Fisher – Election 2010

LIB 3.5%

Incumbent MP
Peter Slipper, since 1993. Previously National Party Member for Fisher 1984-1987.

Geography
Sunshine Coast of Queensland. Fisher covers southern parts of the Sunshine Coast. The seat is centred on the town of Caloundra and includes the coast as far north as Alexandra Headland and inland towns including Landsborough and Maleny.

Redistribution
Fisher has contracted in terms of area covered, gaining territory to the north of its 2007 boundaries from Fairfax as well as the northern part of Bribie Island from Longman. The 2007 seat covered sparsely populated rural areas in Somerset and Moreton Bay council areas, which were transferred respectively to Blair and Longman. The Liberal margin was increased from 3.1% to 3.5%.

History
Fisher was created in the 1949 expansion of the House of Representatives, and has been won by Coalition parties at all but two federal elections, and was held by members of the same family for its first thirty-five years of existence.

The seat was won by Charles Adermann in 1949, after previously having served as Member for Maranoa since 1943. Adermann held the seat for over twenty years, serving as a minister in the Coalition government from 1958 to 1967. Adermann retired in 1972 and was succeeded by his son Evan Adermann.

Adermann held the seat from 1972 until the 1984 election, when he moved to the new seat of Fairfax. Adermann served as a minister in the Fraser government from 1975 until 1980, and served in Fairfax until his retirement in 1990.

Adermann was succeeded by Peter Slipper (NAT) in 1984, and was defeated by the ALP’s Michael Lavarch in 1987.

The Liberal Party first challenged in Fisher at the 1972 election when the senior Adermann retired, and started to regularly contest the seat in 1983. At the 1990 election, Lavarch was elected while the National Party was pushed into third place.

At the 1993 election, Fisher’s boundaries shifted and became notionally Liberal, and Lavarch shifted to the nearby seat of Dickson, where he won a special election a month after the general election due to the death of another candidate. Lavarch became Attorney-General and was defeated at the 1996 election.

In Fisher, the Liberal Party stood Slipper, the former National Party member for the seat, and won. Slipper’s margin exploded to over 70% in 1996 and stayed above 10% for the entirety of the Howard government, with Slipper serving as a Parliamentary Secretary from 1998 to 2004, before a 7.9% swing saw the margin cut to 3.1% at the 2007 election.

Candidates

• Chris Cummins (Labor)
• Robyn Robertson (Family First)
• Garry Claridge (Greens)
• Peter Slipper (Liberal National) – Member for Fisher since 1993.

Political situation
Slipper has held this seat for most of the last two decades, and appears determined to stay on. The slim margin in the seat stands out from recent political history, and would require a great effort from the ALP to achieve the extra swing needed to win the seat.

2007 result

2007 two-candidate-preferred result

Results do not take into consideration effects of the redistribution.

Booth breakdown
Fisher lies entirely within a single local government area. I have divided the booths into three areas. I have grouped those booths around Caloundra, then grouped all of the other booths along the coast of Fisher, and those booths away from the coast. The Liberals won a majority in all three areas, although the Liberals performed weaker inland than they did in Caloundra and along the coast. The Greens and independent Caroline Hutchinson performed better inland, and Hutchinson performed better on the coast than in Caloundra.

Independent votes refer to the performance of Caroline Hutchinson. Figures above include three booths in ‘Inland’ which were contained in Fairfax in 2007, thus Hutchinson received no votes there. Hutchinson’s vote has been calculated by excluding these 5267 votes.