ALP 10.5%
Incumbent MP
Anika Wells, since 2019.
Geography
Northern Brisbane. Lilley covers most of the northern corner of the City of Brisbane, including the suburbs of Chermside, Stafford, McDowall, Wavell Heights, Nudgee, Taigum, Deagon, Sandgate, Zilllmere and Nundah. The seat also covers Brisbane Airport, which substantially increases the land area covered by Lilley, without much of a resident population.
History
The seat of Lilley was first created at the 1913 election. The seat has a history of moving between Labor and conservative parties, although Labor has won it at all but one election since 1980.
The seat was first won in 1913 by Liberal candidate Jacob Stumm. He retired at the 1917 election.
The seat was then won by Nationalist candidate George Mackay. Mackay held the seat for 17 years. After the new United Australia Party won the 1931 election, Mackay was elected Speaker, and served in that role until his retirement at the 1934 election.
Lilley was then won by the UAP’s Donald Charles Cameron, who had previously held Brisbane from 1919 until his defeat in 1931. He only held Lilley for one term before retiring.
In 1937, the UAP’s William Jolly was elected to Lilley. Jolly had been the first Lord Mayor of the Greater Brisbane City Council. Jolly held the seat for two terms, but lost the seat in 1943 to the ALP’s James Hadley.
Hadley was the first Labor member for Lilley, and held it until his defeat in 1949. The seat was then held by Liberal MP Bruce Wight.
Wight held the seat until 1961, when he was defeated by the ALP’s Donald James Cameron. He only held the seat for one term, losing to Kevin Cairns from the Liberal Party in 1963. Cairns served as a junior minister under William McMahon from 1971 to his defeat at the 1972 election, losing to the ALP’s Frank Doyle. Cairns won the seat back at the next election in 1974 and held it until his defeat in 1980.
The ALP’s Elaine Darling won Lilley in 1980. She managed to win re-election in 1983, 1984, 1987 and 1990, and was the first Labor MP to hold Lilley for more than two terms.
Darling retired in 1993, and was succeeded by Wayne Swan, the Secretary of the Queensland ALP. Swan lost the seat in 1996 to the Liberal Party’s Elizabeth Grace, but won it back in 1998. Swan has been re-elected seven times.
Swan joined the Opposition shadow ministry in 1998 and rose to the top of the party, becoming Treasurer after the election of the Rudd government in 2007.
In 2010, Wayne Swan became Deputy Prime Minister. Swan resigned from the deputy leadership and the frontbench when Kevin Rudd was elected Labor leader in 2013. Swan held Lilley until his retirement in 2019, when he was succeeded by Labor’s Anika Wells. Wells was re-elected in 2022.
Assessment
Lilley is a reasonably safe Labor seat.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Anika Wells | Labor | 41,424 | 41.8 | +6.2 |
| Vivian Lobo | Liberal National | 29,530 | 29.8 | -11.0 |
| Melissa Stevens | Greens | 16,916 | 17.1 | +3.1 |
| Michelle Wilde | One Nation | 4,027 | 4.1 | -1.3 |
| Gerardine Hoogland | United Australia | 3,320 | 3.4 | +1.1 |
| Daniel Freshwater | Liberal Democrats | 2,412 | 2.4 | +2.4 |
| Stephen McGrath | Informed Medical Options | 1,378 | 1.4 | +1.4 |
| Informal | 2,750 | 2.7 | -0.8 |
2022 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Anika Wells | Labor | 59,941 | 60.5 | +9.9 |
| Vivian Lobo | Liberal National | 39,066 | 39.5 | -9.9 |
Booths have been divided into four areas: Central, East, North and South.
Labor won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all four areas, ranging from 60.5% in the south to 66.1% in the east.
The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 17.1% in the centre to 20.2% in the south.
| Voter group | GRN prim | ALP 2PP | Total votes | % of votes |
| South | 20.2 | 60.5 | 16,594 | 16.8 |
| East | 18.6 | 66.1 | 10,043 | 10.1 |
| Central | 17.1 | 62.9 | 8,781 | 8.9 |
| North | 18.4 | 64.2 | 6,645 | 6.7 |
| Pre-poll | 15.7 | 58.9 | 32,541 | 32.9 |
| Other votes | 15.8 | 58.7 | 24,403 | 24.6 |
Election results in Lilley at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Liberal National Party and the Greens.
believe this is a liberal target
This might be a close contest given both lnp and greens are targeting it. A 3 cornered contest could help the lnp with Labor having to fight off both the left and the right.
i honestly dont know why the Greens are targeting it. There is a huge gap between the Labor and Greens primary and in terms of Labor primary vote it is quite strong. I dont see Greens knocking the Labor of the 2CP anytime soon. The demographics include mainly middle and working class suburbs and only a few posh suburbs such as Wavell Heights and Kedron. In terms of the LNP’s chances it is usually only close in very bad elections in QLD such as 1996, 2013 and 2019. In fact Labor has a better margin today adjusted to current boundaries in Lilley than in 2007 when there was Wayne Swan and Kevin Rudd. If the Labor party loses Lilley to LNP they can probably win a majority without the Teal seats and it will be a disaster of the election.
@nimalan I agree I don’t think the lnp can win in 2025 but 2028 is on the table. From what I hear the coalition is adopting a 2 term strategy to weaken Labor to the point of minority government in 2025 and then come in and sweep the field in 2028. I’m expecting somewhere around 8-12 for the lnp. That’s a combination of labor/green and minority seats
This seat is like Kingsford Smith in NSW: it’s beachside but for some reason Labor still holds it, even though they usually do poorly in coastal seats in the capital cities where there is a beach. Perhaps the above-average Greens vote helps them in these seats.
This is federal Labor’s only coastal seat in Queensland. Kingsford Smith is the only beachside seat in Sydney that is held by Labor. In Melbourne, Perth and Adelaide it’s different though but even there the beach tends to be a Liberal area. The Gold Coast, the Sunshine Coast and most of the beachy parts of the Central Coast also have high Liberal votes or are Liberal heartlands. Even in Newcastle which is traditionally a city that votes 63% Labor (TPP) on all levels of politics the beachy areas tend to have decent Liberal primaries.
I grew up not far from a beach in regional NSW and it was always the same in the country, city and beach: conservative (Nationals in this case at the time).
What makes beachy suburbs so strong for the Liberals and teals but not so much for Labor or the modern-day Greens? Is it because most are upper or middle-class areas or is there a general conservative vibe?
@ Nether Portal
I dont think the Moreton Bay beaches are that desirables from what i hear there are mostly mudflats etc unlike in the other cities. In the Gold Coast the LNP vote is much stronger on the beaches than inland. Which is why Theodore is more marginal.
I would agree that Generally Beachy suburbs are Lib/Teal as they attract an affluent demographic higher property prices. Kingsford Smith has some industrial areas which is why it is Labor like Gellibrand. Issacs is a seat Libs can win longer term and the Liberal vote is much better on the beach than inland.
@Nimalan yes that is correct in some areas. In Sandgate the beach has a lot of mudflats and because of that you get a lot of stingrays that sleep and nest there. You can walk all the way out like 50 metres at least on some days.
@np anyone who can afford it obviously has money and those people generally vote lnp.
@ NP
To calculate Lilley
State Seats
1. All of Nudgee
2. Parts of Aspley, Stafford, Clayfield, Sandgate and Stafford
Booths/Suburbs
1. Aspley
2. Banyo
3. Boondalll
4. Brighton
5. Chermside
6. Deagon
7. Geebing
9. Kalinga (external booth)
10. Kedron
11. Kedron Heights
12. McDowall
13. Nudgee
14. Nundah
15. Sandgate
16. Shorncliffe
17. Somerset Hills (Stafford)
18. Stafford
19. Taigum
20. Viriginia
21. Wavell Heights
22. Zillmere
23. Northgate
@Nimakan thanks, will calculate now.
State level TPP here (2024):
* Labor: 60.6%
* LNP: 39.4%
Overall Labor only did 0.1% better on the state level in 2024 than on the federal level in 2022, though that could be attributed to Anika Wells’ personal vote and the +9.9% swing to Labor on TPP in 2022 which can partially be attributed to the LNP picking Vivian Lobo as the candidate at the last minute (he’s now being accused of electoral fraud and has to face court).
Apologies for the delay btw.
Np
When you.do. state to federal transposition. And it involves part of electorates can you advise how much of that part electorate is in the federal electorate eg 15% etc
@Mick Quinlivan sure. I will add this to my previous calculations too.
According to The Poll Bludger, Sandgate contains:
* 48% of Aspley
* Parts of Clayfield (Brisbane Airport, Eagle Farm and Pinkenba, neither of which have booths)
* 100% of Nudgee
* 51% of Sandgate
* 68% of Stafford
*Lilley contains those not Sandgate
Also I’ve added the same thing for each of the electorates I’ve already calculated (currently 13/30, but I’ve done all the Brisbane seats except Griffith and Moreton plus I’ve done Blair and Leichhardt).