LNP 61.89%
Incumbent MP
Mark Boothman, since 2012.
Geography
South-East Queensland. Albert covers northwestern parts of Gold Coast City and parts of Logan City. It covers the suburbs of Oxenford, Upper Coomera, Studio Village, Mount Warren Park, Windaroo and parts of Coomera, Ormeau and Pimpama.
History
The seat of Albert was first created in 1888, and has existed for all but ten years since then. The seat was abolished in 1950 and restored in 1960. The seat has been a marginal seat regularly changing hands since the 1970s.
In its early years, the seat was dominated by various conservative MPs, with the ALP never winning the seat prior to its abolition in 1950.
In 1960 it was won by the Country Party’s Cec Carey. He held the seat until his death in 1969.
The 1970 by-election was won by Liberal candidate Bill Heatley. Heatley had previously filled a vacancy in the Senate and served as a Senator from 1966 to 1968. He died in late 1971.
At the 1972 election, Albert was won by Labor candidate Bill D’Arcy. He held the seat for one term, losing in 1974. He later won the seat of Woodridge in 1977 and held it until 2000.
Albert was won in 1974 by National Country Party candidate Ivan Gibbs. He served as a minister in the conservative government from 1979 to 1989.
The ALP’s John Szczerbanik won Albert in 1989. He was re-elected in 1992 but lost the seat in 1995 to the National Party’s Bill Baumann. Baumann was defeated in 2001 by the ALP’s Margaret Keech.
Margaret Keech held Albert for four terms from 2001 to 2012. In 2012, Keech lost to LNP candidate Mark Boothman.
Candidates
- Mark Boothman (Liberal National)
- Amanda Best (Family First)
- Melissa McMahon (Labor)
- Jane Cajdler (Greens)
- Blair Brewster (Palmer United)
Assessment
In normal elections, Albert is a marginal seat. Albert is one of the final seats Labor would need to win to be put in an election-winning position.
2012 election result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Mark Boothman | Liberal National | 13,888 | 49.59 | +10.43 |
| Margaret Keech | Labor | 7,943 | 28.36 | -21.69 |
| Adam Hollis | Katter’s Australian | 3,045 | 10.87 | +10.87 |
| Amanda Best | Family First | 1,620 | 5.78 | +5.78 |
| Petrina Maizey | Greens | 1,511 | 5.40 | -1.68 |
2012 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Mark Boothman | Liberal National | 15,198 | 61.89 | +18.36 |
| Margaret Keech | Labor | 9,358 | 38.11 | -18.36 |
Booth breakdown
Booths in Albert have been split into three parts: central, north and south.
The LNP topped the poll in all three areas, ranging from 48% in the north to 53% in central.
The ALP’s vote was around 27% in the centre and south, and 31% in the north.
Katter’s Australian Party came third, with a vote of around 10-12% in all three areas.
The Electoral Commission does not publish two-party-preferred figures by polling place, so two-party-preferred figures in the following table and map are estimates.
| Voter group | LNP prim % | ALP prim % | KAP prim % | LNP 2PP % | Total | % of votes |
| South | 49.34 | 27.28 | 10.79 | 62.48 | 10,314 | 36.83 |
| North | 47.98 | 30.52 | 11.52 | 59.70 | 5,763 | 20.58 |
| Central | 52.95 | 27.39 | 10.49 | 64.16 | 4,053 | 14.47 |
| Other votes | 49.36 | 28.69 | 10.70 | 61.55 | 7,877 | 28.13 |
Hardworking LNP member in this seat, is always campaigning. Would expect the LNP to hold on here.
You say he’s “always campaigning”. I live in Albert, and that’s just not accurate. While it’s a big margin, I think you’d be surprised at the talk in the district. I’m optimistic that Labor will at least make this a close race.
I think palmer united will be in this one as well
Looking at Melissa McMahon’s profile, she seems like someone the ALP should be pushing for as a major sales pitch for “new blood, but highly qualified”. In fact, they could potentially line her up as the natural choice for Minister for Police, Fire and Emergency Services.
Hello I love this time of year when the two big parties cry foul of the other. I’m tipping lnp to win Albert and government but the little man Newman is a goner!
Can I ask why you think that?
Are you privy to some inside intelligence in Albert? Is PUP running an exceptional candidate here? Did the party do exceptionally well here federally? (As far as I can tell, the answer to the last question is no.)
Albert looks like a classic outer suburban marginal to me. With the the Labor brand somewhat recovered from the thrashing it took in 2012-13, I’d expect both major parties to poll over 35%; comfortably shutting out PUP and any other minor parties.
Bmb might have just meant that PUP would have a candidate.
But beyond that, Albert has much of its area within the Federal electorate of Forde, where PUP had a decent showing (about 12.5%, the only non-major to get beyond 4.2%, and more than the other seven minors/independent combined). The remaining portions of Albert are in Fadden and Wright, both of which saw more than 14% support for PUP.
So while I don’t think PUP will do well enough to actually have a serious chance at being in the 2CP, let alone a chance of winning, they’ll probably do fairly well if they run a candidate.
I find it funny that mark was to be removed one week out last time then was back by the lnp because thay ran out of time to replace him and to be replace by Blair Brewster PUP
I have more to come soon
I find it quite strange that the Greens haven’t announced a candidate for Albert.
Also, PUP have announced Blair Brewster, who ran for Forde in the 2013 federal election, as their candidate for Albert.
Blair Brewster is Clive Palmer’s nephew, if I remember correctly be was involved in registering the party with the AEC
LNP will take a hit 15% to 20%
ALP will take a hit of 5%
Greens will only get 1.5%
FFP will only get 1.8%
PUP will get 18% to 20%
PUP getting 18-20%? They managed just below that in Fisher where they had a genuine shot at AND where they had a decent candidate AND when their stocks were a lot higher then right now. The best they can do is retain some of that protest KAP got here but there is no way they are getting 18-20% and there is no way the ALP will only get 5% here. A win here is good enough to constitute as a GC seat which labor will want and would probably poor most attention into especially now that the Logan seats look secured
Bmb – Blair Brewster only managed 12.5% in 2013 in Forde, and that was during the height of PUP’s support. And Labor got 34%. And even with a massive swing against them, the Greens got 4.2%.
Simply put, your predictions are just plain absurd. PUP has a chance in some electoral districts. Not in Albert. This is my seat, I know the area very well. PUP got 12.5% of the vote at the federal election because people weren’t enamoured with either major party (especially with the drop-in candidacy of Peter Beattie), and they finally had someone other than the Greens to vote for in protest. In the 2010 federal election, the Greens were the ones that got over 12% of the vote.
Simply put, the Labor+LNP vote isn’t going to drop to that much lower than it was in 2012 [you’re suggesting a drop of 20-25% support for majors, which is practically unheard of], if at all. A more plausible situation is this one:
ALP up 8% to get 36% primary
LNP down 12% to get 38% primary
Greens up 2% to get a little over 7% primary
Family First up 1% to get a little under 7% primary
PUP gets the KAP vote plus a little more, to get around 13% primary
Then, about 50% of Greens preferences go to Labor (Greens are more likely to select preferences, in my opinion, and I don’t see any giving their preferences to LNP over Labor), pushing them up to about 39%. PUP preferences bias moderately towards ALP, giving another net bump of about 1%. Family First preferences probably end up mostly exhausting, but give a small (say, 0.5%) net bump to LNP. Making it 40% + some to 38.5% + some (where the “some” is the same on both), leading to an ALP win.
That’s the ALP-favouring scenario. LNP might keep their drop in primary down to around 9%, keeping their primary vote itself above 40%, in which case they hold the seat, I suspect.
PUP simply isn’t going to win the seat. I can’t see a circumstance in which ALP+LNP gets less than 67% of the vote. And given this, it would be necessary for a remarkable chain of unlikely results to happen in order for PUP to actually win. They have the slightest chance of beating LNP into the 2CP if there’s a massive collapse of LNP primary vote… but in that situation, they’d need every one of those LNP preferences to push them over, and LNP are going to run a “vote 1” campaign so strongly that it’ll probably be about 90% of their votes exhausting, giving Labor the win. The electoral mathematics just don’t favour a PUP win except in case of something massive, like both ALP and LNP candidates dropping out in disgrace next week for paedophilia. And even then, it’s unlikely.
In fact, to be blunt, a Greens win here is more likely, and I rate the Greens’ chances at somewhere around 0.0001% (as much as I’d love to see the Greens pick up the electorate, their candidate doesn’t even have a picture up on their candidate list, yet, and the blurb at the bottom of the page talks about Stretton rather than Albert – which makes some sense, as she ran in Stretton in 2009, but they didn’t even update the blurb before posting it, so this seat clearly isn’t a priority for the Greens).
Rise Up Australia Party 745 0.98 +0.98 %
van MANEN, Bert Elected Liberal National Party of Queensland 32,271 42.54 -1.54 %
BEATTIE, Peter Douglas Australian Labor Party 25,794 34.00 -3.39 %
DOUGLAS, Keith Australian Voice 262 0.35 +0.35 %
BREWSTER, Blair Matthew Palmer United Party 9,445 12.45 +12.45 %
SLOSS, Joshua Independent 698 0.92 +0.92 %
PUKALLUS, Jan Citizens Electoral Council 130 0.17 +0.17 %
SPAIN, Sally The Greens 3,162 4.17 -8.05 %
BEST, Amanda Family First 1,701 2.24 -4.08 %
HUNTER, Paul Roger Katter’s Australian Party 1,652 2.18 +2.18 %
no I said the ALP will drop bye 5%
and the LNP will drop up to 20%
FFP Amanda Best she works in Bert’s LNP office
hi Aielyn
this is my seat to Brewster got his votes out of this area he is a local to
look at what happen with the Lib in VIc and NSW the same will happen here up to 20% will go
so if Brewster holds the forde 12.45 % vote and picks up 10% of the LNP vote from what I can see
that gives him 12.45% +10% = 22.45% he will need the greens vote and FFP that my put him in front of Labour then he will get Labour votes to then the LNP are OUT
BMB – first of all, I’m not surprised if Amanda Best works for Bert Van Manen – he was the FF candidate in Forde in 2010 before being the LNP candidate in 2013.
Second, you’re kidding yourself if you think Greens and FF preferences will flow significantly to PUP. Greens aren’t going to significantly favour PUP because PUP is run by a mining magnate. FF aren’t going to significantly favour PUP because FF are all about the religious beliefs and PUP don’t really take social issue stands.
More importantly, if, as you assert, LNP lose 20% of the vote, with 10% of that going to PUP (which is much higher than is plausible), then ALP with Green preferences will push them ahead of LNP, and then it’s PUP vs ALP… and LNP preferences won’t go anywhere – they’ll exhaust in huge numbers.
You seem (in the original set of numbers) to either be suggesting that FF and Greens will only get less than 2% each… or perhaps you meant they’d pick up an extra 1.7% or so each? If the latter, and you mean PUP picks up an extra 15-20%… do you honestly believe that PUP is going to get 28+% of the vote? Seriously? Clive Palmer himself was only able to get 26.5% of the vote in his federal seat, and that was when PUP was at its strongest, and Palmer had had something like 6 months to campaign. Brewster has basically three weeks, given that he was only just announced as the candidate.
Using your more recent suggestion, you have PUP getting 22.45% of the vote (let’s call it 22.5%). You also have LNP down to about 29.5%. This leaves 48% of the vote unaccounted for. Even if we’re generous, and give FF 7% and Greens 9% (I can’t see them going higher than those numbers here), that gives ALP 32%. Greens are going to favour Labor over any other party, with some leakage to PUP and some exhausted votes, so I’d estimate, from 9%, about 5% to Labor, about 2% to PUP, and then 2% exhausted. Family First preferences will flow somewhat to LNP – let’s say 3%, with 1% to PUP, and the remaining 3% exhausted.
So the three-corner race comes down to (without rescaling for exhausted votes) ALP 37%, LNP 32.5%, PUP 25.5%. PUP gets knocked out, PUP votes flow slightly more to ALP than LNP, and ALP wins.
Please, explain how you get PUP over the line, I can’t see a single plausible path.
I’m wanting to watch this seat’s betting pool, as it’s my local seat. Sportsbet only tracks Labor and LNP (fair enough, in my opinion, despite kind of wishing the Greens were stronger, here), and it currently stands at
LNP 1.55, ALP 2.30
I’m expecting this to get a little closer, at least, by the time of the election.
Labor were originally slight favourites in betting for Albert. It has switched, alongside a few other seats on similar or slightly smaller margins.
Major PUP policies:
Abolish payroll tax
Halt coal seam gas until water table secured
First farm buyers grant with concessional interest rate for five years
Reinstate the Upper House in Qld
Prioritise regional development
Tax breaks for people to move to the regions
http://www.9news.com.au/national/2015/01/21/16/41/pup-candidate-slams-lnp-spending-promises
classical marginal seat at state level trending labors way
Hi,
I’m Amanda Best the Family First candidate for Albert & was also in 2012.
I have thoroughly enjoyed reading your comments and predictions. Just clarifying the comments of BMB.
I have never worked for Bert Van Manen or the Liberal Party.
I am self employed, my husband & I have training company called LearnMe. It is based on the Gold Coast and we deliver all over Australia. I am passionate about small business and the sustainability of Australia’s biggest employer small business as you will find out in policies worth noting for the electorate of Albert and the constituents of QLD.
Look forward to seeing the outcomes on January 31st. Happy voting 🙂
Reminder, the odds on the 15th were LNP 1.55 and ALP 2.30
It’s now LNP 1.65 and ALP 2.15
It’s definitely narrowing.
Amanda, I regret to inform you that I won’t be voting for you.
FYI – Bmb is Blair Brewster hence him talking himself up.
Doesn’t live in electorate.
Work for his Uncle Clive
Was made to run
If pup win this seat it will be a miracle & the only seat they win.
Every thing is for Clive, he has candidates that don’t won’t to run, and all deals he has done in federal government have all been beneficial to him and his companies.
Hi I am Blair Brewster
I have only just sold my house and moved to river links because exit 54 is getting worse and I put my hand up to run in this seat so we can have a voice in Albert
And yes I work for gladstone pacific nickel
clive does not own this he is a share holder nice try
In The Know
My prediction: Generally a marginal seat, and keenly contested by both major parties. LNP to hold on with a big swing against them.