LNP 9.0%
Incumbent MP
Ted O’Brien, since 2016.
Geography
Sunshine Coast of Queensland. Fairfax covers the central part of Sunshine Coast Regional Council. It covers the towns of Buderim, Maroochydore and Nambour, as well as following the coast from Maroochydore to Coolum Beach.
History
Fairfax was first created in 1984 when the House of Representatives was expanded, and has always been held by conservative parties. The seat was first won by Evan Adermann of the National Party, who had previously held Fisher since the 1972 election and served as a minister in the Fraser government.
Adermann retired at the 1990 election, and the seat was fought as a three-cornered contest in 1990. The ALP came first on primaries, with the Nationals leading the Liberals by 0.7% on primary votes. A high Democrats vote pushed the Liberals ahead of Nationals candidate John Stone, who had resigned from the Senate to contest the seat, and Liberal candidate Alex Somlyay won the seat on National preferences.
Somlyay held the seat by varying margins, most recently having a margin of over 62% following the redistribution before the 2007 election. A 9.4% swing to the ALP made Fairfax a marginal seat following the 2007 election. A 4% swing back to the LNP strengthened Somlyay’s position in 2010.
In 2013, Alex Somlyay retired, and the seat was won by Clive Palmer, running for his newly founded Palmer United Party. The race was extremely close, only being decided after weeks of counting. Palmer won by only 57 votes.
Palmer did not run for re-election in 2016, and the seat was won easily by LNP candidate Ted O’Brien, who has been re-elected twice.
Assessment
Fairfax is a reasonably safe LNP seat.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Ted O’Brien | Liberal National | 46,551 | 44.9 | -4.7 |
| Sue Ferguson | Labor | 22,662 | 21.9 | +0.4 |
| Sue Etheridge | Greens | 13,862 | 13.4 | +0.8 |
| Nikki Civitarese | One Nation | 6,798 | 6.6 | -1.3 |
| Lisa Khoury | United Australia | 6,132 | 5.9 | +2.9 |
| Tash Poole | Animal Justice | 2,182 | 2.1 | +2.1 |
| Wendy Hazelton | Informed Medical Options | 1,997 | 1.9 | +1.9 |
| Barry Smith | Independent | 1,423 | 1.4 | +1.4 |
| Craig White | Great Australian Party | 1,319 | 1.3 | +1.3 |
| Sinim Australie | Independent | 733 | 0.7 | -0.6 |
| Informal | 6,066 | 5.5 | -0.9 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Ted O’Brien | Liberal National | 61,108 | 59.0 | -4.5 |
| Sue Ferguson | Labor | 42,551 | 41.0 | +4.5 |
Booths have been divided into four areas. Those booths near the coast have been split into “North-East” and “South-East”. The south-east is the most populous part of the seat, including Maroochydore and Buderim. The north-east includes seats close to the coast.
Booths away from the coast have been split into those near the town of Nambour, and the other booths grouped as “West”.
The LNP won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all four areas, ranging from 53.3% in the west to 57.6% in the south-east.
The Greens primary vote ranged from 14.5% in Nambour and the south-west to 16.8% in the west.
| Voter group | GRN prim | LNP 2PP | Total votes | % of votes |
| South-East | 15.3 | 57.6 | 12,158 | 11.7 |
| North-East | 16.8 | 53.7 | 8,512 | 8.2 |
| Nambour | 14.5 | 57.1 | 7,440 | 7.2 |
| West | 16.3 | 53.3 | 4,842 | 4.7 |
| Pre-poll | 12.2 | 59.9 | 51,598 | 49.8 |
| Other votes | 12.5 | 61.7 | 19,109 | 18.4 |
Election results in Fairfax at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal National Party, Labor and the Greens.
Greens are surprisingly close to overtaking Labor both here and Fisher 3PP. It’s trivial if they can’t bring down the LNP vote but perhaps an anti nuclear campaign against O’Brien could cut through.
Having said that, not sure the Sunshine Coast Greens are organised enough to mount a winnable seat campaign, and QLD Greens will have other priorities. But if they are looking for LNP held target seats to telegraph publicly then running against O’Brien could be the ticket.
Same goes for McPherson on the Gold Coast if Karen Andrews becomes enough of a target as immigration spokesperson.
@ John
The only issue is that in mortgage belt parts of the Sunshine coast, Mountain Creek, Sippy Downs, Baringa, Nirimba etc its hard to see the Greens outpolling Labor there. However, they certainly could could do that along the Beach.
Fairfax contains
1. 80% or Buderim
2. 74% of Maroochydore
3. 84% of Nicklin
4. All of Ninderry
Booths to follow
Booths/ suburbs
1. Bli Bli
2. Buderim
3. Burnside
4. Coolum Beach
5. Cotton Tree (Maroochydore)
6. Didililibah
7. Eumundi
8. Forest Glen
9. Kenilworth
10. Kulun
11. Kureelpa
12. Mapleton
13. Maroochydore
14.Moolololaba
15. Mountain Creek
16. Midjimba
17 Nambour
18. North Arm
19. Pacific Paradise
20. Peregian Springs
21. Sippy Downs (Joint booths)
22. Woombye
23. Yandina
Greens always poll well with youth, but to win seats they need big Schools, Hospitals and Universities in their target electorates.
That occurs in Griffith, Ryan, Brisbane and Melbourne, not so much in Fairfax.
@Nimalan thanks.
State level TPP here (2024):
* LNP: 58.6%
* Labor: 41.4%
Labor did 0.4% better on the state level here in 2024 than on the federal level in 2022. Much less than the bigger differences seen in Moreton Bay, but still fractionally better.
Thanks N
I suspect labor did slightly better as they had a sitting MP in Nicklin we may see that in Fisher with Caloundra and in the Gold Coast seats with Gaven.
@Nimalan, no worries. Interestingly in Nicklin, Labor did better on the state level everywhere except Kureelpa, but only did slightly better in Kenilworth. Kenilworth and Kureelpa are both semi-rural suburbs in the Sunshine Coast Hinterland and thus tend to vote LNP. But unlike Maleny the Greens vote isn’t that high there, though One Nation polls better than in other parts of the electorate out there.
Lawyer and small business owner Francine Wiig has been announced as the teal candidate for Fairfax. Why?
I’d say because she decided to run there. That’s why.
Labor has announced Naomi McQueen, an air traffic controller and candidate for Maroochydore 2024 as their candidate for Fairfax. She won’t win unless there’s some monster swing against Ted O’Brien.
I have heard that WIIG only requires approx 28% of the primary vote to win because of how preferences will flow – is this accurate? Her campaign seems to be gaining a lot of momentum.
I was up here last week and there were corflutes everywhere on bits of public land, loads of LNP, teal and strangely Rennick senate ones (no KAP branding, so possibly older?), and a couple of labor and greens ones here and there. Greens and Rennick were the only ones I saw who had senate signs up, the greens had both in most places. In actual yards, however, there was almost none, I spent most of the time around Coolum Beach and saw like a grand total of 2 yard signs, both for Wiig. On the beach, there was a gathering of Labor, Green and Teal people in what seemed to be largely an anti-nuclear thing, probably about 1-200 people in total. Of course, this is one of the worst LNP areas in the electorate, lots of sea changers etc.
That’s right Carly. I know from previous campaigns and independent taking that can take an LNP seat off preference flows. Even lower towards 24 or 25%. It does also depend on how low the LNP primary is and how also on the minor right vote not being too high.
Clarinet, Ice also been in the Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast seats this week. Both Fairfax and Fisher have very strong signage and prepoll for the Teals. A couple of weeks ago I would have said Fairfax was the better chance, but my on ground conversations have mentioned Wiig being at every function and O’Brien not being anywhere. I’m talking business groups, chambers, community associations. Wiig is getting to everything and is working rooms very well.
I’m keeping my eye on this seat. I think Ted being the most associated mp with Nuclear and the general Dutton issues also will hurt here.
One more thing Clarinet, Rennick’s party is separate to Katter. They have a join senate ticket, but that mainly helps in the north of the state as it means Rennick does not need to have booth workers etc up there as Katter will handout for him on Kennedy, Leichardt and Herbert.
Elsewhere it’s a People First operation and it’s bloody well organised. The signs you see are current. It’s a credit to him to have it up and running, it’s just he’s chosen a crowded market place with Pauline and Clive. The One Nation and LNP makes it very hard for him.
That said, Rennick appears as a less crazy and more policy driven centre right figure to former LNP voters and members, he has certainly picked that up as well as a big portion of the general freedom and anti vaccination movement. Couple that with Katter and it’s something of a base. I still think Roberts gets the this seat, but who knows.
I see Francine Wiig has the cookie cutter ‘Teal’ website with a hug and lots of volunteers in matching T shirts. There really is a ” I’m nice so vote for me because I’m nice” vibe going through some of these independents – they seem to have as much policy credibility and consistency as a blancmange.