LNP 10.4%
Incumbent MP
Andrew Willcox, since 2022.
Geography
Central and North Queensland coast. Dawson covers the Queensland coast from Mackay in the south to the outskirts of Townsville in the north. The seat covers the coastal areas, but not the inland areas, of Burdekin and Whitsunday local government areas, as well as parts of Townsville and Mackay LGAs.
History
Dawson was created in 1949 when the House of Representatives was expanded. The seat was first won by the Country Party’s Charles Davidson. Davidson had previously won the neighbouring seat of Capricornia in 1946 for the Liberal Party, defeating Frank Forde, who had served as the ALP’s Minister for the Army since 1941, serving as Prime Minister for one week in 1945 following the death of John Curtin.
Davidson served as a federal minister from 1956 until his retirement at the 1963 election. George Shaw succeeded Davidson as Country Party member in 1963, but died in early 1966 without ever facing re-election.
Rex Patterson (ALP) won the seat at the 1966 by-election. Patterson served as a minister in the Whitlam government from 1972 to 1975, and Patterson lost his seat at the election following the dismissal of the Whitlam government in 1975.
The seat was won in 1975 by Ray Braithwaite of the National Country Party. Braithwaite served as a backbencher for 21 years, retiring at the 1996 election.
Braithwaite was succeeded by De-Anne Kelly, also a National. Kelly was made a Parliamentary Secretary in October 2003, and was promoted to the junior ministry following the 2004 election. She was demoted back to a Parliamentary Secretary position in January 2006.
Kelly lost the seat at the 2007 election in a shock upset when a 13% swing to the ALP overturned Kelly’s 10% margin and gave the seat to Mackay City Councillor James Bidgood. Bidgood didn’t run for re-election in 2010, and a 5% swing back to the Liberal National Party saw George Christensen win the seat. Christensen has been re-elected three times.
Christensen announced plans to retire at the next election in 2021. In April 2022, shortly before the election was called, he resigned from the Liberal National Party. The following week he announced he had joined Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and was running as the third One Nation Senate candidate in Queensland.
The LNP’s Andrew Willcox won Dawson in 2022.
- Paula Creen (Greens)
- Michael Lockye (Trumpet of Patriots)
- Amanda Nickson (Family First)
- Neil Wallace (Labor)
- Andrew Willcox (Liberal National)
Assessment
Dawson is a reasonably safe LNP seat.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Andrew Willcox | Liberal National | 40,109 | 43.3 | +0.4 |
| Shane Hamilton | Labor | 22,650 | 24.5 | +4.2 |
| Julie Hall | One Nation | 12,289 | 13.3 | +0.2 |
| Paula Creen | Greens | 6,675 | 7.2 | +2.7 |
| Ciaron Paterson | Katter’s Australian Party | 5,189 | 5.6 | -0.7 |
| Christian Nigel Young | United Australia | 3,713 | 4.0 | -0.9 |
| Jim Jackson | Great Australian Party | 1,948 | 2.1 | +2.1 |
| Informal | 4,001 | 4.1 | -2.9 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Andrew Willcox | Liberal National | 55,930 | 60.4 | -4.2 |
| Shane Hamilton | Labor | 36,643 | 39.6 | +4.2 |
Booths have been divided into five areas. Dawson covers parts of four local government areas. Polling places in Townsville, Burdekin and Whitsunday have been grouped according to council area. About half of voters live in Mackay Regional Council area. These booths are split between those in the Mackay urban area and those in the remainder of the region.
The LNP won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all five areas, ranging from 52.4% in urban Mackay to 69.0% in Burdekin.
One Nation came third, with a primary vote ranging from 7.9% in Townsville to 18.7% in Whitsunday.
| Voter group | ON prim | LNP 2PP | Total votes | % of votes |
| Mackay Urban | 15.8 | 52.4 | 15,247 | 16.5 |
| Mackay Rural | 15.0 | 59.3 | 7,421 | 8.0 |
| Townsville | 7.9 | 60.0 | 6,522 | 7.0 |
| Whitsunday | 18.7 | 61.8 | 4,578 | 4.9 |
| Burdekin | 14.0 | 69.0 | 2,744 | 3.0 |
| Pre-poll | 12.5 | 62.2 | 42,709 | 46.1 |
| Other votes | 12.5 | 62.6 | 13,352 | 14.4 |
Election results in Dawson at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal National Party, Labor and One Nation.
I am the the first to post actually. State seats for Dawson
1. Whitsunday 100%
2. Burdekin 60%
3. Mackay 100%
4. Mundingburra 42%
Booths to follow shortly
Booths
1. Airlie Beach
2. Aitkenvale PPVC
3. Andergrove
4. Andergrove South
5. Annandale (external booth)
6. Ayr
7. Ayr East
9 Beaconsfield
10. Cannonvale
11. Coningsby
12. Elmeo
13. Farleigh
14. Giru
15. Glenella
16. Hamilton Island
17. Hampden
18. Home Hill
19. Mackay
20. Mackay Grose Ponds
21. Mackay South
22. Mackay Town Beach
23. Mackay West
24. Mount Pleasant East
25. Mount Pleasant West
26. Nome
27. Oonomba
28. Prosperine
29. Queens Beach
30 Seaforth
31. Slade Point
32. Wulguru
Weird that this seat has some of Townsville in it
@Nimalsn thanks, will calculate now.
@Mick I agree, and I propose that as much of Townsville as possible be concentrated into one seat: Herbert, which is entirely in Townsville.
Numerically speaking, as much of Townsville as possible is already concentrated within Herbert.
If you were to add the parts of Dawson which are in Townsville, you would then have to lose much of the northern suburbs, including Burdell, Mount Low, perhaps even Bohle Plains to Kelso, presumably to Kennedy. An expansion of the house of representatives would open the way to two pre-domininately Townsville seats, rather than the current situation. You might have a “Townsville North” seat extending up to Tully, and a “Townsville South” seat extending down past Bowen. Of course those won’t be the names, but you get the idea.
State results here (2024):
* LNP: 63.8%
* Labor: 36.2%
In contrast to nearby seats, Labor actually did 3.4% worse on the state level in 2024 than on the federal level in 2022, and this can be attributed to the LNP overperforming in Mackay and Whitsunday on the state level.
The overperformance in Whitsunday can easily be explained by the lack of any real campaign up there and Labor preselecting a candidate too late, while the overperformance in Mackay is because Mackay was hit bad by the crime crisis and Nigel Dalton, the LNP candidate who is now the member for Mackay, was a victim of youth crime, plus Barry O’Rourke retired which meant the loss of a personal vote, and thus the swing to the LNP in Mackay was huge.
The LNP’s victory in Mackay was also historic because it is the first time in history that it has been won by the LNP and Nigel Dalton is the first non-Labor or independent member since Walter Paget’s term from 1912 until 1915 (he was a member of the now defunct Ministerial/Opposition Party). No existing political party other than Labor has ever won Mackay (independents have won it and the Ministerial and Ministerial/Opposition Parties have also won it but they don’t exist anymore) and it just goes to show that industrial cities like Mackay and Rockhampton (another seat the LNP won but with a smaller margin but still for the first time as well though other non-Labor parties have held it before) are moving away from Labor, so it really was a landmark victory for the LNP.
@Real Talk I agree, but if there are two seats then neither will be entirely based in Townsville (or one might and the other wouldn’t).
And yes, the names would be different from Townsville North and Townsville South since the AEC hates using city and town names in electorate names (the one that currently do are either named after a person who is also the namesake of the city/town (e.g Kennedy, Parkes), named after another geographical feature that shares its name with the city/town (e.g Maranoa) or are Federation seats (e.g Newcastle, Parramatta, etc), though Sydney is an exception I can think of). The reason for this is because state electorates usually are named after suburbs, cities and towns (e.g Toowoomba North and Toowoomba South). However, if this were the UK, they would most likely be named “Townsville North” and “Townsville South” (or perhaps have something else in the name as well, e.g “Townsville North and Ingham”, which is very British, e.g Leeds West and Pudsey).
Even if one seat was entirely based on Townsville, in an expanded parliament scenario, there would be proportionately more of the Townsville urban area in a second seat than currently exists in Dawson at present. That isn’t weird to me. Thats electoral mathematics. What’s more interesting is that you have divisions like Leichhardt, Dawson and Capricornia which have their principal urban area tucked right away in the south east corner, virtually abutting their neighbouring electorate. Then again, thats just electoral geography.
But I ain’t spending any time on it because in the meantime, every three months, a person is torn to pieces by a crocodile in north Queensland.
@Real Talk everyone’s entitled to there own opinion, let there be a thousand blossoms bloom.
@Real Talk, sometimes I wish you could like a comment on here. That comment is deserving of a like.
There are problems with single member seats how do you keep communities of interest intact. 42% of south.Townsville combined with a Mackay based seat. This is seen just maths by the electoral commission