2024 Queensland State Election results: Mackay, Mirani, Whitsundays
A former police officer has achieved what no LNP candidate before him has managed to do, winning one of Labor’s longest-running safe seats as a blue wave sweeps across Central Queensland.
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A former police officer has achieved what no LNP candidate before him has managed to do, winning one of Labor’s longest-running safe seats.
The LNP’s Nigel Dalton is well-known in the electorate through his years as a sergeant in the crime prevention unit, connecting with students and winning Citizen of the Year in 2023.
He grew up in Northern Ireland, avoiding trouble in The Troubles and kicking off his policing career on tougher streets than Queensland could offer.
Now he’s the figurehead for a fed-up electorate seeking to serve justice to Labor.
“The boy from Belfast is now a member of parliament in Queensland,” Mr Dalton said.
Labor was ruthlessly targeted by the LNP on crime, with Mr Dalton the perfect candidate to pull off a historic victory.
“I’ve protected the community for 22 years,” Mr Dalton said. “I’ve done as much as I can to keep people safe.”
When asked if he thought his victory was possible, he smiled and said he’s a competitive person that only races with winning in mind.
“I’m not here for the glory, I want to serve this community,” Mr Dalton said.
Now he’s the figurehead for a fed-up electorate seeking to serve justice to the party they feel forgotten by.
From the first 31,9326 votes, Mr Dalton has won 46 per cent, beating out Labor’s Belinda Hassan on 30 per cent, with Sky News calling the seat in his favour.
In Whitsunday, Amanda Camm has retained her seat and made it one of the LNP’s safest, currently sitting on a primary vote of 52 per cent.
The former Mackay deputy mayor, who regularly spent weekends speaking with voters at markets after being elected, showed what a difference a personal touch can make.
After preferences, she is currently leading 70 per cent to Labor’s 30.
Ms Camm beat out Bauke Hovinga, an ADF reservist and emergency care doctor previously at the Mackay Base Hospital.
Mr Hovinga congratulated her for winning the election, and was upbeat on Sunday morning.
“In the end it wasn’t enough but I’m happy with what we did,” he said.
“We have an LNP government. I have four years to think about if I’ll run again.”
Mr Hovinga was serving as recently as 2019, in the Taji military base hospital in Iraq helping wounded soldiers.
Mirani voters could also turn the seat blue with LNP candidate Glen Kelly and former One Nation MP and now KAP candidate Stephen Andrew battling it out on preferences. Less than one per cent is separating them as the count hits the halfway mark.
LNP candidate Glen Kelly leads with 35.75 per cent of the 25,614 votes.
Initially he was neck-and-neck with KAP candidate Stephen Andrew, who is now sitting at 27.58 per cent.
Following them Labor candidate Susan Teder with 20.18 per cent and Brettlyn ‘Beaver’ Neal of One Nation sitting on 10.82 per cent.
So far, the bulk of the votes for Ms Teder have been going to Mr Andrew, putting him ahead of Mr Kelly 50.47 to 49.53.
The LNP and One Nation deal to ask voters to preference each other over Mr Andrew — called duplicitous by him at the time — might be the deciding factor.
Mr Kelly said an LNP victory would allow Mirani residents to get what they “deserve”.
“I’m always a big believer of what a major party can deliver,” he said.
“All I did was keep my blinkers on, be focused, stay true to myself and keep my mouth shut.”
Follow the Mackay, Mirani, and Whitsunday election races below as they unfolded.
Mackay – Labor seat flips to LNP
Newly elected Mackay MP Nigel Dalton has labelled his historic win a “fresh start for Mackay”, vowing to stand up for the community and say “this is what we need” to our southern counterparts.
“The community of Mackay has asked for change, pleaded for change,” Dalton said, speaking with media at his victory party at Harrup Park.
“This is a massive night for Mackay,” he added, referring to Labor’s 109-year stranglehold on the electorate.
“We need to move forwards. We need to sort out youth crime. We need to sort out the health service, we need to sort out the cost of living and we need to sort out … housing.
“I’m going to work very hard to make sure that that’s done.
“I will work. I will work. I will work.”
Mr Dalton, who has been in the Mackay community for 22 years, praised his group supporters.
“I thank every single person … standing behind me for the commitment that they’ve made to me,” he said.
“I am honoured. I’m far more than honoured. I am ultra honoured. I am uber honoured to be their representative in Brisbane in the Queensland Parliament.
“It is a fantastic feeling to know that you’ve got so many great friends behind you.”
As of 9.01pm Dalton had 43.42 per cent of the 16,957 votes, to Labor candidate Belinda Hassan’s 30.95 per cent.
A Daily Mercury exit poll of 200 voters placed Mr Dalton as the frontrunner to win Mackay.
Taken at the CQUniversity polling booth, the LNP candidate collected 43 per cent of the votes and easily outstripped Labor’s Belinda Hassan on 31 per cent.
One Nation candidate Kylee Stanton has scored 13 per cent of the vote, while the Greens’ Paula Creen collected 5.5 per cent, Ben Gauci of the Legalise Cannabis party scored 5 per cent and the Family First candidate 2.5 per cent.
Early arrivers to the CQUniversity polling booth were mixed on why they cast their votes.
Mackay resident Jackie Russett said she voted for Labor because “I’m a woman with a daughter and two granddaughters”.
Mackay mayor Greg Williamson said he hopes Mackay becomes a marginal seat, regardless of who wins because “that’s where the money goes”.
“We’ve been neglected for a long time in Mackay in terms of expenditure.”
Mackay voter Katelyn Jacobson, 21, said she voted for Belinda Hassan because she agreed with what Labor stood for.
“I like Steven Miles being Premier the last 10 months,” Ms Jacobson said.
“He’s actually done stuff and I’d like that to keep happening.”
Over at Slade Point State School Kayla Melody and Mathew Rasmussen cast their vote for Legalise Cannabis Queensland, but only because there wasn’t a KAP candidate running in Mackay.
Both Mackay candidates for Labor and LNP were stationed at St Mary’s Catholic Primary School on Saturday morning, hoping to encourage as many votes as they could.
“It’s the last day, we’re just absolutely giving it everything that we’ve got, doing the best we can getting our word out to as many people that we’re doing what matters for Queensland,” Mackay Labor candidate Belinda Hassan said, adding that any candidate who was confident in the current climate “would be crazy”.
“I know that we’ve done as much as we possibly can. I know I’ve everything I can. I just have to believe that the people of Mackay will make the right decision.”
Ms Hassan said women’s reproductive rights had “really raised its head” in the election.
“Even just hear this morning, younger women … saying they want to protect their rights … (and) cost of living and housing – so that’s what our message has been all the way through,” she said.
Set up right next door was LNP candidate Nigel Dalton, who said he had been counting down to “this day for such a long time”.
He said fear around violence, crime had been a key issue raised to him.
“People are really concerned about being a victim of crime,” Mr Dalton said.
“It’s all about reducing crime, it’s all about reducing the cost of living, it’s about making sure our healthcare services are available for local people and it’s all about making sure that there is affordable housing for everybody in Mackay.”
Once the voting polls had closed Mr Dalton said he would be having a “long black coffee” ahead of the count.
He said he would stay up with family, friends and party faithfuls until “there was a fair amount of decisions”.
“Or if there’s no decision going to be able to be made tonight then I’ll head home,” he said.
Ms Hassan said she would be joining her volunteers for some “beer and pizzas” as they waited for the count to start.
The Mackay electorate, which covers the city boundaries of Mackay from Slade Point in the north and Paget to the south, was held by Labor even in the tsunami that swung in the Campbell Newman government of 2012.
Then-candidate Tim Mulherin managed to hold on by the slimmest of margins, as less than 300 votes (0.5 per cent) separated Labor and the LNP once preferences were allocated.
Not even a 16 per cent swing against Labor was enough to place the LNP in power.
In the three elections since, it was won easily by his successor Julieanne Gilbert, though the margin has narrowed from 10.2 per cent in 2015, to 8.3 per cent in 2017, and 6.7 per cent in 2020, the most recent election.
Julieanne Gilbert stepped down before the current election — after initially claiming she would run — freeing Belinda Hassan to take her place.
Ms Hassan resigned her deputy mayor position, and took a leave of absence from Mackay Regional Council to run as the Labor candidate, only months after she was elected with the highest individual vote of any councillor in the 2024 local government elections.
Despite her personal popularity, a small sample of 100 voters by this masthead at the Mackay Showgrounds during pre-polling showed Mr Dalton winning 58 per cent of the voters in Mackay as voters turn against Labor more broadly across Queensland.
Labor has promised $269m across Mackay and the Whitsunday seats, while the LNP has offered up $90m — with the $147m Peak Downs Highway funding from Labor and unmatched by the LNP playing an outsized role.
One Nation voters who prefer the conservative minor party to the major duopoly could play a key role in a close race.
While 2020 One Nation candidate Christine Keys only won 12.6 per cent of the vote, the 2017 candidate Jeff Keoskie won 22 per cent in 2017.
Still, running a former police officer well known in the local community is no accident as the LNP highlights youth crime as Labor’s soft target.
Also looming large with single-issue voters on the ground is the planned Pioneer-Burdekin pumped hydro scheme, which the LNP has vowed to axe if elected.
It is the centrepiece of Labor’s plans to reduce emissions in Queensland by storing 5GW of renewable energy, almost 24 hours of dispatchable energy when its not being generated.
Local opposition has been fierce since its announcement, with Save Eungella banners and placards seen everywhere between the CBD out to the proposed site in the Pioneer Valley.
Even the Greens candidate Paula Creen has not come out in favour of it, deferring judgments until the environmental reports are released.
Mirani – held by KAP, LNP predicted to win
The vast electorate of Mirani stretches from west of Mackay and the Pioneer Valley down to the northernmost suburbs of Rockhampton, going on to border the Beef Capital in the west and south.
It was One Nation’s only seat in Queensland before Stephen Andrew was disendorsed by the party and shifted over to Katter’s Australian Party.
Stephen Andrew won the seat with a margin of 9 per cent in 2020, increasing from his 2017 win of 4.8 per cent when he won the seat from Labor.
Despite Labor winning the most first preference votes in 2020, preferences delivered the seat to Mr Andrew in a landslide, as many of the LNP voters placed One Nation higher.
This election will be Mr Andrew’s biggest political test yet, with voters to decide whether it was the One Nation policy platform or his own personal popularity that delivered those results.
Winning Mirani would also make the KAP a bigger electoral force to be reckoned with and give the North Queensland focused party a foothold in Central Queensland — potentially making them a minor government kingmaker with the LNP.
One Nation candidate Brettlyn ‘Beaver’ Neal and LNP candidate Glen Kelly will be hoping to upset that trend, and have both placed each other second on their how-to-vote cards, seeing Mr Andrew as their largest threat.
Mr Andrew placed his former political party second, expecting the same courtesy back and called One Nation ‘duplicitous’ for not returning the favour.
Former One Nation candidate and current Mackay councillor George Christensen has backed Mr Andrew over Ms Neal, in what could be consequential for undecided One Nation supporters.
Calling Mr Andrew a “tireless advocate for his rural Queensland electorate” who “isn’t a mindless zombie doing a party’s bidding”, Mr Christensen — who is personally popular in the region — has thrown his support behind him.
Labor candidate Susan Teder, a mental health trauma social worker who grew up in Sarina is expected to face an uphill battle to even match Labor’s past result given current polling.
Whitsunday – held by LNP
Incumbent Whitsunday MP Amanda Camm said her electorate had spoken, as she also praised her southern neighbour and newly election Member for Mackay Nigel Dalton.
“It is finally time for us to no longer be taken for granted and for our region to receive its fair share of representation,” Camm said.
“This has been a hard four years to demonstrate to our community that we deserve better off, and finally we have.
“I want to congratulate Nigel, he’s been an incredible candidate but before that he’s been incredible human and representative of our community here.
“I look forward to him serving our community alongside me in the Queensland Parliament.”
The LNP’s Amanda Camm will retain her Whitsunday seat, with Labor insiders privately conceding it will be all but impossible to win.
Some 20,526 votes have been counted as of 9.28pm, with Ms Camm winning 52.59 per cent of them.
One Nation candidate Julie Hall, the fiery former psychic, businesswoman and Whitsunday Regional Council mayor has taken 17.64 per cent, and Bauke Hovinga, Labor candidate and former emergency care doctor has 21.80 per cent.
Whitsunday is a broad electorate, spreading from the Northern Beaches of Mackay in the south — the fastest growing suburbs in the city — to Hideaway Bay in the Whitsundays to the north, capturing the population centres of Airlie Beach, Proserpine, Cannonvale in between.
The seat is held on a margin of 3.3 per cent by Amanda Camm.
Ms Camm, a former Mackay council deputy mayor, was elected in 2020 replacing the LNP’s Jason Costigan after he was dropped by the party.
Mr Costigan contested that election under his newly-created party, North Queensland First, but lost to Ms Camm along with Labor candidate Angie Kelly.
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