Toowoomba votes: Demographers, political experts reveal benefits of marginal seats as Groom heads to polls

As Toowoomba prepares to head to the polls on Saturday to decide the next federal member, leading experts have weighed in on what could be possible if Groom became a marginal seat.

Regional cities like Toowoomba can unlock funding for vital infrastructure that helps facilitate their growth — if they sit in a marginal seat.

That’s the argument by leading political and demographics experts, who have laid out the clear case for regions to keep elections on a “knife’s edge” to earn attention from the major parties.

The arguments come as most residents in Toowoomba prepare to head to the polls on Saturday for the federal election, which could become one of the most consequential contests in the seat’s history.

Groom and its predecessor Darling Downs (before 1984) have been considered safe seats for either the LNP, Liberals or Nationals since the 1930s.

Just four contests since the 1934 election, which was the first won by a candidate running under the Liberals’ predecessor party, United Australia, have had a margin of less than 10 per cent.

One was in 2022, where independent Suzie Holt came from fourth to finish second behind incumbent Garth Hamilton.

Groom MP Garth Hamilton and independent candidate Suzie Holt.

In fact only during the 1943 election, when then-Prime Minister Arthur Fadden beat his Labor opponent 53-47, could Toowoomba’s federal seat be considered marginal.

Co-founder of the Demographics Group, Simon Kuestenmacher, who runs the firm with leading demographer Bernard Salt, said Toowoomba was missing key elements to a thriving regional city that a marginal seat could help deliver.

12/7/2024: Simon Kuestenmacher, Director and Co-founder, The Demographics Group. pic: Lyndon Mechielsen/Courier Mail

“You’ve got a great regional airport, so that thing always needs to get absolutely anything they ask for, then you do need a stadium and a conference centre – these types of things make all the difference to get people into town,” he said.

“The marginal seat argument is that before any election, the government looks at their road to power (and) if you have a safe Labor, or a safe Liberal, or safe National seat, whatever it is, you go, ‘we’re not doubling down on those guys, we have this in the bag anyway’.

“If you think of a scenario where every seat in the country was perfectly on knife’s edge at every election, you then couldn’t buy votes through this anymore.

“Then infrastructure would be handed out purely based on function, on complexity.”

Griffith University’s Dr Paul Williams, who is the associate professor of politics and journalism and a regular News Corp columnist, said the idea that marginal seats received more attention than safe seats was backed up by historical trends.

Griffith University’s senior lecturer in politics and journalism Dr Paul Williams

“Marginal seats are the key to government, and not just winning government but maintaining government, (so) irrespective of what politicians say, marginals do get a lot of attention, some would say disproportionate attention,” he said.

“Now that’s been labelled as pork barrelling of course so it depends on what your definition of pork barrelling is.

“Some people would say that’s pork barrelling, just splashing cash for electoral support (while) other people would read it as just being a responsive member or a responsive government or responsive opposition.”

Dr Williams gave Ms Holt a non-zero chance of achieving an upset, arguing it was more likely that the margin in Groom would reduce from 6.9 per cent.

“It’s too big of a task for an independent to take that seat — look, it is not impossible, we’ve seen deeply conservative seats go before, like Indi (in Victoria),” he said.

“It’s just a bridge too far for Suzie Holt, but it’s not going to be a 60-40 two-candidate split between the LNP and Suzie — it’ll be much closer than that.”

Hamilton, Holt trade barbs over ‘fair share’

Both the LNP and Ms Holt’s campaigns have produced data to either reinforce or counter the idea that Groom’s safe seat status hurt its ability to attract federal funding.

Analysis of discretionary grant funding by Climate 200, which is helping fund Ms Holt’s campaign, argued that out of the $900m in federal grants dispensed across 15 different programs during the previous term of government, just $80,000 of it went to Groom.

This was 1.36 per cent of the average across 151 seats, with the research finding marginal seats like Higgins ($20m), Bennelong ($16m) and Lingiari ($61m) received well above the averages.

Independent federal candidate for Groom Suzie Holt. Picture: Christine Schindler

“Groom is missing out because we need a good strong local advocate to deliver for the big ticket items like grants,” Ms Holt said.

“When you’ve got a member of parliament on the backbench just bitterly complaining, nothing gets done.

“When you make the seat marginal, it’s an opportunity because it means it becomes competitive.”

Mr Hamilton vociferously opposed the notion that Groom didn’t receive its fair share by revealing a list of successful grant applications and other funding programs since he had been in parliament, totalling $260m.

Federal member for Groom, Garth Hamilton. Toowoomba Picture David Martinelli

This was for schemes like the Building Better Regions Fund, schools funds and other community grant programs.

Mr Hamilton also pointed to the $6.6bn in infrastructure that is in the pipeline for Toowoomba over the next decade, much of which is made up by the troubled Inland Rail program.

“It’s a ridiculous idea (Groom doesn’t get its fair share) – go to Ipswich and tell me the great investment that being more marginal than us has given them,” he said.

“Most of the decisions are done during the term of government by people who are at the top table and we’ve always had someone there.

“The Teals have promised nothing more than their shows of support, flourishes of concern for issues, but they can’t commit to anything.

“Can they show a piece of infrastructure spending that’s been the result of Teal campaigning over the last three years?

“Because I can’t point to a single damn one.”

Originally published as Toowoomba votes: Demographers, political experts reveal benefits of marginal seats as Groom heads to polls