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| Australian federal election, 2016
Division of Brand, Western Australia
South of Perth: Hope Valley, Kwinana, Lakelands, Rockingham
Sitting member: Hon Gray Gray, elected 2007. Retiring 2016
Enrolment at close of rolls: 98,113
2013 Labor majority over Liberal: 2.9%
2016 notional Labor majority over Liberal: 3.7%
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Candidates in ballot-paper order:
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1. Philip Scott
Rise Up Australia |
2. Madeleine King
Australian Labor Party |
3. Robert Burdett
Australian Christians |
4. Dawn Jecks
Australian Greens |
5. Craig Buchanan
Liberal Party |
2013 results
Statistics and history
Brand was created in 1984, in the fast-growing coastal strip running south of Perth, based on the industrial centre of Rockingham and the tourist-retirement town of Mandurah. Socially it is in some ways like a rural seat - it has a relatively low median income level, a low level of people in professional occupations and a low level of people born in non English speaking countries. Unlike country seats it has a high level of people paying off their homes. It is also marked by the second-highest level in Australia of immigrants from the UK. This mix produces a seat which is usually Labor but far from reliably so. The 2010 redistribution removed Mandurah from the seat, making it more clearly an outer Perth and semi-industrial seat.
Brand was won in 1996 by Kim Beazley, who was then Deputy Prime Minister in the Keating Government. He had been member for Swan since 1980 but rightly felt he needed a safer seat. As it was, Beazley very nearly lost Brand in 1996. He did much better in 1998 and 2001, when he was Leader of the Opposition, but in 2004, under Mark Latham's leadership, he was again run close. Beazley retired in 2007.
Gary Gray, Labor MP for Brand since 2007, was like many of his constituents born in the UK. He worked in the ALP National Secretariat in Canberra from 1986, and was National Secretary from 1993 to 2000. He was then a senior executive at Woodside Energy. He was a minister in the Rudd-Gillard Government, ending as Minister for Resources and Energy in 2013. He is retiring at this election.
The 2016 redistribution has strengthened Labor's position in Brand by chopping off the southern edge of the seat around Meadow Springs, which is strongly Liberal, but this will be offset by the loss of Gray's personal vote. Labor's candidate is Madeleine King, a lawyer and former staffer for Gray, who is chief operating officer of the Perth USAsia Centre. The Liberal candidate is Craig Buchanan, who works at an Anglican school.
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Prospective pendulum, showing all candidates
State and territory maps, showing new boundaries
The thirty seats that will decide the election
Other seats of interest
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