Dickson – Election 2010

ALP 0.8%

Incumbent MP
Peter Dutton (Liberal Party) since 2001.

Geography
Dickson covers the north-western suburbs of Brisbane and adjoining rural areas. It covers most of the former Pine Rivers Shire, now included in the Moreton Bay Council. Suburbs include Ferny Hills, Albany Creek, Strathpine, Petrie and Kallangur. Further west it includes areas such as Dayboro, Mount Samson and Samford Village.

Dickson has often been considered a typical ‘mortgage belt’ seat and is also characterised by primarily being comprised of urban/bushland interface suburbs.

Redistribution
Dickson’s previous boundaries saw the seat extend westwards across the ranges to include the rural Esk Shire in the upper Brisbane River Valley. The redistribution transfers this area, now part of the Somerset LGA, to Blair. Dickson gains a small area around Kallangur in the north-eastern part of the electorate from Longman. The boundary changes flip the seat from its wafer-thin 0.1% margin for the Liberals, to a notional Labor seat on a 0.8% margin.

History
Dickson was created for the 1993 election, though it was not filled until a supplementary election a month after the general election following the death of an independent candidate during the campaign. It was won for the ALP by Michael Lavarch, who transferred to the seat from Fisher, which he had represented since 1987, defeating the Liberal candidate, future Queensland state Liberal Party leader Dr Bruce Flegg.

Lavarch served as Attorney-General in the Keating government, but was defeated in the 1996 landslide by Liberal Tony Smith (not the same Tony Smith now on the Opposition frontbench).

Smith lost the Liberal endorsement for the 1998 election and recontested the seat as an Independent. A leakage of preferences from his 9% primary vote presumably assisted the narrow, 176-vote victory by ALP star recruit, former Democrats leader Cheryl Kernot.

Kernot was defeated in 2001 by the Liberals’ Peter Dutton, who has held the seat ever since, serving as a minister during the Howard government’s last term. In 2007 an 8.8% swing to the ALP saw Dutton hold the seat by just 217 votes.

Candidates

Political Situation
The new notional Labor majority, coupled with Peter Dutton’s highly publicised efforts to abandon the electorate for more fertile ground, should make this a difficult seat for the Liberals to retain. Certainly shaping up as one of the key contests to watch.

2007 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Peter Dutton LIB 38,507 46.15 -6.65
Fiona McNamara ALP 36,438 43.67 +9.54
Howard Nielsen GRN 5,006 6.00 +0.38
Dale Shuttleworth FF 2,118 2.54 -1.75
Peter Kerin DEM 797 0.96 -0.64
Connie Wood CDP 323 0.39 +0.39
Brad Cornwell LDP 258 0.31 +0.31

2007 two-candidate-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Peter Dutton LIB 41,832 50.13 -8.76
Fiona McNamara ALP 41,615 49.87 +8.76

Results do not take into consideration effects of the redistribution.

Booth breakdown
Most of the population of Dickson lives along the eastern edge of the seat, running from Ferny Hills in the south to Kallangur in the north. I have divided this area into four areas according to the main suburb(s) in each of these areas, as well as grouping the four booths in the large sparsely populated western part of the seat.

The ALP solidly wins Kallagur and Strathpine-Bray Park in the north of the seat, and wins Ferny Hills in the south by a smaller margin. Albany Creek was won by the Liberal Party, as were the rural western booths.

Polling booths in Dickson. Western booths in yellow, Ferny Hills in red, Albany Creek in green, Strathpine-Bray Park in blue, Kallangur in orange.

Voter group GRN % ALP 2CP % Total votes % of ordinary votes
Strathpine-Bray Park 4.78 56.32 17,275 25.67
Kallangur 4.64 55.87 16,070 23.88
Albany Creek 4.44 43.35 14,610 21.71
Ferny Hills 6.76 53.99 11,785 17.51
West 13.57 44.45 7,568 11.24
Other votes 4.70 48.00 15,218

Polling booths in Dickson.