LNP 8.4%
Incumbent MP
Keith Pitt, since 2013.
Geography
Central Queensland. Hinkler covers the city of Bundaberg and rural areas south of the city.
Redistribution
Hinkler gained a small area to the north of Maryborough from Wide Bay. This made no impact on the seat’s margin.
History
Hinkler was created in 1984. It has been held by the National Party for most of the last quarter-century. The seat was originally considered notionally Labor when it was created in 1984.
Hinkler was won in 1984 by the Nationals’ Bryan Conquest, who only held the seat until 1987, when Labor’s Brian Courtice won Hinkler. Paul Neville won the seat in 1993 and held the seat for the next twenty years.
Neville’s margin was cut to less than 2% in 2007, but a swing of 8.9% in 2010 strengthened his hold on the seat.
Neville retired in 2013, and the LNP’s Keith Pitt held onto the seat despite a small 1.3% swing back to Labor. Pitt was re-elected in 2016.
Candidates
Assessment
Hinkler is a reasonably safe LNP seat.
2016 result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Keith Pitt | Liberal National | 38,887 | 43.9 | -0.9 | 43.8 |
| Tim Lawson | Labor | 23,678 | 26.7 | -0.9 | 26.7 |
| Damian Huxham | One Nation | 16,987 | 19.2 | +19.2 | 19.2 |
| Tim Roberts | Greens | 3,477 | 3.9 | +1.2 | 4.0 |
| Stephen Lynch | Family First | 2,250 | 2.5 | +0.7 | 2.5 |
| Bill Foster | Independent | 1,720 | 1.9 | +1.9 | 1.9 |
| Robert Owen Windred | Liberty Alliance | 1,670 | 1.9 | +1.9 | 1.9 |
| Others | 0.1 | ||||
| Informal | 4,258 | 4.6 |
2016 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing | Redist |
| Keith Pitt | Liberal National | 51,804 | 58.4 | -0.6 | 58.4 |
| Tim Lawson | Labor | 36,865 | 41.6 | +0.6 | 41.6 |
Booth breakdown
Booths have been divided into four areas. Hinkler covers parts of Bundaberg and Fraser Coast council areas. Those in the Fraser Coast council area, including Hervey Bay, have been grouped together. Those in Bundaberg Region have been split between those in the Bundaberg urban area, those rural booths near Bundaberg as Woongarra, and those to the south of Bundaberg as Isis (the name of the former council).
The LNP won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all four areas, ranging from 52% in Bundaberg to 63% in Isis.
The One Nation primary vote ranged from 17.4% in Woongarra to 25.6% in Isis.
| Voter group | ON prim % | LNP 2PP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| Fraser Coast | 20.5 | 56.8 | 18,561 | 20.7 |
| Bundaberg | 19.0 | 52.0 | 15,134 | 16.9 |
| Woongarra | 17.4 | 59.7 | 7,387 | 8.2 |
| Isis | 25.6 | 62.9 | 3,349 | 3.7 |
| Other votes | 15.9 | 60.9 | 11,857 | 13.2 |
| Pre-poll | 19.4 | 60.5 | 33,299 | 37.2 |
Election results in Hinkler at the 2016 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and One Nation primary votes.
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Another seat where PHON preferences had an impact on numbers, but not the overall outcome.
Boundaries here are strange….Budaberg and Hervey bay are not a natural fit
Bundaberg was the only seat the LNP actually picked up off Labor in the QLD state election, with quite a swing in the LNP’s favour. Hervey Bay and Burnett also had swings towards the LNP.
I don’t see Labor winning this one, or even trying very hard.
Individual seat polls aren’t worth much, but Ipsos did a poll:
2 Party Preferred: LNP 54 (-4.4 since election) ALP 46 (+4.4)
Primary Votes: LNP 40.8 ALP 27.3 ON 14.3 GRN 4.2 FF 1.7 Other 6.9 Undecided 4.7
I stand by my prior comment of the seat being too fundamentally strong for the LNP who only seem to have gained popularity in this area. I don’t expect Labor to target this seat.
LNP won Bundaberg because the local Labor member didn’t pay her rates despite being on such a generous parliamentary salary the backlash in the electorate caused her to lose her seat. If this hadn’t happen I doubt she would have had a problem holding her seat. The LNP also had a drop of 6.9% on their primary vote and won via One Nation preferences.
Despite this I agree this seat will be a long shot for the Labor party. Hinkler was considered a marginal and would have been won by Labor in 2007 election but the redistribution saw Labor strongholds of Gladstone move to the new seat of Flynn and had LNP leaning Hervey Bay move into Hinkler which ensured the LNP narrowly held on to the seat in the Rudd landslide of 2007.
I do expect a swing to Labor in this seat at the next election on the Pendulum and some Nationals in the LNP have been privately pushing the party to ditch the LNP brand and revert back to National colours to distance itself from the Liberals leadership fallout. Despite this I expect the LNP to retain this seat.
2007 wasn’t a landslide 83 seats, That is only 55% of the seats, Not a landslide, It was a narrow win more than anything, anything above 90 seats is a landslide, 1975/1977/1996/2013 were landslide years, Even 1983 Bob Hawke did better than Rudd and that was not a landslide. Even though there was allot of seats changing hands that year, And Coalition Strongholds weakened (Like this one), I believe Labor will get their best result next year since 1943, (Something a little better than 1983),
Daniel
Landslide to me is massive change not a large majority of seats.
It is amount of movement not the size of majority that makes it a landslide. ie a change from 21% to 50.0001% is a landslide but a change from 96% to 97% is not.
Andrew Jackson
the boundaries of this seat make a labor win difficult………Hinkler of old was Bunderberg and Gladstone and other areas around Bundaberg which made a Marginal seat………… now…….. Bundaberg is trending no and Hervey bay is not friendly………..
Daniel the 2007 election has been categorized as a landslide as Wikipedia.
“The centre-left Australian Labor Party opposition, led by Kevin Rudd and deputy leader Julia Gillard, defeated the incumbent centre-right Coalition government, led by Liberal Party leader and Prime Minister, John Howard, and Nationals leader and Deputy Prime Minister, Mark Vaile, by a landslide.”
Then there are bigger wins which I would call annihilations. Political experts have said Labor federal wins are not as big because the Liberals/Nationals have a stronger voting base. If you call the 2007 election a narrow win then what do you consider the 2016 election?
I’m happy to meet you half way though, the Gough Whitlam victory in 1972 wasn’t a landslide despite being overlooked as one. Labor won the election by 10 seats which Whitlam called a ‘sound mandate’.
Generally though Liberals/Nationals have a Newscorp media that always go hard at Labor and while they don’t always prevent Labor wins. They prevent them being bigger they might be by their reporting. I see they did a puff piece on Peter Dutton trying their best to prevent him losing his seat. Just wait this is only the beginning there will be more of this tripe coming from them before election day.
Political Nightwatcman
Whitlam May have had a mandate but at the same election he did not get a Senate Majority.
If you want a landslide you need to look to 1966 (Vietnam War) or 1975 ( Get rid of Whitlam election) Can I suggest that we define landslide as a result in which the winner gets more than 66% of seats and a landslide vote in the winner gets 66% of vote after preferences distributed. I am not expecting ALP to win with a landslide result but I am expecting an ALP win. If I preference ALP ahead of Libs in Reps I will pref LNP ahead of ALP in Senate. Rennick ahead of other Libs and Ketter top of ALP. In effect I am probably at the point where I am favouring ALP ahead of LNP but do not want ALP to be able to govern without minor party votes in Senate. I want Senate to be able to do to Shorten what it did. To Whitlam.
.9 out of 10 last posts relate to Queensland. There is no doubt where the election is being fought.
this is like Wide Bay the margin is too large………. unless there is a much larger swing than the Queensland average
100 seats is likely a landslide, But Labor is more likely to get 90, Still that would be pretty impressive for the party it would be a record for the party. But they are likely to go through the same fate as the coalition in 2016, They will only win a narrow majority in 2022 or maybe a hung parliament like 2010. I don’t understand why Peter dutton attacked turnbull on the worst campaign 1 seat majority, Like Abbott would have done better…. Yeah. But anyway’s Hervey Bay leans Liberal and the last time it went Labor was the Hawke days. If Labor stops going to the left and adapts Hawke policies they will likely will be in for a few terms, And be more likeable by the public,
Daniel
Shorten is not going Left he is pandering to his rock solid base even when it upsets innner city Yuppies
When individuals like me are agreeing with what Shorten says (even if I am very wary of what he is not saying) Liberals have a big problem.
Mind you what Shorten is saying would have been agreed to by Menzies and Fraser. Whitlam May have wanted to move ALP in different direction and Keating and Latham certainly move ALP towards identity politics issues
Only areas where Shorten is showing signs of electoral trouble are:
1) The undercurrent in ALP of Green ideology
2) His inability to sell Negative gearing and Taxation to those who are not committed ALP voters. He will need to focus on groups other than his solid base.
The Green ideology problem is more difficult to resolve. Voters in traditional ALP seats will not tolerate a rejection of Adani and the inner city will not tolerate Adani unless electricity is turned off to them. Yuppies can not live with warm wine, a cold meat sandwich, a 6PM shutdown and worst of all no air conditioning.
My prediction is Shorten to win but gains insignificant in inner city. Outer Suburbs are where this election will be won.
This is exactly why its great we do not have Proportional representation or List system like NZ, Because there would be more Green’s (Communist’s) In parliament, Although with the system there would be no more preferences (or at least no need to be) Which would be interesting in certain seat’s (Not saying this one) But i remember the main reason Preference voting was introduced was because of a By-election around 100 years ago in WA, where the Nationalist’s/Country vote split causing Labor to win it
Still a longshot to gain this for the ALP, But good news for them on Sportsbet because the LNP has slipped to $1.12 while the ALP is on $3.50,
Moe Turaga has announced his run as an independent – https://www.google.com/search?ie=UTF-8&client=ms-android-telstra-au-revc&source=android-browser&q=moe+turaga+hinkler
David Norman has been accepted as an Independent candidate by the AEC office. If elected he will be the first Hinkler MP from Hervey Bay. All others have been from Bundaberg so far.
https://hiapp.com.au