GRN 2.6% vs LNP
Incumbent MP
Elizabeth Watson-Brown, since 2022.
Geography
Ryan covers the western suburbs of Brisbane. The seat covers the north side of the Brisbane river from Auchenflower through Toowong, Indooroopilly, Chapel Hill and Kenmore. It also covers suburbs further north including The Gap and Ferny Grove.
History
Ryan was first created in 1949. The seat was first won by Nigel Drury in 1949 for the Liberal Party. Drury held the seat until 1975, mainly serving as a backbencher. He was succeeded by John Moore in 1975. Moore served as a minister in Malcolm Fraser’s final term and served in the shadow cabinet during the Hawke/Keating governments.
Moore served as Minister for Industry, Science and Tourism in John Howard’s first government and become Minister for Defence after the 1998 election. He lost the portfolio in a reshuffle in December 2000 and proceeded to resign from Parliament early in 2001.
A swing of 9.7% gave the normally safe Liberal seat to Labor candidate Leonie Short by 255 votes. Liberal candidate Michael Johnson won back the seat at the 2001 general election. Johnson was reelected in 2004 and 2007. A 6.6% swing to the ALP in 2007 made the seat marginal, and the ensuing redistribution cut the margin further.
Michael Johnson was expelled from the Liberal National Party in May 2010 due to controversies surrounding his role as Chair of the Australia-China Business Forum.
The LNP preselected Brisbane city councillor Jane Prentice in 2010. Prentice won the seat comfortably. Michael Johnson ran as an independent, and came fourth with 8.5% of the vote. Prentice won two more terms in 2013 and 2016.
Prentice lost LNP preselection in 2019 to Brisbane City councillor Julian Simmonds, and he went on to win the seat with relative ease.
Simmonds lost his seat in 2022 to Greens candidate Elizabeth Watson-Brown. The LNP and Labor primary votes both dropped, with the Greens primary vote increasing to push Watson-Brown into second place on primary votes, and Labor preferences gave her a majority of votes after preferences.
Assessment
This seat is a complex race to watch. For Watson-Brown to win re-election, she not only needs to win the preferential count but she also needs to stay ahead of Labor.
Lower house Greens MPs usually increase their support with the benefit of incumbency, and that would be particularly helpful in seeing off the Labor threat.
The LNP’s chances of regaining the seat partly depend on the Coalition’s ability to rebuild its support amongst inner-city voters. They do not appear to have made much progress on that front yet, which should help Watson-Brown.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Julian Simmonds | Liberal National | 38,239 | 38.5 | -10.1 |
| Elizabeth Watson-Brown | Greens | 30,003 | 30.2 | +9.9 |
| Peter Cossar | Labor | 22,146 | 22.3 | -2.1 |
| Damian Coory | Liberal Democrats | 2,582 | 2.6 | +2.6 |
| Joel Love | One Nation | 2,237 | 2.3 | +0.1 |
| Kathryn Pollard | United Australia | 2,062 | 2.1 | +0.6 |
| Jina Lipman | Animal Justice | 1,088 | 1.1 | -0.8 |
| Janine Rees | Labor | 606 | 0.6 | +0.6 |
| Axel Dancoisne | Federation Party | 353 | 0.4 | +0.4 |
| Informal | 3,140 | 3.1 | +0.7 |
2022 two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % |
| Elizabeth Watson-Brown | Greens | 52,286 | 52.6 |
| Julian Simmonds | Liberal National | 47,030 | 47.4 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Peter Cossar | Labor | 52,062 | 52.4 | +8.5 |
| Julian Simmonds | Liberal National | 47,254 | 47.6 | -8.5 |
Booths have been divided into four areas. Most of the population lies at the eastern end of the electorate, and these areas have been split into three areas. From north to south, these are Enoggera, The Gap and Indooroopilly. The remainder of the booths, most of which lie near the Brisbane River, have been grouped as “West”.
There are two different thresholds that decide who wins Ryan: firstly, who is leading in the race between Labor and the Greens? And then, after preferences, does the LNP have a majority against the main progressive opponent?
On a two-candidate-preferred basis, the Greens won a majority in three out of four areas, ranging from 56% in Enoggera to 57.2% in the Gap. The LNP won 52.9% in the west. The Greens also won 52.3% of the pre-poll votes and the LNP won 51.7% of the other vote.
On a primary vote basis, the Greens outpolled Labor in three out of four areas, with the Greens primary vote peaking at 36% in Indooroopilly. Labor polled 28% in Enoggera, outpolling the Greens in that area.
Generally the Labor vote was highest at the northern end of the seat, the Greens vote highest in the eastern end of the seat, and the LNP vote highest in the south.
| Voter group | GRN prim | ALP prim | GRN 2CP | Total votes | % of votes |
| Indooroopilly | 36.3 | 19.5 | 56.2 | 18,433 | 18.6 |
| The Gap | 34.1 | 22.9 | 57.2 | 11,435 | 11.5 |
| Enoggera | 26.9 | 28.4 | 56.0 | 8,569 | 8.6 |
| West | 28.6 | 18.1 | 47.1 | 5,271 | 5.3 |
| Pre-poll | 29.5 | 23.0 | 52.3 | 30,812 | 31.0 |
| Other votes | 26.3 | 22.0 | 48.3 | 24,796 | 25.0 |
Election results in Ryan at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Greens vs LNP), two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, the Greens and Labor.
Joeldipops
Climate200 is not an environmental movement as such. It is a political vehicle for the renewable energy industry. Some of its big donors are big investors in renewable energy projects – they are not investing out of altruism they are investing to make money. They are not fundamentally a business lobby group no different to the Business Counil, Mining Council or Gina Rinehardt except they are more disengenuous about the whole thing. They are big end of town but would like everybody to think they are not.
I would love to know if there was a deal made for there to be no Teals running in Brisbane. Ryan is a natural Teal seat possibly even Brisbane. Same with Higgins or Macnamara in 2022. Who made the decision not to run and why?
@Clarinet of Communists – I was on prepoll today too, from midday until 3pm! Most fun I’ve ever had on prepoll!
Cool! What booth were you on?
@redistributed I support renewables but do agree about the teals. I suspect they decided the greens support most of their main issues, so there’s not much point challenging them.
Easy answer Redistributed. Ryan, Higgins, Brisbane and MacNamara are marginals that are not Coalition seats, yet could be won by the Coalition, so why would the Teals run against their allies and cost them the seats.
The Teals depend on tactical voting from Labor/Greens so why would a Labor voter voted teal in Macnamara when they already had a Labor MP. In Brisbane, there is a recent history of it being Labor held so Labor voters did not need to tactically vote Teal to oust Libs.
@Clarinet of Communists – Indro booth! I handing out for labor near the entrance. What about yourself?
Bellbowrie, I sort of wandered around, we were sort of overloaded on people lmao!
Oh nice, I heard there were a lot of people there!
I was looking at suggestions for the 2018 Queensland redistribution. The Greens suggestion was very telling about their expectations and aspirations at the time.
They had Griffith move west into the north of Moreton (Annerley, Yeronga, etc.), and losing a slice of its east (the proposed boundary was hideous) to Bonner.
They wanted Brisbane to lose its eastern end (to Lilley) and extend west into Ryan. Then they had Ryan push north into the Pine Rivers.
Had this come to fruition, Brisbane and Griffith would be safer for The Greens – but they wouldn’t have won Ryan.
Is it crazy to say that I think this is the Greens’ safest Brisbane seat? The main threat to the Greens in their QLD electorates is the ALP, which has a serious chance of overtaking the LNP on 3CP in both Brisbane and Griffith. However, that possibility is more remote here, and I don’t see Ryan (or any of the three Brisbane seats, to be fair) swinging back to the LNP in any substantial way – young, educated inner-city voters and Peter Dutton do not seem to mix well. If the Greens lose out in Brisbane I feel like there’s a real chance Ryan will be the last to go, instead of Griffith as everyone is tipping (see: Maiwar vs. South Brisbane at the state election). Of course, all three seats are very close and I wouldn’t be surprised at results ranging anywhere from 3 Greens retains to even 3 Labor pickups. The only outcome that has been entertained in the media which I can’t see happening is the LNP winning Brisbane.
I agree, inari28 – I think Ryan is the safest Greens seat in QLD. Below Melbourne and Ryan it’s a lot harder to rank the other 5 in the Greens’ top defence / target seats because so much depends on the relative strength of the two majors, not just the Greens primary vote – or in Wills just whether the sheer juggernaut of Sam Ratnam campaigning in the seat is enough to shift the quantum of votes needed to win.
Would take a significant bleed for Labor to overtake the LNP on 3CP in Griffith once you account for the RW minor parties preference distribution.
I reckon there’s still under 5% in the LNP-ALP gap in Griffith (anyone have 3CP statistics?) and a swing that big from the LNP and/or Greens is possible given Labor has run a visible campaign and the LNP hasn’t. The GRN-ALP gap in Ryan is a bit bigger, and I don’t think the ALP is as well-placed to gain as big of a swing there. For what it’s worth, my prediction has Ryan and Griffith down as Greens retains at the moment but Brisbane as a Labor gain.
Labor aren’t targeting here and they won’t make the count
Melbourne is the greens safest seat by far
It would be a mistake to dismiss the prospects of the Labor candidate winning Ryan. Firstly, the Greens MP in Maiwar saw a 7.4% swing against him in the 2024 state election and the Labor candidate recieving a swing of 6.7%. This may suggest that the honeymoon period for the Greens has lapsed since Berkman is a pretty well liked State MP, to the advantage of the Labor Party rather than the LNP (who only recieved a primary vote swing of 0.5%).
Secondly, the Labor candidate has placed direct voter contact at the heart of her campaign (rather than flashy billboards) and has been focusing a great deal of time in the Gap (attempting to take advantage of Labor State MP Jonty Bush’s personal popularity). The commitment to open a Medicare Mental Health Clinic in the Gap demonstrates this fact.
Thirdly, the LNP and Greens candidates’ lackluster campaign needs to be mentioned. Dispite spending possibly over a MILLION dollars over the course of 6 months, the LNP’s performance in the polls show no meaningful gains (which can be attributed to the hardline conservative talking points of Forrest failing to win voters over). On the flipside, the Greens MP had won the seat in 2022 with a vigorous ground campaign with a large team of volunteers that is noticably missing from this year’s campaign. This is combined with her unpopularity with community groups due to a general sense of neglect (which the Labor candidate has taken full advantage of as seen on her social media).
Of course, this doesn’t mean that Labor is certainly going to win as their are plenty of elements in play that make everything unpredictable. What I do wish to stress is that this is a three way race between Labor, Greens, and LNP.
[For transparency, I have campaigned for the Labor Candidate for the last 6 months and have lived in Ryan since 2009. The Bellbowrie PrePoll Station is incredible btw lmao]
This seat is going to be very close, I lean towards the side of Greens retain but in terms of probabilities it’s probably 60/40 GRN/LNP. I am a greens voter in this seat so a bit biased, but I did correctly predict it as green gain in 2022 (and predicted that the GRN-LNP 2CP would be better than the 2PP because there are a few wealthy 1 GRN 2 LNP type voters).
I’m confused as to why the Liberals are still considered the favourites or 50-50 at worst in this seat. I would expect the Greens as the incumbent to solidify the left-wing vote behind them, or at least not be threatened by Labor in the 3CP considering the gap in 2022. Meanwhile, I don’t see this being a seat that is trending right – quite the opposite, even – and the Liberals don’t look to be improving on their numbers from 2022 in this election nationally. So I’m not sure why there seems to be a perception that this seat will buck the trend. Everything that I can observe from outside the electorate itself seems to point to a Greens retain.