A state by-election will be held in the north Queensland seat of Hinchinbrook at some point near the end of this year or early in 2026, following local MP Nick Dametto’s announcement that he will contest the mayoralty of the City of Townsville at a by-election next month.
Hinchinbrook covers the northern outskirts of Townsville and stretches halfway up the coast towards Cairns. Dametto is a member of Katter’s Australian Party and has held the seat since 2017. His current margin is 13.2% against the LNP.
The City of Townsville mayoralty was vacated by Troy Thompson last week under threat of being removed from office. He was suspended last November, not long after first being elected in March 2024.
I’ve now published my guide to this by-election. Check it out!
Nick Dametto formally handed his resignation to the Speaker this morning, so the process for a Hinchinbrook byelection is now counting down. The next step is the issue of the writ by the Speaker, and then the byelection will be held “on a Saturday not less than 26 days, nor more than 56 days, after the issue of the writ.”
There’s no real requirement on when the writ gets issued. Since the Townsville Mayoral election is set for November 15 and the cutoff for postal votes to be received is November 25, the election is unlikely to be held over the Christmas break. The Mayoral and State voting would be very unlikely to overlap, particularly since they’ll be using different processes.
So my guess is the writ will be issued in early February for a mid-March election – hopefully cyclone-free.
If the writ were issued today they could hold is on November 15
@Darth Vader After the Ipswich and Inala by-elections there is little appetite for holding Local Government and State elections on the same day. The other issue is that the Mayoral vote is postal only, the State by-election has to be held in-person.
Realistically the latest date the by-election could be held is December 6, but even then that would be messy due to school holidays and the inability to organise the post-election paperwork. My guess is that it will be possibly late November or more likely early February, with the responsibility for the delay being able to be shifted to Nick Dametto and Troy Thompson.
Technically it isn’t on the same day then.