‘Massive wake-up call’: What an unsurprising byelection loss reveals about Labor’s big problem

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Former North Queensland Labor candidates described the party’s humbling byelection slump in Townsville as a “devastating” reminder of its struggle to attract regional support amid its broader intolerance of non-urban views.

Premier David Crisafulli’s Liberal National Party bolstered its parliamentary majority after it prised the seat of Hinchinbrook from Katter’s Australian Party following a more than 13 per cent swing to the government.

Newly elected Hinchinbrook MP Wayde Chiesa celebrates his byelection win with Premier David Crisafulli.

Labor, which suffered a near 6 per cent swing against it with a primary vote of just over 8 per cent, hasn’t held the seat – covering the northern fringe of Townsville and large conservative rural areas – since the 1950s.

Although the party was never expecting to pull off an upset victory, as recently as Saturday, Labor insiders were hoping it would hold the 14 per cent primary vote it recorded at the 2024 state poll.

The collapse further compounds its inability to appeal to regional Queenslanders after the former Labor government conceded a huge swathe of those electorates to the LNP last year, particularly in Townsville and Cairns.

The byelection result also landed a gut punch, given that it fell on the same weekend as the Labor state conference in Brisbane, which heard repeated themes of the party’s need to re-engage regional voters if it is to have any hope of returning to government in 2028.

Ben Gertz, who contested the now-abolished state seat of Dalrymple for Labor, moved a motion at the conference – alongside the party’s 2025 candidate for the federal seat of Capricornia, Emily Mawson – imploring it to rebuild trust and strengthen connections in regional areas.

“Last night’s result is a massive wake-up call,” Gertz told the conference in relation to the byelection defeat.

“We need to make sure that our messaging, particularly moving towards 2028, caters to all parts of our state.

“And delegates, unfortunately, that requires a tolerance of views that may not align with your own.

“It means reaching out and building bridges, and it means doing the work to rebuild trust with people who live in areas like mine.”

Opposition Leader Steven Miles tried to play down the result, stressing the LNP’s vote in Hinchinbrook returned to a historical average following the resignation of popular local KAP MP, Nick Dametto.

But he also conceded the loss “reinforces what we’ve known, and what we’ve been saying”.

“It reinforces what I’ve been saying to my team consistently: that Labor needs to ensure that we develop policies that work for us right across the state,” Miles told reporters on the sidelines of the conference.

“And clearly, we haven’t finished doing that yet.”

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