Four men in preselection fight for blue-ribbon Liberal National seat

Four men will vie to replace Karen Andrews in her Gold Coast seat while a sole female candidate seeks preselection to win back Ryan from the Greens.

David Stevens is vying for LNP preselection in McPherson. Picture: Glenn Hampson

No women have nominated for Liberal National Party preselection in the blue-ribbon seat of McPherson being vacated by former Morrison government minister Karen Andrews.

Four men, including the head of public relations for supermarket giant Coles, two lawyers and a former adviser to John Howard will vie for LNP preselection in the Gold Coast-based seat after the party closed nominations on Monday night.

It is set to be the seventh consecutive preselection in Queensland since 2020 that will choose a male candidate to replace an outgoing federal MP or senator.

With the departure of Ms Andrews there will likely be only three women – Moncrieff MP Angie Bell, Senator Susan McDonald and Capricornia MP Michelle Landry – contesting the 26 Queensland seats the party holds in both lower and upper houses.

King & Wood Mallesons solicitor Leon Rebello is touted as a frontrunner in the McPherson preselection fight, alongside lawyer, rural fire brigade office and former Andrews staffer Ben Naday.

Coles public affairs chief and former Barnaby Joyce staffer Adam Fitzgibbons has also nominated, as has David Stevens, who worked as a senior adviser in Mr Howard’s cabinet policy unit in the 1990s and later as a partner at EY in Dubai.

Ms Andrews, who won the Gold Coast seat at the 2010 election and served five terms, made a shock announcement in April that she would retire at the next election, due by 2025.

She suffered a near 5 per cent primary vote swing against her at the last election, where her first preference vote fell to 44 per cent, but she easily retained the seat on preferences against Labor’s Carl Ungerer, 59 per cent to 41 per cent.

There is growing concern within the LNP that a teal candidate could do well in McPherson, after the Greens in 2022 secured a 14 per cent primary vote, up 4.4 per cent from the 2019 election.

Climate 200, which financially backs teal independent candidates, has been quietly assembling support on the southern Gold Coast, with plans to hold 300 “kitchen table” conversations in McPherson by March.

Meanwhile, in the Brisbane-based seat of Ryan, which fell to the Greens at the 2022 election, there appears to be one female candidate seeking LNP preselection.

Barrister Maggie Forrest, who serves on the party’s state executive as honorary legal adviser, is understood to be the only candidate to submit a nomination before the Monday deadline.

Ryan, once a Liberal heartland, is now held by first-term Greens MP Elizabeth Watson-Brown on a tight 2.65 per cent margin.

Ms Forrest lost the Bowman preselection in 2021 to Henry Pike by 19 votes. Following her defeat, Ms Forrest and her husband bought a $1.5m home within Ryan’s electorate boundaries in August 2022.

Former Ryan MPs ­Julian Simmonds and Jane Prentice have both ruled out another run.