THE POLL BLUDGER
House of Representatives Election 2007

LONGMAN
Liberal 6.6%

Longman has been significantly redrawn in the current redistribution, losing the Glasshouse Mountains and part of Caboolture and moving south into suburban Kallangur. The detached areas return to Fisher, where they had been before Longman was created in 1996. Longman had a notional Liberal margin of 1.6 per cent on its creation, to which Liberal candidate Mal Brough added a 10.0 per cent swing at the 1996 election. Redistributions have since undone some of his good work, cutting his margin by 1.6 per cent in 1998, 0.2 per cent in 2004 and 1.1 per cent at the current election. He also suffered a 9.1 per cent swing in 1998, when One Nation polled 18.1 per cent, but recovered with swings of 1.8 per cent in 2001 and 5.2 per cent in 2004. Brough was regularly promoted throughout this period, becoming Revenue Minister and Assistant Treasurer in July 2004, and might well have had his eyes on neighbouring Fisher as redistributions strengthened the margin of the politically dormant Peter Slipper at his own expense. Labor candidate Jon Sullivan held the since-abolished state seat of Caboolture from 1992 to 1998, when the seat was one of 11 to fall to One Nation. His wife Carryn Sullivan has held the successor seat of Pumicestone since 2001.

Longman was among four Queensland marginals polled at the start of the campaign by Galaxy, from a combined sample of 800, which pointed to a swing to Labor of 5 per cent – enough to cost the Liberals Bonner and Moreton, but not Longman and Herbert.