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| Adam Carr's Election Archive
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Australian federal election, 2025
Division of Dawson, Queensland
Named for: Hon Anderson Dawson (1863-1910), Qld MP 1893-1901, Premier
1899 (first Labor Premier), Senator 1901-06
North Queensland Coast: Annandale, Ayr, Bowen, Mackay, Proserpine
Enrolment at 2019 election: 105,264
Enrolment at 2022 election: 110,384 (+04.8)
1999 republic referendum: No 69.0
2018 same-sex marriage survey: Yes 55.1
2023 Voice referendum: No 80.4
2007 Labor majority over Nationals: 3.2%
2010 Nationals majority over Labor: 2.4%
2013 Nationals majority over Labor: 7.6%
2016 Nationals majority over Labor 3.4%
2019 Nationals majority over Labor 14.6%
2022 Nationals majority over Labor 10.4%
Status: Fairly safe Nationals
Nationals two-party vote 1983-2022
2022 results
Statistics and history
Division of Dawson
Dawson was created in 1949, based on the sugar and beef ports of Bowen and Mackay, and its boundaries have not changed much
since, although the seat has been cut back to the coastal strip by recent redistributions. It is a still a seat in which
agriculture plays a prominent role, and like all such seats has a low level of median family income, a low proportion of
people in professional and managerial occupations and low proportion of people in non English speaking households. It has usually
been a safe seat for the Country/National Party, although Labor has managed to win it occasionally. Labor's strength is in
the cities of Mackay and (to a lesser extent) Bowen, while the Nationals dominate the rural areas, and also the outer
suburbs of Townsville which were added to the seat in 2013. The 2018 redistribution made only slight changes to the
seat.
Labor's
Dr Rex Patterson won a famous upset in Dawson in the 1966 by-election, and held the seat largely on his personal
standing. After his defeat in 1975 the Nationals were fairly secure until the Rudd sweep of Queensland in 2007.
De-Anne Kelly, the first National Party woman elected to the House, had a brief and unhappy ministerial career in the Howard Government, and was defeated by Labor's
James Bidgood in 2007. Bidgood, after a series of misadventures in Canberra, did not recontest the seat in 2010 and it returned to the Nationals.
George Christensen, who won Dawson in 2010, was an eccentric member with a history of extreme statements which he had to retract. This did not seem to affect his local standing. In 2019
he attracted adverse publicity when it was shown that he had taken 28 trips to Manila between 2014 to 2018. Despite this, he was
the beneficiary of the huge swing to the Coalition in the north Queensland seats. But in early 2021 he announced that he would not stand again.
Andrew Willcox, Nationals MP fpr Dawson since 2022, is a tomato farmer and was Mayor of Whitsunday Council at the time of his
election.
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