The Division of Leichhardt () is an

Australian electoral division Electorates (also known as electoral divisions or seats) of the Australian House of Representatives are single member electoral districts for the lower house of the Parliament of the Commonwealth. There are currently 150 electorates. Constitut ...

in the

state State most commonly refers to: * State (polity), a centralized political organization that regulates law and society within a territory **Sovereign state, a sovereign polity in international law, commonly referred to as a country **Nation state, a ...

Queensland Queensland ( , commonly abbreviated as Qld) is a States and territories of Australia, state in northeastern Australia, and is the second-largest and third-most populous state in Australia. It is bordered by the Northern Territory, South Austr ...

. Its MP has been

Matt Smith Matthew Robert Smith (born 28 October 1982) is an English actor. He is known for playing the Eleventh Doctor in the BBC science fiction television series ''Doctor Who'' (2010–2013), Prince Philip in Netflix's historical series ''The Crown ( ...

of the Labor Party since

2025 So far, the year has seen the continuation of major armed conflicts, including the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the Sudanese civil war (2023–present), Sudanese civil war, and the Gaza war. Internal crises in Bangladesh post-resignation v ...

. Leichhardt is located in

Far North Queensland Far North Queensland (FNQ) is the northernmost part of the States and territories of Australia, Australian state of Queensland. Its largest city is Cairns, Queensland, Cairns and it is dominated geographically by Cape York Peninsula, which stret ...

. It is a very mixed electorate, with its classification ranging from provincial in the south and rural and remote elsewhere. It includes the city of

Cairns Cairns (; ) is a city in the Cairns Region, Queensland, Australia, on the tropical north east coast of Far North Queensland. In the , Cairns had a population of 153,181 people. The city was founded in 1876 and named after William Cairns, Sir W ...

, as well as many towns such as

Cooktown Cooktown is a coastal town and locality in the Shire of Cook, Queensland, Australia. Cooktown is at the mouth of the Endeavour River, on Cape York Peninsula in Far North Queensland where James Cook beached his ship, the '' Endeavour'', for ...

Port Douglas Port Douglas is a coastal town and locality in the Shire of Douglas, Queensland, Australia, approximately north of Cairns. In the , the locality of Port Douglas had a population of 3,650 people. The town's population can often double, however, ...

and

Weipa Weipa () is a coastal mining town in the local government area of Weipa Town in Queensland. It is one of the largest towns on the Cape York Peninsula. It exists because of the enormous bauxite deposits along the coast. The Port of Weipa is main ...

, and several

Indigenous Indigenous may refer to: *Indigenous peoples *Indigenous (ecology) In biogeography, a native species is indigenous to a given region or ecosystem if its presence in that region is the result of only local natural evolution (though often populari ...

communities on the

Cape York Peninsula The Cape York Peninsula is a peninsula located in Far North Queensland, Australia. It is the largest wilderness in northern Australia.Mittermeier, R.E. et al. (2002). Wilderness: Earth's last wild places. Mexico City: Agrupación Sierra Madre, ...

and in the

Torres Strait Islands The Torres Strait Islands are an archipelago of at least 274 small islands in the Torres Strait, a waterway separating far northern continental Australia's Cape York Peninsula and the island of New Guinea. They span an area of , but their tot ...

Geography

Since 1984, federal electoral division boundaries in Australia have been determined at redistributions by a redistribution committee appointed by the

Australian Electoral Commission The Australian Electoral Commission (AEC) is the independent statutory agency of the Australian Government responsible for the management and oversight of Australian federal elections, plebiscites, referendums and some trade union A ...

. Redistributions occur for the boundaries of divisions in a particular state, and they occur every seven years, or sooner if a state's representation entitlement changes or when divisions of a state are malapportioned. It is located in

and includes the

. It includes the

local government area A local government area (LGA) is an administrative division of a country that a local government is responsible for. The size of an LGA varies by country but it is generally a subdivision of a federated state, state, province, division (politica ...

s of

Cook Cook or The Cook may refer to: Food preparation * Cooking, the preparation of food * Cook (domestic worker), a household staff member who prepares food * Cook (profession), an individual who prepares food for consumption in the food industry * C ...

Douglas Douglas may refer to: People * Douglas (given name) * Douglas (surname) Animals * Douglas (parrot), macaw that starred as the parrot ''Rosalinda'' in Pippi Longstocking * Douglas the camel, a camel in the Confederate Army in the American Civil ...

Torres Torres may refer to: People *Torres (surname), a Spanish and Portuguese surname * Torres (musician), singer-songwriter Mackenzie Scott ** ''Torres'' (album), 2013 self-titled album by Torres Places Americas * Torres, Colorado, an unincorporated ...

and

Wujal Wujal Wujal Wujal, sometimes spelt Wudjil Wudjil, is a rural town and locality in the Wujal Wujal Aboriginal Shire, Queensland, Australia. It is an Aboriginal community. In the , the locality of Wujal Wujal had a population of 276 people. The comm ...

Demographics

As of the

2021 Australian census The 2021 Australian census, simply called the 2021 Census, was the eighteenth national Census of Population and Housing in Australia. The 2021 Census took place on 10 August 2021, and was conducted by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). ...

, Leichhardt had a total of 175,620 residents (including those who are not on the electoral roll). 50.4% of the population is female, and 49.6% is male. This reflects a trend across northern Australia where the male population tends to be above average. The median age is 39, compared to the state and national average of 38. Aboriginal and

Torres Strait Islander Torres Strait Islanders ( ) are the Indigenous Melanesians, Melanesian people of the Torres Strait Islands, which are part of the state of Queensland, Australia. Ethnically distinct from the Aboriginal Australians, Aboriginal peoples of the res ...

people make up 16.3% of the total population, significantly above the state average of 4.6% and national average of 3.2%. 44.8% of people in Leichhardt are unmarried, significantly higher than the national and state averages. 38.3% of residents have a registered marriage, while 16.9% are in a '' de facto'' marriage. Leichhardt is somewhat multicultural. 31.8% of the population has

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

ancestry, 26.9% have

Australian Australian(s) may refer to: Australia * Australia, a country * Australians, citizens of the Commonwealth of Australia ** European Australians ** Anglo-Celtic Australians, Australians descended principally from British colonists ** Aboriginal Aus ...

ancestry, 10.9% have Aboriginal ancestry, 9.7% have Irish ancestry and 8.7% have

Scottish Scottish usually refers to something of, from, or related to Scotland, including: *Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic Goidelic language of the Indo-European language family native to Scotland *Scottish English *Scottish national identity, the Scottish ide ...

ancestry.

History

The division was first contested in 1949 after the expansion of seats in the

Parliament of Australia The Parliament of Australia (officially the Parliament of the Commonwealth and also known as the Federal Parliament) is the federal legislature of Australia. It consists of three elements: the Monarchy of Australia, monarch of Australia (repr ...

. It is one of Australia's largest electorates, covering an area stretching from

to Cape York and the

Torres Strait The Torres Strait (), also known as Zenadh Kes ( Kalaw Lagaw Ya#Phonology 2, �zen̪ad̪ kes, is a strait between Australia and the Melanesian island of New Guinea. It is wide at its narrowest extent. To the south is Cape York Peninsula, ...

, including the

. It is the northernmost federal division in Australia (although it averages slightly south of the

Division of Solomon The Division of Solomon is an Divisions of the Australian House of Representatives, Australian Electoral Division in the Northern Territory. It is largely coextensive with the Darwin, Northern Territory, Darwin/Palmerston, Northern Territory, P ...

in the

Northern Territory The Northern Territory (abbreviated as NT; known formally as the Northern Territory of Australia and informally as the Territory) is an states and territories of Australia, Australian internal territory in the central and central-northern regi ...

). The division is named after

Ludwig Leichhardt Friedrich Wilhelm Ludwig Leichhardt (; 23 October 1813 – ), known as Ludwig Leichhardt, was a German explorer and naturalist, most famous for his exploration of northern and central Australia.Ken Eastwood,'Cold case: Leichhardt's disappearanc ...

, an explorer and scientist. The area was first covered by the seat of

Herbert Herbert may refer to: People * Herbert (musician), a pseudonym of Matthew Herbert * Herbert (given name) * Herbert (surname) Places Antarctica * Herbert Mountains, Coats Land * Herbert Sound, Graham Land Australia * Herbert, Northern Territor ...

from

1901 December 13 of this year is the beginning of signed 32-bit Unix time, and is scheduled to end in January 19, 2038. Summary Political and military 1901 started with the unification of multiple British colonies in Australia on January ...

1934 Events January–February * January 1 – The International Telecommunication Union, a specialist agency of the League of Nations, is established. * January 15 – The 8.0 1934 Nepal–Bihar earthquake, Nepal–Bihar earthquake strik ...

and then by the seat of

Kennedy Kennedy may refer to: People * Kennedy (surname), including any of several people with that surname ** Kennedy family, a prominent American political family that includes: *** Joseph P. Kennedy Sr. (1888–1969), American businessman, investor, ...

until

1949 Events January * January 1 – A United Nations-sponsored ceasefire brings an end to the Indo-Pakistani War of 1947. The war results in a stalemate and the division of Kashmir, which still continues as of 2025 * January 2 – Luis ...

. Most of the electorate is almost uninhabited except for small Aboriginal communities, but the extreme southeast, consisting of the northern half of the

Wet Tropics The Wet Tropics of Queensland World Heritage Site consists of approximately 8,940 km2 of Australian wet tropical forests growing along the north-east Queensland portion of the Great Dividing Range. The Wet Tropics of Queensland meets all f ...

, with rich volcanic soils instead of the extraordinarily infertile lateritic sands and gravels of Cape York proper, is quite densely populated and includes urban Cairns. There are small, intensive

sugar cane Sugarcane or sugar cane is a species of tall, Perennial plant, perennial grass (in the genus ''Saccharum'', tribe Andropogoneae) that is used for sugar Sugar industry, production. The plants are 2–6 m (6–20 ft) tall with stout, jointed, fib ...

banana A banana is an elongated, edible fruit – botanically a berry – produced by several kinds of large treelike herbaceous flowering plants in the genus '' Musa''. In some countries, cooking bananas are called plantains, distinguishing the ...

and

mango A mango is an edible stone fruit produced by the tropical tree '' Mangifera indica''. It originated from the region between northwestern Myanmar, Bangladesh, and northeastern India. ''M. indica'' has been cultivated in South and Southeast As ...

farms in this region, though they are prone to damage from

drought A drought is a period of drier-than-normal conditions.Douville, H., K. Raghavan, J. Renwick, R.P. Allan, P.A. Arias, M. Barlow, R. Cerezo-Mota, A. Cherchi, T.Y. Gan, J. Gergis, D. Jiang, A. Khan, W. Pokam Mba, D. Rosenfeld, J. Tierney, ...

s and

cyclones In meteorology, a cyclone () is a large air mass that rotates around a strong center of low atmospheric pressure, counterclockwise in the Northern Hemisphere and clockwise in the Southern Hemisphere as viewed from above (opposite to an ant ...

. A safe

Labor Labour or labor may refer to: * Childbirth, the delivery of a baby * Labour (human activity), or work ** Manual labour, physical work ** Wage labour, a socioeconomic relationship between a worker and an employer ** Organized labour and the labour ...

seat from the late 1950s to the 1970s, it has been marginal for most of the time since then. While Cairns has historically tilted toward Labor, the more rural areas tilt toward the Liberals and Nationals. It was a

bellwether A bellwether is a leader or an indicator of trends.bellwether
" ''Cambridge Dictionary''. Re ...

seat held by the party of government from the 1972 election until the 2010 election. When

Warren Entsch Warren George Entsch (born 31 May 1950) is an Australian politician who was a long-serving member of the House of Representatives for a total of 26 years, from 1996 to 2007 and from 2010 to 2025, representing the Division of Leichhardt. He is a ...

, who held the seat from 1996 to 2007, won it back for the LNP in 2010, he became the seat's first opposition member in four decades. It also marked the first time Labor had been in government without holding Leichhardt. Ahead of the 2016 federal election,

ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment and media Broadcasting * Aliw Broadcasting Corporation, Philippine broadcast company * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial American ...

psephologist

Antony Green Antony John Green (born 2 March 1960) is an Australian Psephology, psephologist, Data science, data scientist, journalist, and commentator. He was the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's chief election analyst until his retirement from the r ...

listed the seat in his election guide as one of eleven which he classed as

bellwether A bellwether is a leader or an indicator of trends.bellwether
" ''Cambridge Dictionary''. Re ...

electorates. Warren Entsch retired from federal politics upon the dissolution of the 47th Parliament on 28 March 2025 in the lead-up to the 2025 federal election. Former professional basketball player

subsequently won the seat for Labor, defeating LNP candidate Jeremy Neal.

Members

Election results

Notes

References

External links

Division of Leichhardt (Qld)
—

{{DEFAULTSORT:Leichhardt, Division of Electoral divisions of Australia Electoral divisions of Australia in Queensland Constituencies established in 1949 1949 establishments in Australia Federal politics in Queensland Far North Queensland Cairns, Queensland