Sandgate – Queensland 2015

LNP 2.87%

Incumbent MP
Kerry Millard, since 2012.

Geography
Northern edge of the City of Brisbane. Sandgate covers the Brisbane suburbs of Bracken Ridge, Deagon, Shorncliffe, Sandgate, Brighton, Taigum, Fitzgibbon and parts of Bald Hills.

History
The seat of Sandgate has existed since 1923, and has been held by the ALP continuously since 1960.

Harold Dean won the seat off the Liberal Party in 1960. He held the seat until his retirement in 1977.

Nev Warburton won the seat in 1977. He became Leader of the ALP in 1984, and led the party into the 1986 election. He continued as leader until 1988, when he was replaced by Wayne Goss.

When the ALP won power in 1989, and Warburton served as a minister until he retired in 1992.

Gordon Nuttall won the seat in 1992. He became a minister in the Beattie government in 2001 and served in the ministry until 2005. In 2005, he was investigated for giving a false answer to a Parliamentary committee. He retired in 2006, and resigned from the party shortly before the election, facing the prospect of expulsion.

Nuttall was later convicted of numerous corruption charges in 2009 and 2010, and is serving a seven-year prison sentence.

Vicky Darling held Sandgate for two terms from 2006 to 2012, and served as a minister from 2011 to 2012.

In 2012, Darling was defeated by LNP candidate Kerry Millard.

Candidates

Assessment
Sandgate was considered to be a safe Labor seat before the LNP won with a 15% swing in 2012. Sandgate will probably return to Labor in 2015.

2012 election result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Kerry Millard Liberal National 12,096 43.75 +11.41
Vicky Darling Labor 10,408 37.64 -16.41
Claire Ogden Greens 2,483 8.98 +0.78
John Dunkley Katter’s Australian 1,458 5.27 +5.27
Penny McCreery Family First 751 2.72 +0.53
Mike Crook Independent 454 1.64 +0.31

2012 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Kerry Millard Liberal National 13,228 52.87 +15.24
Vicky Darling Labor 11,794 47.13 -15.24
Polling places in Sandgate at the 2012 Queensland state election. Bracken Ridge in green, Brighton in blue, Sandgate in red, South in yellow. Click to enlarge.
Polling places in Sandgate at the 2012 Queensland state election. Bracken Ridge in green, Brighton in blue, Sandgate in red, South in yellow. Click to enlarge.

Booth breakdown
Booths in Sandgate have been divided into four parts. Polling places around the three key suburbs of Bracken Ridge, Brighton and Sandgate have been grouped together, and those in the south have also been grouped together.

The Liberal National Party topped the primary vote in all four areas, but only by a slim margin in Brighton. The LNP’s primary vote ranged from 38.9% in Brighton to 48.2% in Bracken Ridge.

The ALP came second, with a primary vote ranging from 34.8% in Bracken Ridge to 40.7% in the south.

The Liberal National Party won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in three out of four areas, ranging from 51.4% in the south to 57% in Bracken Ridge. The ALP won a slim 50.3% majority in Brighton.

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 % LNP 2PP % Total % of votes
Bracken Ridge 48.18 34.81 57.02 8,119 29.36
South 44.02 40.73 51.41 4,775 17.27
Brighton 38.85 38.31 49.65 4,067 14.71
Sandgate 41.27 35.75 52.12 3,564 12.89
Other votes 42.54 39.37 51.26 7,125 25.77
Estimated two-party-preferred votes in Sandgate at the 2012 Queensland state election.
Estimated two-party-preferred votes in Sandgate at the 2012 Queensland state election.

7 COMMENTS

  1. This is a seat Labor will want back badly. I know it’s one many Labor people were hurt by when it fell (probably Lytton one of the few that hurt more). Stirling is seen as a good MP in Labor circles so you can bet there will be a few announcements during the campaign from Labor which benefit this electorate. Just a hunch anyway.

  2. Kerry is working hard, it payed off last time, no reason why it won’t again. Hinchliffe can’t just waltz in, get to work I say.

  3. That’s nice Sandgate Resident – can I ask where she’s been the past 3 years though? Nowhere, that’s where. Haven’t heard squat from her on all the bad decisions the LNP have made. Oh, wait, I’m being harsh, I have seen her out a couple of times – conducting a sausage sizzle near Woolworths.

  4. While I am sure there were many Sandgate voters who wanted to kick the Labor government in the rear end at the last election, i spoke to many of them the next day who were mortified that they had lost Vicky Darling as their local member. The current MP Kerry Millard is known locally as the phantom – never see her, never hear from her (except in the past two weeks) and she did nothing to stop the devastation of the Eventide nursing home. This seat will be won and lost on local issues – Millard is gone for all money.

  5. Fun fact: Nev Warburton is the last leader of the Qld ALP to not be premier. (Since him: Goss, Beattie, Bligh, Palaszczuk). That’s some stable leadership there.

Comments are closed.