Division of Brand

Brand Australian House of Representatives Division
Division of Brand in Western Australia, as of the 2016 federal election.
Created	1984
MP	Madeleine King
Party	Labor
Namesake	David Brand
Electors	98,113 (2016)
Area	377 km2 (145.6 sq mi)
Demographic	Outer Metropolitan

The Division of Brand is an Australian electoral division in the state of Western Australia. The division was named after Sir David Brand, a former state premier, and is a safe Labor seat.

According to the 2006 census, Brand is the electorate with the lowest proportion (12.6%) of residents with a university qualification.

The seat was created for the 1984 federal election from parts of the Divisions of Fremantle and Canning to cater for substantial population growth in the Rockingham–Mandurah coastal area south of the state capital Perth. Initially it included country areas to the south and southeast, such as agricultural regions in the Shires of Murray, Waroona and Harvey and the mining town of Collie, and was significantly more marginal for Labor—made abundantly clear by Labor's near-defeat in the seat at the 1996 federal election. The redistribution for the 1998 election saw the electorate become an entirely urban seat, retreating north of the Peel Estuary to roughly its present boundaries, and the seat has been safe Labor ever since.

Brand has had four members —two of whom had previously been sitting members for other seats. Wendy Fatin had been the member for Canning for a single term prior to the creation of Brand, and went on to win in four successive elections, becoming Minister for the Arts in the early 1990s. Upon her retirement from politics, Kim Beazley, who had been Minister for Defence in the Hawke Government until 1990 and had several portfolios before becoming Deputy Prime Minister to Paul Keating in 1995, was preselected for the seat following 16 years as member for the marginal seat of Swan which polling suggested the party was certain to lose. At the 1996 election, Beazley won by just 387 votes against Liberal candidate Penny Hearne, who was later to quit the party and run as an independent against Court minister Doug Shave in the 1996 state election for the seat of Alfred Cove. The third member was Gary Gray, from 2007 to 2016. On 25 March 2013, Gray was appointed to the Australian Cabinet as the Minister for Resources and Energy, the Minister for Tourism, and the Minister for Small Business. From 2010 until 2013, Gray served as the Special Minister of State and the Minister for the Public Service and Integrity.