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| Australian federal election, 2016
Division of Fisher, Queensland
Sunshine Coast: Caloundra, Glasshouse Mountains, Landsborough, Mooloolaba
Sitting member: Hon Mal Brough, elected 1996, defeated 2007, elected 2013.
Retiring 2016
Enrolment at close of rolls: 98,637
2013 Liberal majority over Labor: 9.8%
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Candidates in ballot-paper order:
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1. Tony Gibson
Australian Greens |
2. Caroline Ashlin
Family First |
3. Bill Gissane
Australian Labor Party |
4. John Spellman
Australian Liberty Alliance |
5. Tracey Bell-Henselin
Rise Up Australia |
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6. Andrew Wallace
Liberal Party |
7. Jason Burgess
Veterans Party |
8. L B Joum
Online Direct Democracy |
9. Mike Jessop
Independent |
2013 results
Statistics and history
Fisher was created in 1949, and at that time covered all the rural areas north of Brisbane. Successive redistributions cut the seat back to the
fast-growing Sunshine Coast area, and most recently to a section of the Coast based on Caloundra and Maroochydore. The 2006 redistribution
removed Maroochydore and left the seat consisting of Caloundra, Mooloolaba and a stretch of rural hinterland. The seat is now almost entirely
composed of beachside tourism and retirement towns, and has the country's third-highest level of people aged over 65. As a result it also has
one of the country's lowest levels of median family income, and very low rates of families with dependent children and dwellings being purchased.
Fisher was a safe seat for the Country Party and its successor the Nationals until the 1980s, when the Nationals' vote shifted to the Liberals
as the area urbanised. Members have included Country Party ministers Sir Charles Adermann and his son Evan Adermann. Labor won it in 1987 and
1990, when it included the outer Brisbane suburban areas which later became the seat of Dickson. It is now a reasonably safe Liberal seat.
Peter Slipper won the seat as a National in 1984, lost it in 1987, and won it back as a Liberal in 1993. Slipper was a parliamentary secretary in
the Howard Government, but returned to the backbench in 2004, where he stayed until the Gillard minority Labor Government offered him the post of
Deputy Speaker in 2010 as a gambit to improve their position in the House. In 2011 Speaker Harry Jenkins resigned and Slipper was elected Speaker
with Labor support.
Slipper was then expelled from the Liberal Party and accusations soon emerged that he had sexually harassed a (male) staff member and abused his
travel entitlements. Most of these charges were eventually disproved, but Slipper was forced to resign in October 2012 after he was shown to have
sent offensive text messages. He contested Fisher as an independent in 2013. He polled 1.6%, the lowest vote ever polled by a sitting member of the
House.
Mal Brough, Liberal MP for Longman from 1996 to 2007 and for Fisher since 2013, was an Army officer and businessman before entering Parliament. He
was a minister in the last term of the Howard Government, but lost his seat in 2007. In 2013 he succeeded Slipper as Liberal candidate in Fisher,
and was appointed to the ministry by Malcolm Turnbull in 2015. But continued accusations that he was the source of the false allegations against
Slipper led to his resignation in February 2016, and he is retiring at this election.
The new Liberal candidate in Fisher is Andrew Wallace, a barrister. The Labor candidate will be Bill Gissane, a small business owner. The
discrediting of the last two Liberal MPs may do some damage to the Liberals in this seat, but it would take a big swing in Queensland to give Labor
any real chance of winning it.
These maps are the property of Adam Carr and may not be reproduced without his permission.
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Prospective pendulum, showing all candidates
State and territory maps, showing new boundaries
The thirty seats that will decide the election
Other seats of interest
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