MacGregor – Brisbane 2024

Council margin – LNP 13.5%
Mayoral margin – LNP 11.5%

Incumbent councillor
Steven Huang, since 2011.

Geography
South-eastern Brisbane. MacGregor covers the suburbs of Eight Mile Plains, Macgregor, Robertson, Upper Mount Gravatt and Wishart.

History
Labor candidate Gail MacPherson won Runcorn ward in 1994. She was re-elected in Runcorn in 1997, 2000 and 2004. Her margin at the 2004 election was a very slim 2.2%.

The 2008 redistribution split the Runcorn ward between the new wards of Karawatha and MacGregor.

The new MacGregor took in parts of Wishart, and sitting Wishart Liberal councillor Graham Quirk shifted to MacGregor. Quirk had been sitting on the council since 1995.

Quirk increased the Liberal margin from 7.9% to 21.1% at the 2008 election, and became deputy mayor as part of the Liberal Party gaining a majority on the council.

Graham Quirk became Lord Mayor in early 2011, after Campbell Newman resigned from the mayoralty to take up the state leadership of the Liberal National Party. Quirk was re-elected in 2012 and 2016, before retiring in 2019.

Quirk was replaced as councillor for MacGregor by the LNP’s Steven Huang in April 2011, and Huang was re-elected to a full term in 2012. He was re-elected in 2016 and 2020.

Candidates

Assessment
MacGregor is a safe LNP ward.

2020 council result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Steven Huang Liberal National 13,345 59.4 +0.4
Trent Mctiernan Labor 6,460 28.8 -0.1
Sean Womersley Greens 2,666 11.9 -0.3
Informal 630 2.7

2020 council two-candidate-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Steven Huang Liberal National 13,588 64.1 +0.4
Trent Mctiernan Labor 7,603 35.9 -0.4
Exhausted 1,280 5.7

2020 mayoral result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Adrian Schrinner Liberal National 12,786 54.6 -8.5
Pat Condren Labor 6,823 29.1 +2.7
Kath Angus Greens 2,183 9.3 +2.6
Karagh-Mae Kelly Animal Justice 778 3.3 +3.3
Jeff Hodges Motorists Party 238 1.0 +1.0
John Dobinson Independent 214 0.9 +0.9
Frank Jordan Independent 208 0.9 +0.9
Ben Gorringe Independent 101 0.4 +0.4
Jarrod Wirth Independent 82 0.4 -0.1
Informal 684 2.8

2020 mayoral two-party-preferred result

Candidate Party Votes % Swing
Adrian Schrinner Liberal National 13,330 63.1 +6.3
Pat Condren Labor 7,802 36.9 -6.3
Exhausted 4,198 16.6

Booth breakdown

Booths in MacGregor have been divided into three parts: north, south and west.

The Liberal National Party won the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 53.6% in the north to 62.0% in the west.

Voter group GRN prim council LNP 2PP council LNP 2PP mayoral Total votes % of votes
North 15.6 53.6 55.3 2,219 9.9
South 12.8 61.8 62.5 1,488 6.6
West 15.4 62.0 58.6 1,136 5.1
Postal 9.1 71.2 70.8 6,534 29.1
Other votes 13.9 60.3 53.7 6,305 28.1
Pre-poll 10.1 65.3 60.8 4,789 21.3

Council election results in MacGregor at the 2020 Brisbane City Council election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal National Party, Labor and the Greens.

Mayoral election results in MacGregor at the 2020 Brisbane City Council election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for the Liberal National Party, Labor and the Greens.

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3 COMMENTS

  1. One of the few seats, might be the only actually, where the sitting LNP councillor has a notably higher margin than the mayoral margin, indicating a strong personal vote for Steven Huang.

  2. Huang may have a personal vote, but it only stretches so far. It didn’t really help him in the 2022 federal election when he ran for Moreton. He only won one booth on 2PP in the area covered by Macgregor ward, that being Robertson, a small booth in a wealthy area, and his 2PP margin there was only 0.2%. This was 15% below his margin in the Robertson booth at the last council election.

    The conclusion I draw is that any benefit to Huang from a personal vote was swamped in the other direction by his party annoying the Chinese Australian community with their bellicose rhetoric against the Chinese government. It’s worth noting that Huang is Taiwanese rather than Mainland Chinese, which might have hurt his ability to counteract that effect.

    Perhaps Huang’s personal vote is more advantageous at council level where there is no foreign policy debate making things difficult for him.

  3. I’d be cautious about using those mayoral figures – the special votes for the mayoral election weren’t properly distributed to the correct wards.

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