Federal election 2025: Labor women lead charged into Qld

Brisbane is the epicentre of a crushing devastating defeat in Queensland that has reduced the party to its worst representation in almost two decades.

Brisbane is the epicentre of a crushing defeat in Queensland that has reduced the LNP to its worst result in 18 years.

Inner-city voters have deserted the party in the past two elections, with its primary vote falling 15 percentage points.

Across Queensland, a 3.8 per cent swing to Prime Minister Anthony Albanese will hand Labor up to 13 seats – its best ­result since winning 15 seats in Kevin Rudd’s 2007 landslide.

In contrast, the statewide 4.8  per cent plunge in the LNP’s primary vote has resulted in four of its seats falling to Labor, including the prized scalp of Peter Dutton’s Dickson.

The shock loss of LNP and Greens MPs and senators came at the hands of a group of Queensland Labor women playfully dubbed the Magnificent Seven.

As well as Ali France in Dickson they include Renee Coffey in Griffith, Madonna Jarrett in Brisbane, Kara Cook in Bonner, Emma Comer in Petrie and Julie-Ann Campbell who retained Moreton after Labor’s Graham Perrett exited. Corinne Mulholland has been elected to the Senate.

Labor could also win Longman, where its candidate Rhiannyn Douglas was narrowly leading the LNP’s Terry Young.

The loss of Longman would diminish the leaderless LNP to just 15 seats in Queensland – about a third of all won.

As for the men, former Cairns Taipans player Matt Smith will take Leichhardt in the far north and Rowan Holzberger is on track to take Forde from the LNP’s Bert van Manen.

Corinne Mulholland, Emma Comer, Madonna Jarrett, Kara Cook, Ali France, Renee Coffey and Julie-Ann Campbell led Labor’s charge in Queensland. Picture Lachie Millard/NCA NewsWire

In Dickson, Ms France won’t call herself a giant slayer, despite becoming the first person to oust a federal opposition leader from their seat.

As of Sunday afternoon, Ms France had secured a two-party preferred vote of 56.7 per cent, comprehensively winn­ing the outer-urban seat north of Brisbane.

On top of Labor’s messaging, Ms France said the “absolutely chaotic” Coalition campaign under Mr Dutton was a factor in her win – with the promise to sack public servants and a backflip on cancelling work from home hitting harder in the seat than perhaps he expected.

“I have a lot of public servants living in my electorate, I door knocked lots of them … and the reason they were home … was because they worked from home two or three days a week,” she said.

Labor’s doubling of its federal representation in Queensland was a result of a very long-term effort and should not be written off as a fluke, Senator Murray Watt said.

In addition to the six Lower House seats Labor was on track to take as of Sunday afternoon, it also won another Senate spot, more than doubling its numbers in a state where it has failed to make ground for a decade.

Senator Watt said Queensland Labor had worked for years to overcome the “frankly embarrassing” results of the past couple of elections.

“It is unacceptable that in a state like Queensland, one of the two major parties being Labor, only held five out of 30 House of Representative seats,” he said.

“The other thing about Queenslanders is that we are pragmatic mainstream people. Queensland voters don’t vote for the extremes of politics in big numbers.

“We saw the Greens representatives take extreme positions on a whole range of issues.

“We have seen the Liberal Party over recent years drift further and further towards the right, taking extreme positions and starting culture wars that most people … aren’t thinking about when they go to bed every night.”

The Coalition campaign remained largely silent on Sunday as the scale of the defeat in Queensland sank in.

Outer suburban and regional Queensland voters have returned to Labor in droves just six months after they deserted the state party.

Political commentator Paul Williams said the Labor swing in Queensland should not be attributed to a successful ­Albanese campaign, but rather to a woeful campaign by Mr Dutton.

“This is an existential crisis for the Liberals,” he said.

“ The brand is broken.

“I am surprised Dickson is gone, I’m more surprised Petrie  and Forde have gone – those seats stayed when (then Liberal prime minister) Scott Morrison was at his worst and yet, they’ve dumped Dutton even there.

“Albanese didn’t win this campaign – the Opposition lost it.”

Mr Williams said the weak LNP campaign lacked strong policy and was too conser­vative for Queensland, a state that had shown it had no issue voting for opposing sides of government in state and federal elections.

“You don’t have to be too politically clued in to know you have to pitch to the centre,” he said.

Originally published as Federal election 2025: Labor women lead charged into Qld