Wright – Australia 2016

LNP 11.8%

Incumbent MP
Scott Buchholz, since 2010.

Geography
Wright covers rural parts of South-East Queensland. Wright covers sparsely populated parts of the Gold Coast hinterland, rural parts of the City of Logan, and the entirety of Lockyer Valley and Scenic Rim council areas. Wright covers the towns of Boonah, Beaudesert, Gatton and Laidley, and comes close to the major centres of Logan, Gold Coast, Ipswich and Toowoomba.

History
Wright was created in the 2010 election, out of parts of the seats of Forde and Blair. Both seats were Labor seats in 2007, but Wright was created as a notional Liberal National seat, and neither sitting Labor MP ran in Wright.

Forde was created at the 1984 election as a southern Brisbane seat as part of the expansion of the House of Representatives. The seat has since moved further south and lies on the edge of the urban part of South-East Queensland.

Forde was first won in 1984 by David Watson (LIB), who lost the seat in 1987 to Mary Crawford of the ALP. Watson was elected to the Legislative Assembly in 1989 and went on to serve as a minister in the Borbidge government and as state Liberal leader from 1998 to 2001.

Mary Crawford held the seat from 1987 until her defeat at the 1996 election, serving as a Parliamentary Secretary for the last two years of the Keating government.

Kay Elson (LIB) won the seat in 1996. She held the seat for eleven years as a backbencher, retiring at the 2007 election.

In 2007 the ALP’s Brett Raguse won the seat. Forde was the safest Liberal seat to be lost in 2007, with the ALP gaining a 14.4% swing.

Blair was created for the 1998 election, and took over Ipswich from the seat of Oxley, which at the time was held by One Nation founder Pauline Hanson. Hanson ran for Blair, topping the poll on primary votes. The ALP polled second, with Liberal candidate Cameron Thompson third. Thompson gained Nationals preferences, then defeated Hanson on Labor preferences.

Thompson won by more comfortable margins in 2001 (58.5%) and 2004 (61.2%). The redistribution cut Thompson’s margin by 5.5% before the 2007 election. A 10% swing saw the ALP’s Shayne Neumann won the seat on a second attempt.

In 2010, Wright was created with a 53.8% majority for the LNP. The LNP’s Scott Buchholz won the seat with a 6% swing, and was re-elected in 2013 with a further 1.7% swing.

Candidates

Assessment
Wright is a safe LNP seat.

2013 result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Scott Buchholz Liberal National 38,630 47.8 -5.3
Sharon Murakami Labor 17,267 21.4 -6.4
Angie Elaine Ison Palmer United Party 11,691 14.5 +14.5
Judith Summers Greens 4,358 5.4 -6.6
David Neuendorf Katter’s Australian Party 4,332 5.4 +5.4
Stephen Lynch Family First 2,087 2.6 -1.3
Matthew Wright Independent 1,810 2.2 +2.2
Tony Maunder Rise Up Australia 565 0.7 +0.7
Informal 4,276 5.3

2013 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Scott Buchholz Liberal National 49,930 61.8 +1.7
Sharon Murakami Labor 30,810 38.2 -1.7

Booth breakdown

Booths have been divided into four areas. Wright covers parts of four local government areas, and polling places have been divided into these four areas.

The Liberal National Party won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all four areas, ranging from 55.4% in Logan to 65.8% in the Gold Coast.

The Palmer United Party came third, with a vote ranging from 12.2% in Scenic Rim to 19.8% in Logan.

Voter group PUP % LNP 2PP % Total votes % of votes
Scenic Rim 12.2 64.3 16,865 20.9
Lockyer Valley 13.4 61.5 14,971 18.5
Logan 19.8 55.4 14,831 18.4
Gold Coast 15.6 65.8 8,370 10.4
Other votes 13.2 62.9 25,703 31.8

Election results in Wright at the 2013 federal election
Click on the ‘visible layers’ box to toggle between two-party-preferred votes and Palmer United Party primary votes.

10 COMMENTS

  1. Lockyer Valley is really a weird appendage to this seat. I don’t actually think there’s actually a connection between the two halves of the seat that doesn’t go through Blair or Maranoa. It’s really like they cobbled together all the leftover bits of Blair, Forde, and the Gold Coast seats that couldn’t fit anywhere else.

    At the next redistribution, I expect this will lose Lockyer and move further up into Logan City. This would make it very similar to the old Forde, and a realistic chance for Labor to be more competitive.

  2. On current enrolment figures, the southside and Gold Coast seats, plus Wright and Blair, are collectively under quota. Perhaps Blair takes back the Lockyer Valley as well Crows Nest and possibly Kingaroy-Nanango.

    The other option would be to make Wright a more thoroughly rural seat. Lose all or part of the Logan and Gold Coast areas and draw in the Southern Downs region.

  4. It will be interesting to see whether One Nation beat Labor to 2nd in the final 2PP. They got 20.9% of the primary vote compared to Labor’s 23.11%. The Greens did reasonably well at 7.58 and got a swing, but there may be enough donkey voters and voters putting both majors last, and I can’t see many Lib Dem and Family First preferences going to Labor ahead of the LNP or One Nation.

  5. Perhaps… then again, plenty of those folk would put the Libs ahead of both, which doesn’t help One Nation. FF (3.5%) have the Libs at #2 on their HTV, which probably means game over. (Their hysterical anti-Green language on the website I found that on brought some lulz.) It’s a similar situation to Maranoa, but with a different flavour of also-rans.

  6. Astonishing result for One Nation here, their highest result nationwide at 21% of the PV!

  7. Just when things cant get any worse for the Liberals,Buchholz gets himself embroiled in a a very public revelation about his poor behaviour
    Morrison must not be happy

  8. Daniel
    Talking about donkey voters before the draw for ballot position is a waste of time. No one has a clue who Donkey vote will benefit or disadvantage at moment and we will not know for 3-4 months.
    Andrew Jackson
    apjackson2@bogpond.com

Comments are closed.