QUEENSLAND ELECTION 2009

BUNDABERG Nationals 1.0%
Region: Regional City Federal division: Hinkler
	JACK DEMPSEY Liberal National (top) PHIL FREEMAN Labor (bottom) ERIN HALL Greens

The boundaries of the electorate of Bundaberg are almost perfectly consistent with the limits of the city, excluding a few blocks placed in the electorate of Burnett which entirely surrounds it. Bundaberg was the scene of the Beattie government's defining disaster, the Jayant Patel “Doctor Death” affair, which looked certain to end Labor's 110-year winning streak (barring the QLP/DLP complication between 1957 and 1969) at the 2006 election. So it proved, although the ultimate margin of 464 votes was surprisingly narrow under the circumstances. Labor was also encumbered at the election by the retirement of Nita Cunningham, the popular former mayor who had been member since 1998 when she held on against One Nation by 2.0 per cent. After a 14.9 per cent blowout in 2001, the Nationals achieved one of their most encouraging results in 2004 when discontent in the sugar industry fuelled a 9.7 per cent swing. Cunningham's resignation on health grounds in August 2006 prompted Beattie to call the election six months ahead of time, averting a soon-to-be-redundant by-election that Labor looked certain to lose.

The election saw the Nationals candidate, local police officer Jack Dempsey, prevail over Labor's Sonja Cleary, a university lecturer and former nurse. Cleary was reportedly imposed against the wishes of local branches who backed Marcia Courtice, electorate officer to Cunningham and wife of former federal Hinkler MP Brian Courtice. Marcia Courtice was sacked from her job in Cunningham's office in late 2005, which she claimed was payback for her husband's leaking of party documents that purportedly exposed the “siphoning” of branch funds. It was reported in January 2006 that the affair had inspired Brian Courtice's collaborator, former Labor branch secretary Greg McMahon, to run as an independent, who further muddied the waters for Labor by polling 6.8 per cent. Brian Courtice went on to embarrass Kevin Rudd during the 2007 federal election campaign by claiming Rudd “couldn't go 20 rounds with Winnie the Pooh”, and would thus be unable to stand up to militant union leaders. There had been earlier suggestions the seat might be contested independently by Beryl Crosby, of the Bundaberg Patients Support Group, or Toni Hoffman, the nurse whose attempts to blow the whistle on Patel met only with bureaucratic obstruction. Hoffman was also approached by Lawrence Springborg and Rob Messenger to run as a Nationals candidate with the promise that she would become parliamentary secretary for health in a Coalition government.

In an interview with LNP state director Michael O'Dwyer on ABC Brisbane in the last week of the campaign, Madonna King said: “Someone in your party said to me, look, we fear we’ll lose Bundaberg. For the last 100 years it’s held by Labor, we’ve picked it up on a single issue, health, last time around.”

PREDICTION: Liberal National retain