Peter Dutton loses his own seat of Dickson
By Bronte Gossling
Follow our live coverage of the 2025 federal election here.
Peter Dutton has lost his seat of Dickson after holding it for more than two decades. Labor’s Ali France will be the new MP for the outer Brisbane seat.
Liberal Senator James Patterson said Labor had been targeting Dutton with a “very personal” advertising campaign and an independent was “trying to tear him down”.
“He’s held that since 2001,” Patterson told Nine. “They have come for him before and he’s held it. So let’s wait and see.“
Opposition leader Peter Dutton is joined by his family as he concedes defeat against Anthony Albanese at the Coalition’s election night function in Brisbane.Credit: James Brickwood
Labor is projected to win the election. Dutton and the Coalition cannot form government.
Our analysts say the swings against the Coalition have been so strong across so many seats that there is no way for Peter Dutton to form government with a majority in parliament.
Labor has made big gains in most of the target seats it had named to increase its majority and the early results show that it has achieved those objectives.
Labor has also gained big swings in hard-fought electorates that it did not name as target seats. One prominent Labor supporter says the early results indicate a Labor landslide.
Who is Ali France
Ali France is the Labor candidate who managed to unseat Leader of the Opposition Peter Dutton from the Queensland seat of Dickson.
The single mum and former journalist lives in the Moreton Bay area on the outskirts of Brisbane, and this is her third attempt at the seat of Dickson.
France has campaigned on Labor party tax cuts, electricity rebates and cheaper medicines, and says she understands first-hand the importance of NDIS and Medicare after tragically losing her son Henry to leukaemia in early 2024, and losing her leg in an accident in 2011.
Dutton has held Dickson since 2001, but France has been creeping up on him since 2019, when she contested the seat with a maiden campaign and won 45.4 per cent of the vote to Dutton’s 54.6 per cent. Three years later, Dutton lost 2.9 per cent to France’s gain on her second contest.
The opposition leader clearly took the threat of France seriously, claiming in 2019 that she was using her disability as an excuse not to live in her electorate, before apologising in a tweet.
France, meanwhile, tweeted fake images showing Dutton in a Nazi uniform in 2017, which saw Dutton take Albanese to task on April 24 after the prime minister defended his Labor candidate.
Who were the candidates for Dickson in 2025?
Since its inception in 1992, Dickson has been back-and-forth between Labor and Liberal stewards (though technically for 130 days in 1998, former Liberal MP Tony Smith held the seat as an independent before losing the October election).
Other candidates for Dickson include the Greens’ Vinnie Batten, Maureen Brohman of the Animal Justice Party, Family First’s Suniti Hewett, Trumpet of Patriots’ Michael Jessop, who is fighting criminal charges including stalking and weapons charges, Climate 200-backed independent Ellie Smith, Joel Stevenson of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, and David Zaloudek of the Legalise Cannabis Party.
What were the results for Dickson in 2022?
You can take a look at the interactive below, or search this interactive map for more information on electorates and candidates.
To summarise, Dutton won Dickson in 2022 with 51.7 per cent of the vote, after preferences, with France then securing 48.3 per cent of the vote. The two-candidate-preferred margin between Dutton and France was 1.7 per cent.
What suburbs are in Dickson?
Located in the outer suburbs roughly 30 to 50 minutes north of Brisbane city centre by car, Dickson covers 724 square kilometres and is home to about 118,468 enrolled voters across suburbs including Albany Creek, Everton Hills, Ferny Hills, Kurwongbah, Murrumba Downs, Petrie, Strathpine and parts of Kallangur.
The boundaries are based on what used to be the Shire of Pine Rivers, which is in the Sunshine State’s Moreton Bay region and includes two lakes: Kurwongbah and Samsonvale.
Is Dutton at risk of losing his seat?
As ABC election analyst Antony Green told Peter FitzSimons, for more than a decade, he’s been hearing whispers that Dutton is in trouble in Dickson.
“[Dutton has] still not lost in all that time. So, I mean, we’ll see what happens on the night,” Green said in mid-April following a News Corp poll that put Dutton behind France by four points.
“But there needs to be a more general swing in Brisbane before Dickson would fall. I can’t see that right now, and I’m always very doubtful of individual seat polls.”
In Queensland, according to The Sydney Morning Herald and The Age’s most recent Resolve Political Monitor, 38 per cent of voters say they will put the Liberal National Party first on the ballot, with 30 per cent saying the same for Labor.
YouGov’s most recent polling predicts the Coalition will retain Dickson with 52.5 per cent of votes over Labor’s 47.5 per cent, with a 0.8 per cent swing to the Coalition.
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