Barron River – Queensland 2015

LNP 9.48%

Incumbent MP
Michael Trout, since 2012.

Geography
Far North Queensland. Barron River covers the northern suburbs of Cairns, including Whitfield, Brinsmead, Smithfield, Redlynch and Kuranda. Most of the electorate lies in the Cairns local government area, with small parts contained in Douglas Shire and Mareeba Shire.

History
The electorate of Barron River was first created for the 1972 election. At most elections this seat has been won by one of the parties who won the election.

Bill Wood won the seat for the ALP in 1972. He had previously sat as Member for Cook since 1969. He lost Barron River in 1974. He later served as a member of the ACT Legislative Assembly from 1989 to 2004.

Martin Tenni won Barron River for the National Party in 1974. He held the seat until 1989, when the seat was won by Lesley Clark of the ALP, as part of the Labor Party’s return to government after decades of conservative rule.

Clark lost to Lyn Warwick of the Liberal Party in 1995 before returning to the seat in 1998. She retired in 2006.

Steve Wettenhall was elected for the ALP in 2006. He was re-elected in 2009, and served as a parliamentary secretary from 2009 to 2012.

In 2012, LNP candidate Michael Trout defeated Wettenhall.

Candidates

Assessment
Barron River has tended to go with the party of government for the last forty years. Labor will need to win seats like Barron River to be in a position to form government.

2012 election result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Michael Trout Liberal National 13,652 45.71 +1.88
Steve Wettenhall Labor 8,317 27.85 -15.40
Brendan Fitzgerald Katter’s Australian 4,732 15.84 +15.84
Elaine Harding Greens 2,736 9.16 -3.76
Mike Squire Independent 431 1.44 +1.44

2012 two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Michael Trout Liberal National 15,406 59.48 +11.8
Steve Wettenhall Labor 10,494 40.52 -11.80
Polling places in Barron River at the 2012 Queensland state election. Central in green, North in orange, South in blue. Click to enlarge.
Polling places in Barron River at the 2012 Queensland state election. Central in green, North in orange, South in blue. Click to enlarge.

Booth breakdown
Booths in Barron River have been divided into three parts: central, north and south.

The LNP topped the primary vote in all three areas, with a vote ranging from 41.9% in the centre to 47.7% in the south.

The ALP came second in each area, with a vote ranging from 26.3% in the south to 29.7% in the centre.

Katter’s Australian Party came third, with 15-17% of the vote in the three areas.

The Electoral Commission does not publish two-party-preferred figures by polling place, so two-party-preferred figures in the following table and map are estimates.

Voter group LNP prim % ALP prim % KAP prim % LNP 2PP % Total % of votes
North 44.52 28.81 15.41 57.99 8,663 29.00
South 47.71 26.28 16.88 61.95 6,891 23.07
Central 41.92 29.74 16.76 56.14 6,675 22.35
Other votes 48.55 26.51 14.60 61.82 7,639 25.58
Estimated two-party-preferred votes in Barron River at the 2012 Queensland state election.
Estimated two-party-preferred votes in Barron River at the 2012 Queensland state election.
Katter's Australian Party primary votes in Barron River at the 2012 Queensland state election.
Katter’s Australian Party primary votes in Barron River at the 2012 Queensland state election.

12 COMMENTS

  2. That’s basically the Cairns city centre, so I guess they are all shared booths with Cairns. It’s not uncommon for there to be a few booths outside the borders but that is a lot.

  3. http://www.ecq.qld.gov.au/elections/state/State2012/Barron%20River/Map.pdf

    There’s 12 booths geographically in the electorate of Cairns. Of those, seven (!) are shared with Barron River, six with Mulgrave, and three are shared between all three seats – only two (Cairns West and Manunda) are just for Cairns. Just to make things more confusing, there’s also two booths in Mulgrave and one in Barron River shared with Cairns. Must make running elections a nuisance.

  4. http://www.sunshinecoastelections.com.au/UserFiles/File/SunshineCoastPollingBoothLocations.pdf

    Here’s a list of polling booths (indicating the shared ones) from 2009. There’s only five electorates that don’t have any shared booths: Mt Isa, Callide, Gregory, Gladstone and Southern Downs. There’s a bundle of booths split between three electorates, and even a few which serve four: two in Cairns (serving Cairns, Barron River, Mulgrave and Cook) and one on the Gold Coast (Burleigh, Mermaid Beach, Mudgeeraba and Surfers Paradise). It’s making it harder than I thought it would be to compare with federal results.

  5. Some advertising already in the electorate for Trout – one large sign in the canefields on the Cook Highway, and another in the middle of a housing development in Redlynch. Now I know what my local member looks like.

  8. My feeling is Trout will hang on, just. Lots of visibility in the local media, and a marked increase in junk mail coming through the door.

  9. He will hang on – this is a bellweather seat. This will be massively in play in 2018 though. My advice to Labor would be to get a candidate sometime in 2016 and get him campaigning for 2 years. This is game on in 2018.

  10. This may be a little bit of secondhand information, but a colleague of mine tells of a friend of hers who works in Trout’s electorate office. Apparently she has said her friend expects to be looking for alternative employment come Monday.

Comments are closed.