GRN 10.5% vs LNP
Incumbent MP
Max Chandler-Mather, since 2022.
Geography
Southern Brisbane. Griffith covers the suburbs of Brisbane on the south side of the Brisbane river across the river from the Brisbane CBD, including South Brisbane itself, as well as Greenslopes, Holland Park, Kangaroo Point, East Brisbane, Coorparoo, Carina, Seven Hills, Morningside, Balmoral and Bulimba.
History
Griffith was created for the 1934 election, replacing the original seat of Oxley which was abolished at that election. Both Oxley and Griffith have been marginal seats, with Griffith swinging back and forth regularly between the Liberal Party and the ALP since 1949, although this has not usually coincided with national changes. The seat had become relatively safe for the ALP since it was won by Kevin Rudd in 1998, but has since become more marginal, with Labor finally losing the seat in 2022.
The seat was first won in 1934 by Labor MP Francis Baker, who had previously won the seat of Oxley off the United Australia Party, ironically at an election when the UAP swept away the federal Labor government.
Baker was re-elected in 1937, but was killed in a car accident in 1939 at the age of 36. Ironically his father was elected to federal parliament in Maranoa in 1940, after his son’s term in Parliament.
The 1939 Griffith by-election was won by Labor candidate William Conelan. Conelan held the seat until he lost Griffith to Liberal candidate Douglas Berry in 1949.
Berry was re-elected in 1951 but lost to the ALP’s Wilfred Coutts. Coutts held on in 1955 but failed to win re-election in 1958, losing to the Liberal Party’s Arthur Chresby, and winning it back in 1961.
Coutts lost the seat once again in 1966, when the seat was won by Liberal candidate Donald Cameron. Cameron held the seat for eleven years, moving to the new seat of Fadden in 1977. He held Fadden until his defeat in 1983, and returned to Parliament at the 1983 Moreton by-election, which he held until his retirement in 1990.
The ALP regained Griffith in 1977, with Ben Humphreys winning the seat. Humphreys served as a minister in the Hawke/Keating government from 1987 until 1993, and retired at the 1996 election.
The ALP preselected Kevin Rudd, but he lost to Graeme McDougall (LIB). McDougall only held on for one term, losing to Rudd in 1998. Rudd joined the ALP shadow ministry in 2001 as Shadow Minister for Foreign Affairs, a role he held for five years.
Rudd’s profile rose as Shadow Foreign Minister, and he was considered a contender for the ALP leadership when Simon Crean resigned in 2003 and when Mark Latham resigned in 2005, but he waited until late 2006 when he challenged Kim Beazley, and was elected leader, and then proceeded to win the 2007 federal election, becoming Prime Minister.
Kevin Rudd was removed as Labor leader and Prime Minister in June 2010, and was re-elected in Griffith as a Labor backbencher. He returned to the ministry as Foreign Minister following the election. He returned to the backbench as part of a failed challenge to Julia Gillard’s leadership in February 2012. Kevin Rudd again challenged for the Labor leadership in June 2013, and returned to the Prime Ministership.
Rudd led Labor to defeat at the 2013 election – he was re-elected in Griffith with a 3% margin, but resigned shortly after. The seat was won at an early 2014 by-election by Labor’s Terri Butler, in the face of a 1.25% swing to the Liberal National Party. Butler was re-elected in 2016 and 2019.
Butler lost to Greens candidate Max Chandler-Mather in 2022, with Butler falling into third place.
- Andrea Campbell (Family First)
- Max Chandler-Mather (Greens)
- Renee Coffey (Labor)
- Aaron Hayes (Trumpet of Patriots)
- Dion Hunt (People First)
Assessment
This seat is a complex race to watch, but the Greens are in a stronger position here then in their other two inner Brisbane electorates. The progressive two-candidate-majority majority is quite substantial, and the Greens have quite a large lead over Labor in the three-candidate-preferred count. Chandler-Mather has a good shot at winning a second term.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Max Chandler-Mather | Greens | 36,771 | 34.6 | +10.9 |
| Olivia Roberts | Liberal National | 32,685 | 30.7 | -10.2 |
| Terri Butler | Labor | 30,769 | 28.9 | -2.0 |
| Shari Ware | One Nation | 3,504 | 3.3 | +1.2 |
| Robert Gordon McMullan | United Australia | 2,581 | 2.4 | +1.0 |
| Informal | 2,169 | 2.0 | -0.3 |
2022 two-candidate-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % |
| Max Chandler-Mather | Greens | 64,271 | 60.5 |
| Olivia Roberts | Liberal National | 42,039 | 39.5 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Terri Butler | Labor | 64,923 | 61.1 | +8.2 |
| Olivia Roberts | Liberal National | 41,387 | 38.9 | -8.2 |
Booths have been divided into four areas: Bulimba in the north, Greenslopes in the south, South Brisbane in the west and a series of booths along the eastern boundary.
There are two different thresholds that decide who wins Griffith: firstly, who is leading in the race between Labor and the Greens? And then, after preferences, does the LNP have a majority against the main progressive opponent?
On a two-candidate-preferred basis, the Greens won a majority in all four areas, ranging from 58% in Bulimba to 69.7% in South Brisbane. The Greens also polled over 60% of the pre-poll vote.
On a primary vote basis, the Greens outpolled Labor in all four areas, with the Greens primary vote peaking at 44.5% in South Brisbane. Labor’s vote peaked at 30% in the east.
| Voter group | GRN prim | ALP prim | GRN 2CP | Total votes | % of votes |
| Bulimba | 32.6 | 28.2 | 58.1 | 15,493 | 14.6 |
| South Brisbane | 44.5 | 27.2 | 69.7 | 12,008 | 11.3 |
| Greenslopes | 37.5 | 29.6 | 64.9 | 11,098 | 10.4 |
| East | 32.4 | 30.0 | 59.5 | 6,823 | 6.4 |
| Pre-poll | 35.0 | 28.4 | 60.7 | 35,773 | 33.6 |
| Other votes | 29.8 | 30.4 | 55.5 | 25,115 | 23.6 |
Election results in Griffith at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (Greens vs LNP), two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Greens, the Liberal National Party and Labor.
As much as the 3-way contests are fun for the stats, they are pretty stupid from an electoral fairness perspective. We really shouldn’t have a situation where Liberal supporters would be better off first pref-ing Labor to avoid the Greens winning, it does create an almost FPTP-like situation, albeit significantly less common. Does anyone know of any talk about solving this or is it too niche for anyone to really care?
The solution is to not use single member electorates, and yeah I talk about it pretty much constantly.
I wrote a paper about this problem for the 2023 APSA conference.
Labor is pretty much the Condorcet winner in all these 3 way contests. Same as Macnamara, Brisbane and to a lesser extent the old Higgins.
What about having increased but smaller electorates? There are more but smaller state seats in QLD. The 2CP in South Brisbane is Labor vs Greens whereas in Bulimba, it is Labor vs LNP, after preferences. An LNP voter won’t ‘accidentally’ vote in a Green. Expanding federal parliament is a different kettle of fish.
@Angus, you make a good point. If you’re an LNP voter and you want to see the back of MCM, you’d hope that Labor doesn’t get pushed to third spot in the 3CP like in Brisbane in 2022.
The greens have their uses. Because it forces labor to out green the greens therefore pushing some seats towards the liberals. The alp would be smart to follow Dutton who instead of trying g to out teal the teals is targeting outer suburban labor voters who have been left behind by labor as they try to secure wealthier elite inner city votes
Expanding the parliament wouldn’t solve the problem of three-cornered contests producing weird results. It might mean it doesn’t happen here, but it would happen in different places instead. The problem is that the vote is fragmented in such a way that means that there are few seats where the winner has a majority of the vote, or even close to a majority, so preferences become more important and sometimes produces weird situations. A proportional system would mean more MPs would win based on the primary vote and be less dependent on preferences.