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| Adam Carr's Election Archive
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Australian federal election, 2025
Division of Fisher, Queensland
Named for: Rt Hon Andrew Fisher (1862-1928), Qld MP 1893-96, 1899-
1901, federal MP 1901-15, Prime Minister 1908-09, 1910-13, 1914-15,
Leader of the Opposition 1908, 1909-10, 1913-14
Sunshine Coast: Caloundra, Currimundi, Landsborough, Mooloolaba, Sippy Downs
Enrolment at 2019 election: 113,134
Enrolment at 2022 election: 125,775 (+11.3)
1999 republic referendum: No 61.5
2018 same-sex marriage survey: Yes 62.8
2023 Voice referendum: No 68.6
2007 Liberal majority over Labor: 3.1%
2010 Liberal majority over Labor: 4.1%
2013 Liberal majority over Labor: 9.8%
2016 Liberal majority over Labor: 9.2%
2019 Liberal majority over Labor: 12.7%
2022 Liberal majority over Labor: 8.7%
Status: Fairly safe Liberal
Liberal two-party vote 1983-2022
2022 results
Statistics and history
Division of Fisher
Fisher was created in 1949, and at that time covered all the rural areas north of Brisbane. Successive
redistributions cut the seat back to the fast-growing Sunshine Coast area, and most recently to a
section of the Coast based on Caloundra and Maroochydore. The 2006 redistribution removed Maroochydore
and left the seat consisting of Caloundra, Mooloolaba and a stretch of rural hinterland around Landsborough.
The seat is now almost entirely composed of beachside tourism and retirement towns, and has one of the country's
highest level of people aged over 65. As a result it also has a low level of median family income,
and low rates of families with dependent children and dwellings being purchased.
Fisher was a safe seat for the Country Party and its successor the Nationals until the 1980s, when
the Nationals' vote shifted to the Liberals as the area urbanised. Members have included Country Party
ministers
Sir Charles Adermann and his son
Evan Adermann. Labor won it in 1987 and 1990, when it included
the outer Brisbane suburban areas which later became the seat of
Dickson. It is now a reasonably safe Liberal seat.
Peter Slipper won the seat as a National in 1984, lost it in 1987, and won it back as a Liberal in
1993. Slipper was a parliamentary secretary in the Howard Government, but returned to the backbench in
2004, where he stayed until the Gillard minority Labor Government offered him the post of Deputy Speaker
in 2010 as a gambit to improve their position in the House. In 2011 Speaker
Harry Jenkins resigned
and Slipper was elected Speaker with Labor support.
Slipper was then expelled from the Liberal Party and accusations soon emerged that he had sexually
harassed a (male) staff member and abused his travel entitlements. Most of these charges were eventually
disproved, but Slipper was forced to resign in October 2012 after he was shown to have sent offensive
text messages. He contested Fisher as an independent in 2013. He polled 1.6%, the lowest vote ever
polled by a sitting member of the House.
His Liberal successor was
Mal Brough, who had been Liberal MP for Longman from 1996 to 2007 and a minister
in the last term of the Howard Government. He was appointed to the ministry by Malcolm Turnbull in 2015.
But continued accusations that he was the source of the false allegations against Slipper led to his
resignation in February 2016, and he retired under a cloud in 2016.
Andrew Wallace, Liberal MP for Fisher since 2016, is a barrister. In 2021-22 he was briefly Speaker.
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