Braddon – Australia 2025

LIB 8.0%

Incumbent MP
Gavin Pearce, since 2019.

• Geography
• History
• Candidates
• Assessment
• 2022 results
• Booth breakdown
• Results maps

Geography
Braddon covers the west coast and north-west of Tasmania, including the islands to Tasmania’s north-west. The seat covers West Coast, Burnie, Central Coast, Circular Head, Devonport, Latrobe and Waratah/Wynyard councils. It also covers King Island. The seat’s largest centres are the towns of Devonport and Burnie.

History
The seat of Braddon was created in 1955 when the existing Divison of Darwin was renamed. The seat of Darwin was created in 1903 for the first election with single-member electorates in Tasmania, and has always been a northwestern electorate. The seat of Darwin/Braddon had been largely dominated by conservative parties, but has tended to alternate between the major parties in recent years.

The seat was first won by the ALP’s King O’Malley, who held the seat until 1917. O’Malley is best-known for his service as Minister for Home Affairs under Andrew Fisher which saw him take responsibility for choosing the site and town plan for Caberra. He was also largely responsible for the Americanised spelling of the name of the Australian Labor Party. He was strongly anti-conscriptionist and his term as a minister ended when the ALP split, with Billy Hughes joining with the Liberals to form the new Nationalist government. At the 1917 election, O’Malley was narrowly defeated by a Nationalist candidate, and the Nationalist parties and its successors held the seat for the next forty years, with the exception of a single term in 1922 when the seat was held by the nascent Country Party.

The most prominent MP to represent Darwin during this period was Enid Lyons, widow of former Prime Minister Joseph Lyons, who was the first woman elected to the House of Representatives in 1943 and held the seat until the 1951 election.

After the seat was renamed Braddon in 1955, the ALP won the seat back in 1958. Ron Davies held the seat for the ALP up to the post-dismissal election in 1975, when he was defeated by the Liberal Party’s Ray Groom, who held the seat until 1984. He went on to enter state politics and was Premier from 1992 to 1996. Chris Miles succeeded Groom in Braddon and held the seat for the Liberal Party up to the 1998 election, when he was defeated by Sid Sidebottom.

Sidebottom held the seat for the ALP from 1998 to 2004, when he lost the seat to Liberal Mark Baker in a backlash against Mark Latham’s forestry policies.

Sidebottom regained the seat in 2007, and was re-elected in 2010.

In 2013, Liberal candidate Brett Whiteley defeated Sidebottom with a 10% swing, but he lost in 2016 to Labor’s Justine Keay.

Justine Keay was forced to resign from parliament in early 2018 due to her late citizenship renunciation in 2016, but she was re-elected at the resulting by-election.

Keay was defeated in 2019 by Liberal candidate Gavin Pearce. Pearce was re-elected in 2022.

Candidates
Sitting Liberal MP Gavin Pearce is not running for re-election.

Assessment
The Liberal margin in Braddon is now substantial, but the seat has a long history of switching back and forth between the major parties, and could be in play.

2022 result

2022 two-party-preferred result

Booth breakdown

Booths have been divided into six areas. Polling places in the Circular Head, Waratah/Wynyard and West Coast LGAs were divided into North West and South West. Polling places in Devonport and Latrobe council areas have been grouped into one group. Polling places in Burnie and Central Coast council areas have been grouped together separately.

The Liberal Party won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all six areas, ranging from 51.0% in Burnie to 63.5% on King Island.

Election results in Braddon at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, Labor and the Jacqui Lambie Network.

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