THE POLL BLUDGER
Queensland Legislative Assembly Election 2006

MOUNT GRAVATT
Labor 10.3%

The southern suburbs centre of Mount Gravatt is at the northern end of the electorate that bears its name, extending south to Sunnybank and Runcorn. Mount Gravatt was created at the 1950 election and held by Labor until they lost power in 1957, when it fell to the Liberals. It next changed hands in 1983 when it was one of a number of Liberal seats to fall to the Nationals, allowing Joh Bjelke-Petersen to form a National Party majority government. Judy Spence (right) won the seat for Labor as part of the 1989 election win and held it against the 1995 backlash, despite it being located in the Koala Motorway corridor where Labor suffered its worst defeats. An 8.1 per cent swing in 2001 secured Labor's hold, and the correction in 2004 was limited to 3.9 per cent.

Judy Spence served as Community Services Minister in the period when the Goss government maintained a shaky hold on power between the 1995 election and the 1996 Mundingburra by-election defeat, and maintained the portfolio in both opposition and government until the 2001 election. She then became Family and Disability Services Minister, in which she dealt with the issue of foster child abuse that dogged the Beattie government in late 2003. After the 2004 election she assumed the police and corrective services portfolios. Spence was a stalwart of the Left faction earlier in her career but defected to Labor Unity shortly aft er the 2001 election, which the Courier-Mail says "followed clashes between her and other high-profile Left ministers Steve Bredhauer and Anna Bligh". Liberal candidate Nick Monsour (left) is a "senior professional and management consultant with sixteen years corporate and executive management experience".

ASSESSMENT: Labor retain