Lyons – Australia 2025

ALP 0.9%

Incumbent MP
Brian Mitchell, since 2016.

• Geography
• History
• Candidates
• Assessment
• 2022 results
• Booth breakdown
• Results maps

Geography
Tasmania’s largest seat by area, Lyons includes parts of every region of the state. The seat stretches from the outskirts of Devonport and Launceston in the north to the outskirts of Hobart in the south, as well as the central highlands and the east coast of Tasmania.

History
Lyons was originally named Wilmot, which was created as a central Tasmanian electorate in 1903. The seat was held by a variety of non-Labor parties up to 1929, when the seat was won by former Premier of Tasmania Joseph Lyons. He left the ALP during his first term in federal Parliament and was elected Prime Minister in 1931 at the head of the new United Australia Party. The ALP won the seat in a 1939 by-election following Lyons’ death, but lost the seat at the 1940 election. The ALP’s Gil Duthie won the seat at the 1946 election, and held the seat until the 1975 election, when he was defeated by the Liberal Party’s Max Burr.

In 1984, the seat was renamed Lyons in honour of the former Prime Minister and his wife Enid, who was the first female member of the House of Representatives. Burr held the renamed seat until 1993, when he retired and the ALP’s Dick Adams won the seat.

Dick Adams held Lyons for the ALP for the next twenty years. At the 2004 election, a 4.5% swing against the ALP made the seat marginal, but in 2007 Adams recovered most of his margin, partly due to conflict in the Liberal Party, with the original Liberal candidate, Ben Quin, resigning and running as an independent after Minister for the Environment Malcolm Turnbull approved the Gunns pulp mill.

Adams gained a further swing of almost 4% at the 2010 election, but in 2013 he was defeated by Liberal candidate Eric Hutchinson, after a 13.5% swing. Hutchinson lost in 2016 to Labor’s Brian Mitchell, who was re-elected in 2019 and 2022.

Candidates

Assessment
Lyons is a very marginal seat and would be a key Liberal target.

2022 result

2022 two-party-preferred result

Booth breakdown

Booths have been divided into three areas: north, central and south. Lyons covers all or part of twelve council areas, and these council boundaries have been used to divide booths into three areas.

• Central – Break O’Day, Central Highlands, Glamorgan/Spring Bay, Northern Midlands, Southern Midlands.
• North – Kentish, Meander Valley.
• South – Brighton, Clarence, Derwent Valley, Sorell, Tasman.

The Labor vote tends to be highest at the southern end of the electorate and gradually decline as you move north. Labor won 58.7% of the two-party-preferred vote in the south, while the Liberal Party won 53.7% in the centre and 57.1% in the north.

The Greens came third, with a primary vote ranging from 9.6% in the centre to 12.4% in the south. The Jacqui Lambie Network came fourth, with a primary vote ranging from 9.3% in the north to 12.2% in the south.

Election results in Lyons at the 2022 federal election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal Party, Labor, the Greens and the Jacqui Lambie Network.

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