MP
Andrew Cripps (NAT) since 2006 election.
Profile
Covers the mainly agricultural districts along the Bruce Highway from Bushland Beach near Townsville to just south of Innisfail. Main population centres include Ingham, Cardwell, Tully, Mission Beach, and some of the northern beaches of Townsville.
Redistribution
Gains East Palmerston and Mena Creek from Tablelands, plus Bushland Beach to the west of Townsville from Thuringowa. The areas added from Thuringowa voted solidly Labor in 2006, which means the Liberal National margin in Hinchinbrook declines from 3.7% to an estimated 2.0%.
History/Trivia
For a seat with a long National Party history, Hinchinbrook has seen some tough contests for National candidates over the last two decades. Hinchinbrook was re-fashioned with the end of the National Party's zonal electoral system in 1992 to include most of the Labor-held seat of Mourilyan. This made Hinchinbrook a notional Labor seat and the 1992 election saw a battle between National MP Marc Rowell and Labor's Bill Eaton, member for Mourilyan and a Minister in the first Goss government. Rowell was victorious and there then followed a massive swing to the National Party at the 1995 election, but tougher contests were to follow. In 1998 Rowell required Labor Party preferences to defeat One Nation. The 2001 election saw an extraordinary contest, Rowell recording just 28.8% of the primary vote but managing to retain his lead thanks to three quarters of all distributed preferences exhausting. Rowell's vote after preferences was only 35.4% of the formal vote, the lowest in the state, with fully a third of votes ending up exhausted rather than voting for either of the final two candidates. Rowell withstood another challenge in 2004, this time from an Independent, before retiring at the 2006 election. New National candidate Andrew Cripps was elected with 50.4% of the primary vote, the first time in a decade that the National Party had avoided being forced to preferences.
Main Candidates
The sitting LNP MP is 28 year-old Andrew Cripps, who was born and bred in Tully and worked on the staff of then Hinchinbrook National MP Marc Rowell before winning National Party endorsement. He is currently Shadow Spokesman on Natural Resources and water. Cripps is spoken of as one of the brighter young National MPs and has a Bachelor of Economics and Bachelor of Arts from the University of Queensland. His Labor opponent Mark Platt is in his final years of study at the Queensland University of Technology completing a law/business degree.
Issues and Polls
After avoiding the media for most of the campaign, Labor candidate Mark Platt was unwise enough to do an interview where he admitted that his only connection with the electorate was that he had once driven through it on the way to Cairns. He also stated that he did not intend to visit the electorate during the campaign. It can always be tough for a party to get decent candidates in their opponent's safe seats, but Hinchinbrook is not ultra-safe for the LNP. Platt's honesty did not go down well with the electorate, or the ALP campaign managers, who managed to find somewhere to hide Platt away from local media until polling day.
Assessment
Liberal National Party should win with a substantially increased majority.
