How so many urban Liberals were run out of town

Labor has dismantled the Coalition’s Fortress Queensland, at least doubling its number of MPs in the state and clearing out all but one of the Liberals’ metropolitan seats.

Election winners Ali France, Madonna Jarrett and Kara Cook at Pine Rivers Park on Sunday morning. Picture: Lachie Millard

Labor has dismantled the Coalition’s Fortress Queensland, at least doubling its number of MPs in the state and clearing out all but one of the Liberals’ metropolitan seats.

In the strongest result in the state since Kevin Rudd’s 2007 victory, Labor has increased its Queensland MPs from five to 10 and leads the count in a further three Liberal-held seats on the outskirts of Brisbane.

The defeats of the Brisbane Liberals continues a trend that has left the party with possibly as few as five metropolitan MPs across the nation.

Four Liberals – Alex Hawke in Mitchell, Simon Kennedy (Cook), Julian Leeser (Berowra) and Melissa McIntosh (Lindsay) – still hold seats in Sydney but all are on the outer rim.

Henry Pike in Bowman is the only Brisbane Liberal left – his seat is also on the city’s fringes.

Perth and Adelaide are now Liberal-free zones – and unless Tim Wilson can turn the vote count in his favour in Goldstein, Melbourne will be too – while Labor holds the Darwin seat of Solomon.

Labor’s sweep in Queensland has even shocked ALP insiders who had been hopeful of picking up one or two seats. Instead, it has at least doubled its tally, winning three seats from the LNP (Bonner and Dickson in outer-suburban Brisbane, and Leichhardt in far north Queensland) and two from the Greens (Brisbane and Griffith in the inner-city).

Votes are still being counted in Petrie, on Brisbane’s bayside, which has been held by the LNP’s Luke Howarth since 2013.

Labor’s Emma Comer – a former officer cadet in the ADF – is leading Mr Howarth by nearly 3000 votes on a two-party preferred basis. The result is expected to come down to postal votes, but Ms Comer looks set to be elected.

The LNP-held seats of Longman and Forde are being scrutineered, and Labor is still in the hunt in that pair of electorates but it is very close.

Luke Howarth.

Terry Young.

In Longman, sitting LNP member Terry Young trails former high school teacher and ALP organiser Rhiannyn Douglas by just 500 votes. And in Forde, which takes in Logan south of Brisbane, sitting LNP MP Bert van Manen is behind Labor’s Rowan Holzberger by almost 3000 votes.

On a best-case scenario for Labor, Anthony Albanese’s party could end up with 13 of Queensland’s 30 electorates.

The Liberals are guaranteed of holding nine seats and the Nationals will hold six seats.

The Coalition incumbents suffered swings against them in all but two Nationals seats: the Mackay-based seat of Dawson, held by Andrew Willcox, who increased his margin by 1.7 per cent and the Gladstone-based seat of Flynn, held by Colin Boyce, who increased his margin by 5.2 per cent.

Bob Katter retained his seat of Kennedy and Greens MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown will hold her Brisbane seat of Ryan.Queensland senator Murray Watt said the party had turned it around after a terrible result in the state at the last federal election in 2022.

“This has been a very long-term effort from Queensland Labor to overcome the frankly embarrassing results that we’ve returned from this state over the last 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, and we had to have a good hard look at ourselves about that.”