MPs reassess futures amid Qld electoral boundary changes
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A Queensland Government Minister is house hunting and a shadow minister needs a new seat after the Queensland Electoral Commission's (QEC) final boundary changes.
The Queensland Electoral Commission announced yesterday it has made further readjustments to 22 of the state's 89 electorates.
Four seats have been abolished - the One Nation-held Tablelands in Queensland's far north, Labor's Fitzroy and the LNPs Darling Downs and Cunningham.
There are now four new electorates - Condamine, Buderim, Morayfield and Coomera and four new names - Dalrymple, Pine Rivers, Sunnybank and Mermaid Beach.
Both sides say the changes suit the other.
One Nation's only surviving MP Rosa Lee Long will challenge either Labor in Cook or the LNP in Dalrymple.
"I'll just have another look and finetune the whole thing," she said.
"I have been thinking about it over the last few months since this process started, but I will just finetune it now and make my intentions known probably in the next few weeks."
In Brisbane, Treasurer Andrew Fraser now lives 50 metres outside his electorate of Mt Coot-tha.
But LNP justice spokesman Stuart Copeland does not even have a seat with Cunningham abolished.
"I'll be sitting down with my family and looking at the options," he said.
Mr Copeland's LNP leader Lawrence Springborg wants to find him a seat somewhere, but the vacant Beaudesert is unlikely.
Mr Springborg wants Mr Copeland to move.
"What I need is to protect and ensure that all of my existing members of Parliament who haven't announced their retirement to date actually continue on," he said.
"There are any number of communities throughout Queensland who are crying out for candidates of the capability of Stuart Copeland."
Labor's Jim Pearce is retiring from another scrapped seat, Fitzroy, while the LNP's Ray Hopper will move from the abolished Darling Downs to the new Condamine.
The QEC changes include the border between Nanango and Condamine, which means a township in the Bunya Mountains is no longer split in two.
The Independent Member for Nanango, Dorothy Pratt, says changes made to her electorate to include whole towns make sense.
"A couple of the towns that have been split in two have now been put into the various electorates as a whole body," she said.
"I don't think it's beneficial to any town to be cut in two - there's always a quip going around that, 'oh you've got two members or three members going to represent you', but it doesn't work like that.
"So I think they should be really pleased and I think overall it's a good outcome for the Nanango electorate."
Ms Pratt says it means a lot more time on the road travelling but she is happy to take up the challenge.
"I will be endeavouring to put out a flyer to let people know how the boundaries have actually changed for them and that they will be in the Nanango electorate in the future," she said.
" That will happen between now and Christmas, I will try to get to everybody.
"If they want to talk to me at anytime I have an open line and I have an open door policy.
