1949, but fell out with his party in 1950 and contested the seat as an independent in 1951, losing to the Country Party’s Wilfred Brimblecombe. Brimblecombe held the seat until his retirement in 1966.

James Corbett won Maranoa for the Country Party in 1966, holding it until 1980. He was succeeded in 1980 by Ian Cameron, also of the National Country Party.

Cameron retired in 1990, and the National Party’s Bruce Scott won the seat, and held the seat until his retirement in 2016.

LNP candidate David Littleproud succeeded Scott in 2016.

Candidates

Assessment
Maranoa is a reasonably safe seat, unless there was a major surge in One Nation support.

2016 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
David Littleproud Liberal National 44,297 49.2 -8.2
Dave Kerrigan Labor 16,456 18.3 +2.0
Lynette Keehn One Nation 16,047 17.8 +17.8
Rick Gurnett Katter’s Australian Party 4,306 4.8 -0.8
Katherine Hompes Greens 3,056 3.4 +0.3
Myfanwy Schenk Family First 2,905 3.2 +0.5
Luke Arbuckle CountryMinded 2,141 2.4 +2.4
Sherrilyn Church Rise Up Australia 841 0.9 0.0
Informal 5,269 5.5

2016 two-candidate-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes %
David Littleproud Liberal National 59,308 65.9
Lynette Keehn One Nation 30,741 34.1

2016 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
David Littleproud Liberal National 60,821 67.5 -4.7
Dave Kerrigan Labor 29,228 32.5 +4.7

Booth breakdown

Booths have been divided into six areas. Polling places in Dalby and Roma council areas were grouped by local government areas. Balonne and Goondiwindi council areas have been grouped together as ‘South’.

Polling places in Toowoomba council area have been split into two areas. Those in the south have been combined with those in Southern Downs as “South-East”. Those in the north have been combined with South Burnett as “Kingaroy-Crows Nest”. The remainder of the booths have been combined as “West”, in an area that makes up a majority of the seat’s geographical area but a small minority of the population.

The LNP won a majority of both the two-party-preferred vote (against Labor) and the two-candidate-preferred vote (against One Nation) but the pattern varied. The two-party-preferred vote ranged from 59.8% in the west to 70.8% in Dalby, while the two-candidate-preferred vote ranged from 60.4% in Kingaroy-Crows Nest to 67.9% in the south-east.

Voter group LNP 2PP % LNP 2CP % Total votes % of votes
South-East 66.1 67.9 13,824 15.4
Dalby 70.8 64.2 10,069 11.2
Kingaroy-Crows Nest 61.6 60.4 9,198 10.2
West 59.8 62.6 4,987 5.5
South 65.2 66.8 4,954 5.5
Roma 68.4 66.0 3,435 3.8
Other votes 73.9 69.1 19,516 21.7
Pre-poll 66.1 65.4 24,066 26.7

Election results in Maranoa at the 2016 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred (LNP vs Labor) votes and two-candidate-preferred (LNP vs One Nation) votes.


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9 COMMENTS

  1. One Nation may get a good primary vote but in order to win, Labor would need to vacate the seat as their how to vote cards would put One Nation last. KAP or the Shooters, or a strong independent that Labor would happily preference over the LNP would have a better shot, and they could benefit from a preference snowball, but it would depend on them being the main recipients of the “anti politics” vote.

    At any rate I don’t think One Nation are going to be much of an entity when the election comes around, and even with a swing against Littleproud a lot of those One Nation voters are going straight back home to the LNP.

    Prediction: Won’t even go to preferences

  2. Katter candidate starting to get active with townhall style meetings advertised for Roma and Pittsworth. Bob Katter draws crowds for candidate Anthony Wallis. Talking about inland rail.
    Maranoa is 731,297 square kilometres. Combined area of 37 Victorian electorates is 153,353 square kilometres.
    I placed a post about the difficulties of campaigning in Kennedy in Kennedy thread during last election. Cost in time and money can be astronomical.
    Dickson ALP had 18 street booths yesterday. They all could have met on Friday night slept in their own beds Friday night and been on site early Saturday with a small amount of organising Thursday. To do the same in Maranoa would be a 3 week exercise with probably about 10 K kilometres of driving. Dickson is a large Division by Victorian Standards 772 square km.
    I considered driving out to Pittsworth
    To attend the meeting but it would be a 300km each way. Roma 450 km each way.

  3. there are those places in the electorate close to Toowoomba ………. like Dalby, Kingaroy. Warrick and then the remainder which I would call outback

  4. Mick
    Dalby has always had a bit of an independent streak to it. The state seat of Aubigny ( abolished by Joh 1969???) was the last QLP / DLP seat in Queensland.

    Maranoa is a safe National seat until such time as electorate work out that Nationals have been taken over by Spring Hill Libs. At that point Katter could take the seat.
    KAP had great internal party strength in electorate at one time.
    Whilst Ashby-Hanson May be standing the electorate are decentralised and well placed local newspaper campaigning is possible.
    If Katter is going to get any seats South of Tropic Maranoa will be prime target.
    Andrew Jackson
    apjackson2@bigpond.com

  5. Andrew yess mp was Les Diplock he won I think Condamine in the early 50’s as an alp candidate which was a first….. then with a Boundary change he and a chap named Sparkes stood for the same seat which was retained by Mr Diplock………. Maranoa started off as a secure Alp seat held until lost in the early 1920s…… then won again 1940 and narrowly lost 1943…. think there was a protestant labor party candidate then……… now of course labor cannot win…….. good luck with kap

  6. Mick
    Yes I remember Les Diplock a nice bloke. He used to come into Parliament with Gordon Chalk MLA for Locker when Chalk was Deputy Premier.
    Diplock was in fact a member of Anglican synod so Lord Knows why a Protestant Labor candidate would have stood against him.
    Diplock spoke at the first party meeting I attended. He had been Minister for Public Instruction in the Gair Government. A wonderful name for schooling “instruction” ie passing on of traditional knowledge, having the confidence to know what kids should be taught.

  7. No the Protestant national party was not part of the alp…….. stood for Maranoa against Mr Baker the alp mp who lost the seat narrowly in 1943……. did not Contest against Mr Diplock. look at the votes for Aubigny and Condamine on Wikipedia Mr Diplock in both seats had a huge personal vote he even received most alp preferences in contests against the npa

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