ON 9.0% vs ALP
Incumbent MP
Stephen Andrew, since 2017.
Geography
North Queensland. Mirani covers regional parts of Queensland from the southern edge of Mackay to the outskirts of Rockhampton. The seat covers parts of Isaac, Mackay and Rockhampton local government areas, and the towns of Mount Morgan, Dysart and Middlemount.
History
The seat of Mirani has existed since 1912. Apart from the period 1935-1947, the seat was held by MPs who belonged to the Country Party, National Party and Liberal National Party until 2015, when Labor won the seat before losing to One Nation.
Jim Randell held the seat for the National Party from 1980 until 1994. His resignation triggered the 1994 Mirani by-election.
Ted Malone won the 1994 by-election for the National Party. He joined the merged Liberal National Party in 2008. Malone was elected to his first full term in 1995 by a solid 59% margin, before dropping to a slim 53-54% in 1998 and 2001.
Malone increased his margin to 60.6% in 2004, but lost support in 2006.
The most recent redistribution in 2009 favoured Labor, and Mirani became a notional Labor seat. Malone held on by a slim margin of 50.6% in 2009, and then gained a swing of over 10% in 2012. While Malone had served as a shadow minister before the 2012 election, he moved to the backbench when the LNP won power in 2012, before becoming an Assistant Minister in late 2012.
Malone retired at the 2015 election, and Labor’s Jim Pearce won the seat with a 16% swing.
Pearce only held Mirani for one term, losing in 2017 to One Nation’s Stephen Andrew. Andrew was re-elected in 2020.
Assessment
Andrew holds Mirani by a substantial margin, but a small swing to the LNP could see One Nation fall into third and lose.
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Shane Hamilton | Labor | 9,412 | 32.0 | -4.8 |
| Stephen Andrew | One Nation | 9,320 | 31.7 | -0.4 |
| Tracie Newitt | Liberal National | 8,123 | 27.6 | +0.7 |
| Jason Borg | North Queensland First | 1,200 | 4.1 | +4.1 |
| Ben Watkin | Greens | 715 | 2.4 | -1.9 |
| Nick Byram | Civil Liberties & Motorists | 342 | 1.2 | +1.2 |
| Tepepe Borg | United Australia | 329 | 1.1 | +1.1 |
| Informal | 1,146 | 3.7 |
2020 two-party-preferred result
| Candidate | Party | Votes | % | Swing |
| Stephen Andrew | One Nation | 17,363 | 59.0 | +4.2 |
| Shane Hamilton | Labor | 12,078 | 41.0 | -4.2 |
Booths in Mirani have been divided into three areas. Polling places on the outskirts of the Mackay area have been grouped, and the remainder were split into north and south.
One Nation won a majority of the two-candidate-preferred vote in all three areas, ranging from 51.6% in Mackay to 65.1% in the north.
The LNP came third, with a primary vote ranging from 24.8% in Mackay to 30.7% in the south.
| Voter group | LNP prim % | ON 2CP % | Total votes | % of votes |
| North | 26.7 | 65.1 | 4,582 | 15.6 |
| South | 30.7 | 56.5 | 2,241 | 7.6 |
| Mackay | 24.8 | 51.6 | 2,020 | 6.9 |
| Pre-poll | 24.8 | 58.0 | 13,316 | 45.2 |
| Other votes | 33.0 | 59.7 | 7,282 | 24.7 |
Election results in Mirani at the 2020 Queensland state election
Toggle between two-candidate-preferred votes (One Nation vs Labor) and primary votes for Labor, One Nation and the Liberal National Party.
6 News reported via the Australian on Friday that Andrew has filed paperwork to join the Katter’s. I still think the swing to the LNP statewide may be too large for him to overcome, but he seems out and about in the community already and I don’t think joining them really hurts (or helps) him at all. Will be interesting to see if they can finally break their curse of failing to elect MPs outside Kennedy’s boundaries.
I think the lnp will win this one now. People often vote for a party more then a candidate with a few exceptions so I think this will be an lnp gain
Why did onp dump him?
They had one mp now they will have none
Will he last longer in Katters than Fraser Anning did…. I wonder.
LNP gain. Labor will run dead and cop the statewide backlash. If Stephen Andrew does run, Labor preferences will push the LNP over the line. On top of that, there’s the momentum behind the LNP.
Any reason why Pauline dumped him? There are no free articles online. He’s bound to be the last ever ON lower house MP.
@Votante – from my vague memory, Stephen Andrew had started to lean towards joining the KAP. They dumped him because of that.
& @Daniel T
@james. .. I don’t live in nth Queensland so it is hard to tell. But I think Pauline dumped him as he was not hung ho onp enough…. I think the moves towards the Katters were AFTER he was dumped.. but Volante is right no more onp lower house mps. ( Ashby will not win in Keppel)
Why will.alp preference the lnp here? I can see no reason to do so
@Mick Quinlivan
One Nation probably dumped him because he almost completely dissociated himself from the party, over the last few years. Completely de-branded, no mention of their the party or their policies on socials and in his speeches.
Also, they likely had Brettlyn Neal lined up to contest this seat, before they dumped Andrew.
AA…. that makes sense
Stephen Andrew acted like an independent for years – not much usage of the One Nation logo in his branding and little mention of the party or Pauline. Perhaps it was sour grapes.
Daniel T, Andrew probably will last longer than Anning did because he’s not a white supremacist who attends neo-Nazi rallies. Probably wouldn’t be welcome at them anyway given his ancestry. Accepting Anning was the Katters’ biggest political mistake and it’s a good thing they corrected it relatively quickly.
If Andrew joins the KAP, and makes the 2pp, he could win on ALP and ONP preferences.
I notice that Labor’s past HTV cards put the KAP second in Hinchinbrook (causing them to leapfrog the second placed One Nation in 2017, and win on ONP preferences), and third (behind the Greens) in Traeger.
So it’s not out of the picture that Labor will put the KAP above the LNP – and obviously, One Nation will put the KAP above the LNP – and Andrew will win.
Is it a given that One Nation would put the KAP above the LNP in Mirani if Andrew is the KAP candidate? I could see them making an exception here out of spite
@AA that’s only if he makes the TCP vote though, and he may have even switched to KAP because Labor preference them above the LNP and One Nation.
In Kennedy, 68.3% of Labor preferences flowed to Bob Katter before the LNP candidate (Bryce MacDonald).
Preference flows from Labor to KAP in Kennedy at each federal election:
* 2013: 84.6% (+0.8%)
* 2016: 79.8% (-4.8%)
* 2019: 74.4% (-5.4%)
* 2022: 68.3% (-5.6%)
So it seems that Labor voters are slowly beginning to preference the LNP over KAP, but the majority of them still preference KAP over the LNP (probably because HTV cards recommend that). However, KAP and Labor are gradually losing votes to the LNP as we can see from the LNP TPP increasing in recent elections, albeit only slightly.
@Nether Portal I think Andrew will make the 2PP. Labor won’t make it, because they don’t have a candidate yet, and I just can’t see One Nation beating Andrew on first preferences.
Labor also doesn’t class Mirani as “winnable”, so there won’t be many resources put into it.
@AA if he makes the TPP he COULD win, but it’s certainly not guaranteed. If Labor and One Nation lost enough votes to the LNP then the LNP would win. Obviously we know Labor will lose a lot of votes to the LNP but how much is the question, and will One Nation drop massively this time after they gained ground last time despite crashing everywhere else.
At the moment I now have Mirani as a tossup for either the LNP or KAP. If he hadn’t joined KAP it would be an LNP gain.
lnp will win if not on primaries on onp preferences
this could actually end up being onp v lnp in whcih case it will depend on whether labor and andrew send their preferences
@John Andrews will go to One Nation and Labor will go to the LNP.
Andrew has now been officially welcomed into the fold by KAP as per a Facebook post earlier today. I’m now thinking it will definitely be an LNP v KAP contest, but whether or not he pulls through depends on how strongly preferences flow to him from Labor and One Nation. The LNP candidate is very out and about and while Andrew is campaigning as well he could probably do with picking up the pace a bit.
@Laine if it’s LNP vs KAP then KAP will likely win depending on how high the KAP vote is and how low the Labor vote is.
Sitting mp to retain
Labor cannot win I think so I think it is better to help the
Kap candidate to win. Esp if the alp vote recovers a bit and they might need to talk to the Katters
@Mick Quinlivan given that we’re 47 days out from the election, I don’t think we’re gonna see any change in the overall outcome. Some seats might be saved or lost, but I think it’s pretty clear now that Labor will lose. They would need to pull off a shocker to even get close and those types of shockers (i.e the outcome of elections themselves) aren’t really occurring anymore and when they did they certainly weren’t common. We still certainly get shocks in specific booths and even specific seats, but not for the whole election. Yes it was a shock that the CLP won a landslide last month but polls and analysts still predicted the CLP would win so it’s not unexpected that they won, it’s just that the magnitude of their victory was unexpected (though polls did technically predict it quite accurately, but analysts were too naïve and sceptical of these polls to take them seriously).
KAP win, helped by Labor and One Nation preferences.