The creation of the seat of Wide Bay at Federation was remarkable not only for its size (14,500 sq km) but for the fact that its inaugural MHR was a Labor man who would become one of our first Prime Ministers.
Gympie’s Andrew Fisher became Labor leader in 1907 and Prime Minister of a minority Labor government the following year. Fisher was Prime Minister off and on until his retirement in 1915.
The electorate’s long conservative history began when Liberal Edward Corser squeaked in by a handful of votes at that year’s election.
Re-elected as a Nationalist in 1917, he served until his death in 1928, when his son, Bernard Corser, won Wide Bay for the Country Party and held it until his retirement in 1954.
The Country Party retained the seat until 1961, when Labor’s second decade of power in Wide Bay began with the election of Brendan Hansen, who held it until 1974.
The Country Party’s Clarrie Millar held it until his retirement in 1990, when the Nationals’ Warren Truss won election, holding the seat until retiring in 2016 when current member Llew O’Brien was elected.
So conservative support has been rusted on for almost half a century, but it also has to be acknowledged that the long-serving local members have been good ones, none more so than Warren Truss, who was widely respected on both sides of the house and served as Nationals’ leader, a cabinet minister and finally as Deputy Prime Minister.
Llew O’Brien has now won two elections, with a five per cent swing towards him in 2019.
Apart from the considerable weight of history, the main reason Labor in opposition over the past decade hasn’t made a dint in the LNP margin is that it hasn’t tried, its eyes on more winnable seats.
If we’re going to see change in Wide Bay in the foreseeable future, it’s going to be led by the Greens, who secured more than 18 per cent of the Noosa polls in 2019.
The 107,000 electors in Wide Bay are pretty much shared evenly between Maryborough, Gympie and Noosa, but as housing affordability and sea and tree changers spread the younger population base around, the electorate demographic is changing rapidly.
