Electorate: Ipswich West
Margin: Labor 9.5%
Region: Western Ipswich
Federal: Blair
Click here for Electoral Commission of Queensland map
The candidates
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WAYNE WENDT
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Electorate analysis: Ipswich West covers the western and northern and western parts of Ipswich and extends through a further 20 kilometres of hinterland to the west, with Labor’s vote strongest in western Ipswich and weakest in its north and beyond the town limits. The seat has been won by Labor at each election since its creation in 1960, with two exceptions: in 1974, when Albert Hales won for the National Party, and 1998, when One Nation’s Jack Paff won narrowly on Nationals preferences. Paff quit the party in February 1999 and went into the 2001 election under the wing of the City-Country Alliance, polling a dismal 5.1 per cent. The defeated Labor member from 1998, Don Livingstone, recovered the seat with a 7.3 per cent two-party margin over One Nation, and went similarly untroubled in 2004. Livingstone’s retirement announcement a day before the 2006 election was called resulted in a snap Labor preselection won by Wayne Wendt of the Labor Unity faction, a local accountant who had run against Pauline Hanson in Blair at the 2001 federal election. The LNP has again endorsed its candidate from 2009, Sean Choat, whom the party website spruiks as having had a “successful career in vocational education and training”.
Analysis written by William Bowe. Please direct corrections or comments to pollbludger-AT-crikey.com.au. Read William’s blog, The Poll Bludger.
