Electoral district of Warrego

Warrego is an electoral district of the Legislative Assembly in the Australian state of Queensland.

The electorate lies in the extreme southwest of Queensland, running along the western part of the border with New South Wales. It includes a number of rural centres, including the towns of Roma, St George and Cunnamulla.

Warrego was, as with the rest of the state, held by independents and loose groupings of members around the government of the day until the first years of the twentieth century, when the partisan system took hold. It then became a stronghold of the centre-left Australian Labor Party, who held it without interruption from 1908 to 1974. The decline of the rural working class changed the demographics of the electorate drastically, however, and it fell to the conservative National Party of Australia at the height of the popularity of the Bjelke-Petersen government in 1974. The National Party strongly increased their hold on the seat thereafter, and it is today one of their safest seats. The current member, Howard Hobbs, has held the seat since 1985, and was re-elected with 62% of the vote at the 2006 state election.

Members for Warrego

Member		Party	Term
	Frederick Forbes	Unaligned	1865–1867
	Graham Mylne	Unaligned	1867–1868
	Sir Arthur Hodgson	Unaligned	1868–1869
	Sir Thomas McIlwraith	Ministerialist	1870–1871
	Archibald Buchanan	Ministerialist	1871–1873
	William Henry Walsh	Ministerialist	1873–1878
	Ernest Stevens	Independent	1878–1883
	John Donaldson	Independent/Ministerialist	1883–1888
	Richard Casey	Unaligned	1888–1893
	Sir Arthur Hodgson	Unaligned	1888–1893
	James Crombie	Ministerialist	1893–1898
	William Hood	Ministerialist	1898–1899
	David Bowman	Labor	1899–1902
	Patrick Leahy	Ministerialist/Opposition	1902–1907
	George Barber	Labor	1907
	Patrick Leahy	Ministerialist/Opposition	1907–1908
	John Coyne	Labor	1908–1923
	Randolph Bedford	Labor	1923–1941
	Harry O'Shea	Labor	1941–1950
	John Dufficy	Labor	1951–1969
	John Aiken	Labor	1969–1974
	Neil Turner	Country	1974–1975
		National Country	1975–1982
		National	1982–1986
	Howard Hobbs	National	1986–2008
		Liberal National	2008–present

Election results

Main article: Electoral results for the district of Warrego

Queensland state election, 2009: Warrego
Party		Candidate	Votes	%	±%
	Liberal National	Howard Hobbs	13,805	59.8	-5.4
	Labor	Elliott Thornton	4,378	19.0	-5.1
	Independent	Wally Gleeson	3,831	16.6	+16.6
	Family First	Tony Kusters	548	2.4	-3.8
	Greens	Kathryn Wildermuth	411	1.8	+1.8
	Independent	Allen Hassall	126	0.5	+0.5
Total formal votes			23,099	98.6
Informal votes			311	1.4
Turnout			23,410	90.8
Two-candidate preferred result
	Liberal National	Howard Hobbs	14,884	74.3	+1.7
	Labor	Elliott Thornton	5,138	25.7	-1.7
	Liberal National hold		Swing	+1.7

External links

• Electorate Profile (Antony Green, ABC)