Boothby – Australia 2025

As you mentioned – overall, the Labor brand in Brisbane is not that well known in general. Not that it means they are ‘dodgy’ by any means. Instead, I would put it down to simple demographics because Brisbane doesn’t really have the strong Labor voting type suburbs that are present in Sydney, Melbourne and even Adelaide apart from a small ‘enclave’ in the south based around the industrial based suburbs of Inala and Moorooka.

@ Tommo9
Yes Spence is Labor heartland and is in fact one the most economically deprived electorates in the in the country. However, there will be some idiot on Sky After Dark who will suggest that the Libs should target Spence instead of Boothby which they will argue turned Woke.

With Griffith, it is Blue/Green seat and these are more challenging as Labor cannot rely on Liberal preferences. It does have some very wealthy areas around Bulimba. These seats are harder to hold on to longer term. It is the same with Macnamara/Richmond and even Higgins. All seats why Greens may eventually outpoll Labor and knock them out of the 2CP. Sometimes it maybe not really because Terri Butler lost the same voters election on election but that there were different voters. For example a lifelong Labor voter who lived in West End at a time when it was working class died who was a lifelong labor voter and there was new young renter (Gen Z) moved out of the family home in the suburbs and moved to Wollongabba into a new apartment with his girlfriend and who both votes Greens. As this process is repeated over time Labor get squeezed out.

@Yoh An and @Nimalan Thank you for your insights. Judging by your contributions it seems the suburbs in Griffith are either becoming much bluer (in the teal way) or much greener depending on which part you’re referring to. It has some of the most expensive housing in Brisbane particularly by the riverside, whilst also having one of the most progressive voters with 75% of people voting for SSM back in 2017. Labor appears to have been squeezed from both sides on this, even with Terri Butler who’s pretty popular from what I heard and is of the left faction. Seems even that couldn’t save her even if Labor won in 2022, although I think Labor probably never thought the Greens would win it from them in that year and took it for granted.

With seats in Adelaide like Boothby and Sturt which are both generally blue-tealish but also contains a chunk of working place people (the middle of Boothby is Labor heartland of the Western suburbs, the north of Sturt being a migrant-heavy old working class) it’s much easier for Labor to capture that as it balances out the wealthy southern suburbs within.

@Tommo9 with Griffith, areas like West End and Woolloongabba have been greens heartland for a while. Like Newtown or Brunswick. Greenslopes, Coorparoo and Seven Hills have experienced big jumps in housing prices and are shifting towards The Greens, being leafy inner city areas with families and renters. Bulimba and Hawthorne are very affluent with small-l liberals. So demographically is a Liberal vs Green contest.

Since Adelaide isn’t dense like most other capital cities are, electorates are somewhat large. This means that electorates can cover a mix of demographics.

Historically Adelaide, similar to Melbourne, was a blue collar city with a large unionised workforce working in manufacturing. This explains the relatively high Labor vote compared to Brisbane. Many traditional working class suburbs exist in Boothby such as those in the middle along Marion Road.

These suburbs share the same electorate as affluent teal suburbs in the east like Netherby and Springfield as well as Green/teal suburbs in the foothills and near Flinders Uni in the south. There’s also Glenelg with a large retiree population and is staunchly Liberal.

@Votante I agree that Adelaide is politically more mixed. If you look at the booth results of the last federal election the southern and eastern parts of Hindmarsh as well as the eastern and western thirds of Boothby all voted Liberal. Hindmarsh is a fairly safe Labor seat.

@Yoh An another thing Brisbane doesn’t have much of is ethnic enclaves in general. Yes there are some suburbs with high concentrations of certain ethnic groups but it’s not like in Sydney where some suburbs are 40% Asian or 40% Arab.

The southern parts of Brisbane (including all of Logan City and the southern suburbs of Brisbane City) have most of the multicultural communities, which overlap with both LNP and Labor seats. Something interesting about Queensland is I think it’s the only state where the most multicultural suburb is not in the capital city. Southport on the Gold Coast is considered Queensland’s most multicultural suburb with large Asian, European and South American communities there.

@Nether Portal Sunnybank is the only “ethnic enclave” in Brisbane I could think of. Big Chinese population, 35% Chinese ancestry, has all the Chinese shops and restaraunts. Definitely not on the level of Sydney with Harris Park, Cabramatta, Fairfield, Burwood etc.

To a lesser extent, there’s Inala (Vietnamese cultural hub) and Moorooka (African cultural hub)

Bulimba and Morningside are nothing like Mosman! I’m a bit sick of people down south trying to “understand” Queensland by forcing analogies to Melbourne and Sydney. Brisbane is different! Griffith has generally low median household wealth (not income), more on par with Blair or Calwell than North Sydney or Warringah, which are both in the national top 15. This is because of a big contingent of renters, obviously in ultra-progressive West End but also more moderate and suburban Bulimba/Hawthorne (which is probably most similar to Balmain, if anything?). Still, no part of Griffith is anywhere near on par with the sometimes staggering wealth you see in parts of Teal electorates, or Sydney more generally. Max Chandler-Mather and the Greens clearly recognised the untapped potential of an inner-city, progressive electorate with a lot of renters and rolled with it. He didn’t run on a small-L liberal, pro-women, pro-transparency platform like the Teals did. A Teal couldn’t win anywhere in QLD if they tried.

Boothby-wise, I don’t think it’s vulnerable to a Teal either. You might point to Curtin as an example of a Teal member outside of Sydney/Melbourne, but there’s nowhere like Peppermint Grove (one of the most advantaged suburbs in the nation) or Cottesloe in Adelaide, let alone Boothby. Save for a major political screw-up, I expect Labor to hold on here.

I live in Brisbane and I reckon Bulimba, Hawthorne and Morningside are very affluent. Especially the parts along the river. That part of Griffith is demographically on par with ‘teal’ electorates in NSW. So is the Hamilton/Ascot part of Brisbane. The state seats of Bulimba and Clayfield could be teal targets with the right conditions.

@ Tommo9
It is for the same reason i dont think Brisbane is promising for Labor i reckon the gap between Greens and Labor will widen over time with new younger voters moving into new apartments and older Labor voters dying out. With respect to Boothby slow population growth in Adelaide means gentrification will be much slower and the Working class suburbs along Marion/South Road will remain working class for the foreseeable future and will not be vulnerable to a Teal.

@Nimalan I think Brisbane is perhaps still salvageable for Labor if they get a high profile, popular candidate for the area, given that Labor has to make ground in Queensland and rural Queensland are too far out of reach bar Leichhardt. They need to make inroads in the city/suburban areas and Brisbane is the only hope left for Labor (Griffith and Ryan are both Greens vs LNP). If they shoehorn Terri Butler to contest Brisbane they could come in with a chance as long as they can push LNP to third place and then win on their preferences. Stephen Bates came first last time despite being 3rd on primary votes because the minor preferences slightly favoured the Greens. Had it gone the other way then Labor would’ve easily won.

Boothby used to be much more conservative with more of the Southern foothills and Glenelg involved, but since they’ve received some of the outer-suburban areas like Marino, Seacliff (which used to be in Kingston) and Western suburbs which is Labor heartland, Labor has been favoured to win some time but had been suppressed by the fact that Labor didn’t even think it was in reach until recently and underperformed.

Terri Butler has said she is not running again.

@ Tommo9
For Brisbane, i will look at the state seat of Prahran as example. Just like Brisbane, it was the AJP that helped the Greens leapfrog Labor on the 2CP. Labor had one more chance in 2018 and they came close but by 2022 they lost interest as they had other seats. IMHO i very much doubt LNP will fall to 3rd place is Brisbane/Ryan they have a stubborn vote in the old money areas. There is a much greater chance that the LNP can fall to 3rd place in Griffith as the Liberal vote in Bulimba, Morningside is no where near as strong as Ascot or Fig Tree Pocket. I do agree that Leichardt is the only real chance of a pick up in QLD in 2025 and certainly not Flynn, Capricornia, Herbert, Dawson etc. However, longer term they should really look at Bonner, Forde and Petrie. I heard in 2022 that Labor volunteers at the last moment decided not to campaign in Bonner and moved to save Griffith.