Glenn Butcher

Glenn James Butcher (born 15 April 1972) is an Australian politician. He has been the Labor member for Gladstone in the Queensland Legislative Assembly since 2015. The seat had been held by retiring independent MP Liz Cunningham since 1995.

Butcher had previously contested the seat in 2012, losing to Cunningham. However, Gladstone has been a Labor stronghold for over a century, and most calculations of "traditional" two-party matchups during her tenure–Labor vs. National before 2009, Labor vs. LNP since 2009–showed it as a safe Labor seat. As evidence of Labor's strength in the seat, Labor would have held it on a comfortably safe margin of 11 percent in a traditional two-party contest even in the face of Labor's near-meltdown that year. For this reason, Butcher's victory was not considered an upset; it had been widely expected for some time that the seat would revert to Labor once Cunningham retired. Further underlining Labor's strength in Gladstone, Butcher won enough primary votes to win the seat outright, and pushed the LNP into third place.

Butcher consolidated his hold on Gladstone in 2017, helped by a redistribution that increased his majority from 11.9 percent to 13 percent (from 25.1 percent to 25.3 percent in a "traditional" two-party matchup with the LNP). He picked up a healthy two-candidate swing of 10.7 percent, this time over a One Nation candidate, and again pushing the LNP into third place. He now sits on a majority of 20.7 percent, making Gladstone the fourth-safest Labor seat in the state and the safest outside Brisbane.

In May 2020 Butcher was appointed as the new Minister for Regional Development and Manufacturing.