Forde lies in south-eastern Queensland, and was the safest Liberal seat to fall to the ALP in 2007 with a swing of over 14%. The seat has been a bellwether seat since 1987, and contracted substantially in the last redistribution to become a largely urban seat mostly lying in the City of Logan.
I have justed posted my 47th seat profile: the Queensland seat of Brisbane. This has followed up on me recently posting guides to Sydney, Melbourne and Grayndler, all strong Greens inner-city seats. With Andrew Bartlett standing for the Greens in Brisbane, the seat will likely increase in significance. You can read the profile here.
Last Friday the AEC released the final Queensland electoral boundaries for the next federal election. These boundaries include a small number of changes from the draft boundaries, and Antony Green has posted updated notional margins for each seat based on the 2007 election results. You can download the new boundaries as a Google Earth map here. I will also update the pendulum on the federal election guide tonight to include Queensland electorates.
Click to enlarge and see seat names
The Australian Electoral Commission has announced the draft boundaries for Queensland’s federal redistribution, which will see the state gain a thirtieth seat. The AEC has proposed the creation of a seat using the name of ‘Wright’ in the rural hinterland south of Brisbane and west of the Gold Coast. The seat is named after the poet Judith Wright. The name was originally proposed for the central Queensland seat created for the 2007 election, but was changed to Flynn in consideration of the history of the disgraced ALP MP Keith Wright, who had previously represented a seat in central Queensland.
Antony Green has crunched the numbers and come up with the notional margins in each seat. The new seat of Wright is a marginal Liberal seat, while the redistribution sees two very marginal Liberal seats, suburban Brisbane Dickson and the Townsville seat of Herbert, both become notional Labor seats, although in the end both seats remain incredibly marginal. I’ll leave the rest of the broad picture to Antony Green’s commentary:
In the South East corner, Treasurer Wayne Swan’s seat of Lilley has its margin cut from 8.6% to 5.9%, but Labor’s position in the marginal seats of Blair, Moreton and Petrie is strengthened but weakened in Longman. The Liberal seat of Ryan has its margin cut from 3.8% to 1.2%.
The marginal seats on the old boundaries are shown below. Labor held 15 seats, the Coalition 13 (Liberal 10, national 3) with Independent Bob Katter holding the northern outback seat of Kennedy. Nine of Labor’s 15 seats were marginal on the old boundaries.
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On the new boundaries, Labor now notionally hold 17 seats with the addition of Herbert and Dickson to the Coalitions 12 (Liberal 9, National 3) with one Independent. The Liberal margin in Bowman is so narrow it could almost be a Labor seat.
Nine of Labor’s 17 seats are marginal, but this includes Herbert and Dickson. Three of Labor’s former marginal seats, Blair, Moreton and Petrie, have been substantially strengthened, while Brisbane has moved into the marginal category.
I have uploaded the maps as a Google Earth file, which you can download here. You can also download the 2007 boundaries and use them to compare each seat’s changes and do your own analysis. The following maps show Brisbane as a hold on the 2007 and draft 2010 boundaries:
Brisbane, 2007 federal boundaries
Brisbane, 2009 draft federal boundaries
One seat I wanted to particularly point out is Ryan, which is the sole remaining Liberal seat in Brisbane proper. Ryan was held by a 3.8% before the redistribution, while on the draft boundaries the seat is held by a bare 1.2%.
Elsewhere: A discussion thread at Poll Bludger.
Submissions closed last Friday for Queensland’s federal redistribution, and they have now been published online. The interesting factors include:
The most interesting element are the variety of suggestions for the name of the 30th Queensland seat, including:
What is your idea? Please post electorate name ideas in the comments section below, and you might want to read the AEC’s guidelines to naming divisions.
Following Lawrence Springborg’s election-night resignation has resulted in the election of largely-unknown Gold Coast MP John-Paul Langbroek as leader of the Queensland LNP. Langbroek defeated former National Fiona Simpson and former Liberal Tim Nicholls. Lawrence Springborg has been elected as the party’s deputy leader. Langbroek is the first Liberal to lead the conservative side of politics in Queensland since, like, forever.
GOLD Coast MP and former dentist John-Paul Langbroek has been elected leader of Queensland’s Liberal National Party.Former leader Lawrence Springborg was elected deputy leader at a meeting of the LNP’s 33 MPs in Brisbane.
Mr Langbroek and Mr Springborg are expected to front the media this afternoon.
Mr Langbroek, 48, defeated Brisbane MP Tim Nicholls and Sunshine Coast MP Fiona Simpson for the top job.
The Dutch-born MP and father of three was first elected to the seat of Surfers Paradise in 2004.
The former Liberal MP has been leader of opposition business since September last year and held a number of shadow portfolios including education, health and housing.