Electoral district of Warrego

File:QLD - Warrego 2008.png

2008 electoral map 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 the large town of Dalby, as well as the rural centres of Surat, Roma, Tara, Charleville, Augathella, St George and Cunnamulla.

History

The electoral district of Warrego was created by the Additional Members Act of 1864 which introduced six new single-member electorates. A by-election was held to fill the seat. The nomination date was 18 March 1865 and the election was held on 25 March 1865.

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 Labor Party, which held it without interruption from 1908 to 1974. The decline of the rural working class gradually changed the demographics of the electorate, however, and in 1974 it was swept up in a massive landslide for the National Party.

It remained a marginal National seat for the next two decades, even at the height of the popularity of the Bjelke-Petersen government. However, it stayed in National hands even after Labor ended the long National run in government. The "one vote one value" reforms ahead of the 1992 election gave the Nationals a 13 percent notional majority, making the seat safe National on paper. The Nationals significantly increased their hold on the electorate thereafter, and it was now one of the most conservative seats in Queensland. Since then, the National hold on the seat has been only remotely threatened once, in 2001. It remained a conservative stronghold after the LNP was formed from a merger with the Liberals in 2009. The current member, Ann Leahy, has held the seat since 2015.

Members for Warrego

Member		Party	Term
Template:Australian party style|	Frederick Forbes	Unaligned	1865–1867
Template:Australian party style|	Graham Mylne	Unaligned	1867–1868
Template:Australian party style|	Sir Arthur Hodgson	Unaligned	1868–1869
Template:Australian party style|	Sir Thomas McIlwraith	Ministerialist	1870–1871
Template:Australian party style|	Archibald Buchanan	Ministerialist	1871–1873
Template:Australian party style|	William Henry Walsh	Ministerialist	1873–1878
Template:Australian party style|	Ernest James Stevens	Independent	1878–1883
Template:Australian party style|	John Donaldson	Independent/Ministerialist	1883–1888
Template:Australian party style|	Richard Casey	Unaligned	1888–1893
Template:Australian party style|	James Crombie	Ministerialist	1893–1898
Template:Australian party style|	William Hood	Ministerialist	1898–1899
Template:Australian party style|	David Bowman	Labour	1899–1902
Template:Australian party style|	Patrick Leahy	Ministerialist/Opposition	1902–1907
Template:Australian party style|	George Barber	Labour	1907
Template:Australian party style|	Patrick Leahy	Ministerialist/Opposition	1907–1908
Template:Australian party style|	Harry Coyne	Labor	1908–1923
Template:Australian party style|	Randolph Bedford	Labor	1923–1941
Template:Australian party style|	Harry O'Shea	Labor	1941–1950
Template:Australian party style|	John Dufficy	Labor	1951–1969
Template:Australian party style|	Jack Aiken	Labor	1969–1974
Template:Australian party style|	Neil Turner	National	1974–1986
Template:Australian party style|	Howard Hobbs	National	1986–2008
Template:Australian party style|		Liberal National	2008–2015
Template:Australian party style|	Ann Leahy	Liberal National	2015–present