Collie was originally created as the seat of "South West Mining" in the
Constitution Act Amendment Act 1899, the last redistribution of seats to require a modification of the Constitution. It was first contested at the
1901 election. The district in 1900 consisted of three non-contiguous parts: one centred on the
Collie coalfields, one centred on the
Greenbushes tinfields, and one centred on the
Donnybrook goldfields. In 1904, it was renamed "Collie" with almost no changes to its boundaries. In the
Redistribution of Seats Act 1911, its boundaries were so unusually contorted by the then-
Liberal government, which was accused of trying to lock Labor votes in
Premier Frank Wilson's marginal seat of
Sussex behind Collie's boundaries, that the
Kalgoorlie Miner and other newspapers used the seat's map as an effective
mascot for the bill. However, the boundaries remained unchanged until a later redistribution ahead of the
1930 election. The seat changed hands three times between the Liberal member
John Ewing and his Labor rivals, but the seat was securely Labor from the
1908 election and for 81 years continuously remained a Labor seat, with only three members during that time—
Arthur Wilson until 1947, then
Harry May until 1968 and
Tom Jones until 1989. In 1986, the seat had 9,410 enrolled voters compared with an average of 13,796 statewide and over 28,000 in some metropolitan electorates such as
Joondalup and
Murdoch. The
Burke Labor government's
Acts Amendment (Electoral Reform) Act 1987, passed with
National Party support, increased metropolitan representation from 29 to 34 out of 57 seats, and the 1988 redistribution which resulted in Collie gaining parts of
Dale and
Warren combined with a significant statewide swing against the Labor Party delivered the seat to the Nationals' Dr
Hilda Turnbull, who held the seat until the
2001 election. Labor's
Mick Murray, head of the Country Labor grouping in Western Australia, gained the seat on his third attempt with a margin of 34 votes. In the 2003 redistribution, the seat was renamed Collie-Wellington when it lost its southern and eastern sections and incorporated large sections of
Waroona and
Harvey which had been part of
Murray-Wellington. The 2007 redistribution renamed the seat Collie-Preston and largely reversed the 2003 redistribution, but added the coastal section of the
Shire of Capel which brought in residents on the fringes of metropolitan
Bunbury. This slashed Murray's margin from a fairly safe 9.3 percent to an extremely marginal 0.8 percent. Mick Murray retained the seat at the
2005,
2008 and
2013 elections. A redistribution ahead of the 2017 election saw Collie-Preston gain Donnybrook-Balingup Shire from Warren-Blackwood and Clifton Park from Bunbury while it lost Dalyellup to Bunbury. This erased Murray's paper-thin majority of 0.1 percent and made Collie-Preston notionally Liberal, on a margin of 2.9 percent. However, Murray retained the seat on a massive swing of 17.6 percent. Murray retired in 2021, and
Jodie Hanns easily retained the seat for Labor. She now sits on a margin of 23.4 percent, Labor's safest outside the Perth-Mandurah axis. ==Geography==