Oxley – Australia 2019

ALP 9.0%

Incumbent MP
Milton Dick, since 2016.

Geography
Oxley covers the southwestern suburbs of the City of Brisbane and eastern parts of the City of Ipswich. Suburbs include Redbank, Forest Lake, Richlands, Durack, Inala, Jamboree Heights and Jindalee.

Redistribution
Oxley slightly expanded to the north-east, taking in an area near the suburb of Oxley from the seat of Moreton. This slightly reduced the Labor margin.

History
The seat of Oxley was created as part of the expansion of the House of Representatives at the 1949 election. After first being held by the Liberal Party for a decade, it has almost always been won by the ALP, except for the 1996 election, when it was won by disendorsed Liberal candidate Pauline Hanson, who later formed the One Nation party.

The seat was first won in 1949 by Liberal candidate Donald Cameron.  Cameron served as a minister in the Menzies government from 1956 until his defeat at the 1961 election, when he was defeated by former police officer and Labor candidate Bill Hayden.

Hayden served as Member for Oxley for 27 years. He joined Gough Whitlam’s ministry in 1972, and served as Treasurer for the final five months of the Whitlam government in 1975. Hayden was elected Leader of the Opposition after Gough Whitlam’s resignation after the 1977 election, and led the party to an improved position in 1980.

Hayden faced a leadership threat from former ACTU president Bob Hawke, who had entered Parliament in 1980. Hawke failed to win a ballot in 1982. In early 1983 Hayden resigned as leader and was replaced by Hawke, only hours before Malcolm Fraser called an early election. After Bob Hawke’s win, Hayden was appointed Foreign Minister. He served in this role until he was appointed Governor-General in 1988, at which point he resigned from Parliament.

The ensuing by-election was won by the ALP’s Les Scott. Scott held the seat for the remainder of the Hawke/Keating government, up to the 1996 election. The Liberal Party preselected former Ipswich councillor Pauline Hanson as their candidate in 1996. Shortly before the election she was quoted in local papers criticising government assistance for indigenous Australians, which resulted in her disendorsement as a Liberal candidate. With the ballot papers already printed with the Liberal Party’s name attached to Hanson, she gained a high profile and managed to win the seat with a large swing.

Hanson was a prominent independent MP and, in 1997, founded the One Nation party in support of her political views. The party had a strong result at the Queensland state election in early 1998 and she was predicted to perform strongly at the next federal election. Her hopes fell short at the 1998 election, where One Nation only managed to elect a single Senator, despite a national result of over 8%. Hanson contested the new seat of Blair, which now covered Ipswich, which had previously been included in Oxley. Despite coming first on primary votes, Hanson lost due to the ALP and Liberal Party swapping preferences.

Pauline Hanson repeatedly run for election after losing her seat in 1998, and finally returned to parliament as a senator in 2016.

Hanson’s seat of Oxley was won in 1998 by ALP candidate Bernie Ripoll, and he held the seat until his retirement in 2016. Ripoll was succeeded by Labor’s Milton Dick.

Candidates

Assessment
Oxley is a safe Labor seat.

2016 result

2016 two-party-preferred result

Booth breakdown

Booths have been divided into three areas. Booths in the City of Ipswich have been grouped as ‘South-West’. Booths in the City of Brisbane have been split into South-East and North.

The ALP won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in two areas, polling 63.2% in the south-west and 69.6% in the south-east. The LNP managed 54.1% in the north.

Two-party-preferred votes in Oxley at the 2016 federal election

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