By Phil Jarratt
The Queensland electorate of Noosa was carved out of the old electorate of Cooroora by a redistribution before the 1992 election, but not before Ray Barber, the small but perfectly formed Labor candidate, turned nearly 80 years of conservative rule on its head by winning the seat with a massive swing as part of Wayne Goss’s Labor landslide of 1989.
Ray was to be a one-term wonder and the new seat of Noosa went back to its Tory roots in 1992 with the election of bait shop magnate and Liberal Party candidate Bruce “Davo” Davidson, but we’ll get to that in a minute.
The history of the seat of Cooroora goes back to its creation in 1912, when its first MLA was Gympie war hero and farmer Harry Walker, who had served with distinction as part of the Queensland Regiment in the Boer War in 1899-1902 and had been elected member for Wide Bay in 1907. The conservative parties came and went over the next 35 years, but Harry went on forever, serving the Nationals, the Country Party, the CPNP and the Country Party again, finally being given the agriculture portfolio for longevity, in which capacity he drove in the T.M. Burke cavalcade of bridges in 1929, and proposed several toasts at the opening of Noosa Beach Estate, thus beginning a long association between the local member and the huge developer.
After more than a generation of conservative rule, you’d think that Cooroora would have opted for change when Harry retired in 1947, but they opted for the Country Party’s David Low, who soon became known as the minister for T.M. Burke, and was instrumental in securing the land for roadwork deal that created Peregian, Marcus, Castaways and Sunrise beaches. Dave Low won 16 elections over the next 27 years, and when he held the position of chairman of Maroochy Shire as well as MLA for Cooroora, he was all-powerful.
The next long-term Cooroora member, Gordon Simpson, was a conservative of a different colour. Over his 15 years as National Party member from 1974 to 1989, Gordon frequently fought for environmental sanity in Noosa, was a conduit for the Noosa Parks Association into the highest ranks of the Bjelke-Petersen government, and sometimes even fought his own party to achieve the best results for Cooroora.
Following Ray Barber’s brief tenure, the new seat of Noosa went to Bruce Davidson, whose visibility through his weekend fishing forecasts on the TV news saw him become Minister for Tourism in the Borbidge government, where he is remembered as the man who tried to buy rhinoceroses from the South African government for a North Queensland safari park. Nevertheless, Davo had plenty of local fans and served three terms before One Nation preferences helped elect Labor’s Cate Molloy in 2001.
Molloy increased her majority in 2004 but quit Labor over its proposed Traveston Dam and ran as an independent in 2006, when she was soundly defeated by the Liberals’ Glen Elmes.
Elmes, a popular media executive and behind-the-scenes Liberal operator, served 11 years as MLA for Noosa, serving as Minister for Aboriginal and Multicultural Affairs in the Campbell Newman government, and notably putting Noosa before his party in supporting the 2014 de-amalgamation of Noosa Shire.
In 2017, Glen lost the seat to independent Sandy Bolton, who had been a high profile councillor. Apart from a brief period when Cate Molloy sat on the cross benches, Sandy’s first term has been the first time that Noosa has been represented by a true independent, and she has proven hard-working and capable.
