Electoral district of Warrego

Warrego is an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of Queensland.

Warrego Queensland—Legislative Assembly
Electoral map of Warrego 2017
State	Queensland
Created	1865
MP	Ann Leahy
Party	Liberal National
Namesake	Warrego River
Electors	29,307 (2020)
Area	337,812 km2 (130,429.9 sq mi)
Demographic	Rural
Coordinates	26°52′S 146°9′E
Electorates around Warrego: South Australia Gregory Callide Nanango South Australia Warrego Condamine Southern Downs South Australia New South Wales New South Wales

2008 Electoral map of Warrego

The electorate lies in the extreme southwest of Queensland, running along the western part of the border with New South Wales. It includes the large town of Dalby, as well as the rural centres of Surat, Roma, Tara, Charleville, Augathella, St George and Cunnamulla.

History

The electoral district of Warrego was created by the Additional Members Act of 1864 which introduced six new single-member electorates. A by-election was held to fill the seat. The nomination date was 18 March 1865 and the election was held on 25 March 1865.

Warrego was, as with the rest of the state, held by independents and loose groupings of members around the government of the day until the first years of the twentieth century, when the partisan system took hold. It then became a stronghold of the centre-left Labor Party, which held it without interruption from 1908 to 1974. The decline of the rural working class gradually changed the demographics of the electorate, however, and in 1974 it was swept up in a massive landslide for the National Party.

It remained a marginal National seat for the next two decades, even at the height of the popularity of the Bjelke-Petersen government. However, it stayed in National hands even after Labor ended the long National run in government. The "one vote one value" reforms ahead of the 1992 election gave the Nationals a 13 percent notional majority, making the seat safe National on paper. The Nationals significantly increased their hold on the electorate thereafter, and it was now one of the most conservative seats in Queensland. Since then, the National hold on the seat has been only remotely threatened once, in 2001. It remained a conservative stronghold after the LNP was formed from a merger with the Liberals in 2009. The current member, Ann Leahy, has held the seat since 2015.

Members for Warrego

Member		Party	Term
	Frederick Forbes	Unaligned	1865–1867
	Graham Mylne	Unaligned	1867–1868
	Sir Arthur Hodgson	Unaligned	1868–1869
	Sir Thomas McIlwraith	Ministerialist	1870–1871
	Archibald Buchanan	Ministerialist	1871–1873
	William Henry Walsh	Ministerialist	1873–1878
	Ernest James Stevens	Independent	1878–1883
	John Donaldson	Independent/Ministerialist	1883–1888
	Richard Casey	Unaligned	1888–1893
	James Crombie	Ministerialist	1893–1898
	William Hood	Ministerialist	1898–1899
	David Bowman	Labour	1899–1902
	Patrick Leahy	Ministerialist/Opposition	1902–1907
	George Barber	Labour	1907
	Patrick Leahy	Ministerialist/Opposition	1907–1908
	Harry Coyne	Labor	1908–1923
	Randolph Bedford	Labor	1923–1941
	Harry O'Shea	Labor	1941–1950
	John Dufficy	Labor	1951–1969
	Jack Aiken	Labor	1969–1974
	Neil Turner	National	1974–1986
	Howard Hobbs	National	1986–2008
		Liberal National	2008–2015
	Ann Leahy	Liberal National	2015–present

Election results

Main article: Electoral results for the district of Warrego

This section is an excerpt from Results of the 2020 Queensland state election § Warrego.[edit]

2020 Queensland state election: Warrego

Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Liberal National	Ann Leahy	14,100	55.98	+8.35
	Labor	Mark O'Brien	4,966	19.72	−1.97
	Katter's Australian	Rick Gurnett	2,842	11.28	−9.96
	One Nation	Joshua Coyne	2,224	8.83	+8.83
	Greens	Joshua Sanderson	569	2.26	−0.83
	Independent	Mark Stone	487	1.93	−1.51
Total formal votes			25,188	97.97	+2.17
Informal votes			521	2.03	−2.17
Turnout			25,709	87.72	−0.71
Two-party-preferred result
	Liberal National	Ann Leahy	18,424	73.15	+8.80
	Labor	Mark O'Brien	6,764	26.85	−8.80
	Liberal National hold		Swing	+8.80

External links

• Green, Antony. "Electorate Profile". Australian Broadcasting Corporation.