ALP 6.7%
Incumbent MP
Jonty Bush, since 2020.
Geography
North-Western Brisbane. Cooper covers the Brisbane suburbs of The Gap, Ashgrove, Milton, Paddington, Red Hill and parts of Bardon and Kelvin Grove.
History
The seat of Ashgrove was created in 1960. The seat was held by the Liberal Party continuously from 1960 to 1983 and has been held by the ALP continuously from 1989 until 2012. The seat was renamed Cooper in 2017.
The seat was first won in 1960 by Douglas Tooth. He had previously won the seat of Kelvin Grove for the Liberal Party in 1957. He held Ashgrove until his retirement in 1974. He was replaced by John Greenwood, also of the Liberal Party.
In 1983, Greenwood lost his seat to the ALP’s Tom Veivers. Veivers held the seat for one term, losing to Liberal candidate Alan Sherlock in 1986. Sherlock again only held the seat for one term, losing in 1989 to Labor candidate Jim Fouras. Fouras had previously held South Brisbane for one term from 1983 to 1986.
Fouras was elected as Speaker of the Legislative Assembly in 1990, and held the position until 1996. He retired from Parliament in 2006.
Kate Jones won Ashgrove in 2006. After winning a second term in 2009 she was appointed as Minister for the Environment, Resource Management and Climate Change. She stepped down from the ministry in June 2011 to focus on her campaign against LNP leader Campbell Newman.
At the 2012 election, Jones was defeated by her LNP opponent Newman. Newman had served as Lord Mayor of Brisbane from 2004 to 2011, and resigned in April 2011 after being elected as leader of the LNP despite not holding a seat in the state Parliament. Newman became premier of Queensland following the 2012 election, serving until the 2015 election.
Newman lost the seat of Ashgrove to his predecessor Kate Jones in 2015, while his party also lost power. Jones was re-elected as member for Cooper in 2017.
Jones retired in 2020, and Labor’s Jonty Bush won the seat.
- Jonty Bush (Labor)
- Donna Gallehawk (Family First)
- Katinka Winston-Allom (Greens)
Assessment
Cooper is a reasonably safe Labor seat in a Labor vs LNP contest, although the Greens are not that far away from breaking in to the top two.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Jonty Bush | Labor | 11,509 | 34.1 | -6.7 |
| Trent Wiseman | Liberal National | 11,285 | 33.4 | -2.2 |
| Katinka Winston-Allom | Greens | 10,000 | 29.6 | +9.0 |
| Susan Ventnor | One Nation | 587 | 1.7 | +1.7 |
| Robert Wiltshire | Independent | 366 | 1.1 | -1.9 |
| Informal | 443 | 1.3 |
2020 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Jonty Bush | Labor | 20,414 | 60.5 | -0.2 |
| Trent Wiseman | Liberal National | 13,333 | 39.5 | +0.2 |
Booths in Cooper have been divided into three areas: east, south and west.
Labor won a majority of the two-party-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 60.2% in the centre to 64.1% in the west.
The Greens came third, with just over 31% in the centre and west, and 38% in the east.
| Voter group | GRN prim % | ALP 2PP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| East | 38.0 | 63.6 | 3,741 | 11.1 |
| Central | 31.3 | 60.2 | 3,350 | 9.9 |
| West | 31.5 | 64.1 | 3,331 | 9.9 |
| Pre-poll | 29.3 | 61.0 | 13,461 | 39.9 |
| Other votes | 25.7 | 57.6 | 9,864 | 29.2 |
Election results in Cooper at the 2020 Queensland state election
Toggle between two-party-preferred votes and primary votes for Labor, the Liberal National Party and the Greens.
@John – Are you saying that Jonty Bush is a male? Jonty Bush is actually a female.
I reckon this will go Green if Labor’s state polls contiune. Possibly more likley than McConnel.
@james did you just assume their gender.? (Jkin) didn’t know that tbh.
In relation to the redistribution it should lose the reservoir as it unnecessarily elongates the district and adds no real electtors
@cg easy greens gain. This is within ryan and Labor will likely finish 3rd. I wager lnp finishes first and greens second
FINALLY, FINALLY, FINALLY I CAN SAY THIS:
LNP have preselected Raewyn Bailey, the CEO of Mental Awareness Foundation, a Mater Foundation Board member, and former owner of a successful recruitment firm for Cooper. An interesting race with no clear winner in sight.
The race to win Cooper against Labor & Greens*
@james libs can’t win without a size primary increase. Greens should easily push Labor into 3rd and take the seat
@John – The Labor MP Jonty Bush is quite popular and active in the electorate. Yes the tide is turning on them, but MPs with a personal following should usually get re-elected. @A A has said this quite often. Plus, it feels the Greens candidate is merely running for photo-ops with the federal MPs. I doubt she’ll win.
Plus, have you seen the results in Cooper in 2020? Labor, LNP & Greens were only separated by 5% on primaries. I’m confident the LNP can’t win as the left vote outweighs the right vote but who knows what could happen. The LNP retained The Gap ward on BCC with a swing to them plus barely lost Paddington so there could be an upset?
@james possibly all I know is Labor isn’t winning this seat
Redistribution would likely make this less safe for Labor.
As for the LNP, I think they’ll definitely finish first here, but I don’t think they can win this seat simply because the left vote is too high. As others have pointed out, Jonty Bush is quite popular in Cooper, so the swing against her will be probably smaller than in other seats, including the neighbouring seat of Moggill. The swing against Labor will be split between the LNP (voters who are happy with the more moderate Crisafulli as opposed to the more conservative Dutton (Crisafulli is the most moderate LNP leader since Tim Nicholls) and “it’s time”rs, plus swing voters on issues such as crime and cost of living) and the Greens (voters moving to the left plus people voting for a third party).
The Labor voters swinging to the LNP this time fall under a few categories statewide:
* Affected voters (especially voters affected by what Crisafulli refers as the “four crises”: the crime crisis, the cost-of-living crisis, the health crisis and the housing crisis)
* “It’s time”rs (people who have had enough of Labor)
* Moderates and centrists (people who prefer Crisafulli to Dutton or even Frecklington)
* Swing voters (much of these fall under the first category)
Currently there’s an unpopular Prime Minister and federal Labor leader in Albanese, an unpopular Opposition Leader and federal Coalition leader in Dutton and an unpopular Premier and state Labor leader in Steven Miles, but a popular state Opposition Leader and state LNP leader in Crisafulli. Greens and minor party leaders are never popular with the general public (at least ideologically) because they are too extreme (Adam Bandt would likely be more unpopular than any party leader in the current Federal Parliament barring maybe Pauline Hanson simply because there are more Greens voters than One Nation voters in most of Australia).
Just looked at the primary vote figures by the way. Last time Labor only led the LNP on primaries by 224 votes, and the Greens got exactly 10,000 votes and were 1,285 votes behind the LNP.
Overall, here’s a summary of the results here last time:
* Left: 63.7% (–2.3%)
* Right: 35.1% (–0.5%)
* Wiltshire: 1.3% (–1.7%)
I have no idea what Robert Wiltshire’s views are so I’ve separated his 1.3% from the rest. As we can see, this is a progressive seat.
@np yes minor parties especially those on the extreme end only resonate with a small fraction of voters. Although despite being considered as once extreme one nation isn’t seem as extreme as it once was at least publicly people are OT afraid to show support for them. In regards to the redistribution my plan is to put fig tree pocket and enoggera resevoir into moggill while enogerra reservoir only has a handful of voters in unecessarily elongates Cooper and makes it easier for Cooper to expand without looking weird. I then plan to move maiwar into Milton and then move Cooper into mconnel along countess Street taking in petrie terrace
@np not necessarily progressive remember Campbell Newman did once represent it. Libs could easily persuade some Labor voters to their side but despite her popularity I can’t see how bush survives anything but a negligible swing of less then 2.25% to the greens putting her out of the 2cp and that’s not including any swing to the lnp. Her only other hope is that it s alab vs grn contest in which she might get lib preferences. But I can’t see her surviving
@John Campbell Newman represented Ashgrove, not exactly Cooper, but a more conservative part of Cooper.
Furthermore, the only possible way for Jonty Bush to survive is for either the LNP or the Greens to flop and not make the TCP. Labor has to finish first or second to win.
@np the lnp will finish first. Greens second Labor 3rd. The greens are running the same candidate as 2020. The combined lnp and green swing will push her out. It only has to be 2.25% lab->grn to push greens into 2nd and Labor out. And that’s not including any swing to libs. Labor is unpopular at a state and federal level sure she has some personal voters but the swing voters will determine this. Cooper was the former ashgrove and is close enough to the same division.
If you look at where the road connections are, it makes sense that the very few electors in Enoggera Reservoir would be in the same electorate as The Gap.
@nicholas yes but my reasoning is it elongates the district and yes it should be but the electorate should not be drawn so long as it makes adding bits when needed further making it weird looking
@John I agree the LNP will finish first but I’m saying if Labor are to win they need to finish either first or second, so with swings to the LNP and the Greens that’s highly unlikely, so they’ll probably finish third and end up losing the seat to the Greens.