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| Adam Carr's Election Archive
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Australian federal election, 2025
Division of Braddon, Tasmania
Named for: Rt Hon Sir Edward Braddon (1829-1904), Tas MP 1879-88, 1893-1901, Premier 1894-99, federal MP 1901-04
Northern Tasmania: Burnie, Devonport, Port Sorrell, Ulverstone, Wynyard
Enrolment at 2019 election: 79,244
Enrolment at 2022 election: 82,424 (+04.2)
1999 republic referendum: No 67.8
2018 same-sex marriage survey: Yes 54.0
2023 Voice referendum: No 72.1
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Sitting member: Gavin
Pearce (Liberal): Elected 2019, 2022. Retiring 2025
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2007 Labor majority over Liberal: 1.4%
2010 Labor majority over Liberal: 7.5%
2013 Liberal majority over Labor: 2.6%
2016 Labor majority over Liberal: 2.2%
2018 by-election Labor majority over Liberal: 2.2%
2019 Liberal majority over Labor: 3.1%
2022 Liberal majority over Labor: 8.0%
Status: Fairly safe Liberal
Liberal two-party vote 1983-2022
2022 results
Statistics and history
Division of Braddon
Braddon was created in 1955 when the old seat of
Darwin, which had occupied the same area of north-western Tasmania since 1903, was renamed.
The seat has at different times been strongly Labor and strongly anti-Labor, reflecting an electorate which is largely working-class but also
parochial and conservative. Consistent with this, Braddon has the 4th lowest median income level of any seat, and the 3rd lowest level of
non English speaking households. At the same time it has lower-than-average levels of families with dependent children and of dwellings being purchased:
this is a seat of low-income home-owners, not homebuyers.
Labor's strongest area is in Burnie - even in 2013 Labor won five of Burnie's eight booths. The Liberals dominate the rural areas, while the two
parties usually break roughly even in Devonport, Ulverstone and Wynyard. The old mining towns of the west coast, once called "the Gibraltar of
Labor," are now politically marginal. In 1943 this seat elected
Dame Enid Lyons, the first woman in the House of Representatives.
Sid Sidebottom won Braddon for Labor in 1998. He seemed well-entrenched, but in 2004 he became a victim of
Mark Latham's anti-logging forestry
policy, and was defeated by
Mark Baker. In 2007 Sidebottom regained the seat, and was a Parliamentary Secretary in the Rudd-Gillard government.
But in 2013 he fell to the large swing against Labor that swept Tasmania in 2013, and was defeated by
Brett Whiteley, a Burnie City Councillor and
state MP. Despite Labor's poor standing in state politics in 2016, there was a swing back to Labor at the 2016 election, and Whiteley was unexpectedly
defeated by Labor's
Justine Keay, a Labor staffer and Devonport City Councillor.
In early 2018, following the High Court's ruling in the
citizenship case of Senator
Katy Gallagher, Keay resigned and was re-elected at the subdsequent by-election with her majority unchanged. At the 2019
election, however, she was defeated as part of the swing against Labor in Tasmania, and in seats like Braddon nationwide.
Gavin Pearce, Liberal MP for Braddon since 2019, served in the army for 20 years before becoming a beef farmer and small business operator. His family has farmed in the area since the 1850s. These are good credentials in a conservative regional seat, but this will never be a safe seat for either
side of politics. In June Pearce announced that he would not recontest the seat.
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