The Division of Fairfax is an Australian electoral division in the state of Queensland. It comprises part of the Sunshine Coast, including the large towns of Maroochydore and Buderim.
Since 2016 its MP has been Ted O'Brien of the Liberal Party.
Since 1984, federal electoral division boundaries in Australia have been determined at redistributions by a redistribution committee appointed by the Australian Electoral Commission. 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.
The Division of Fairfax is located in the Sunshine Coast region north of Brisbane and includes the towns of Coolum, Yaroomba, Marcoola, Mudjimba, Maroochydore, Buderim, Woombye, Bli Bli, Yandina, Nambour, Mapleton, Kenilworth and Eumundi.
The division was created in 1984 and is named after Ruth Fairfax, founder of the Country Women's Association.
While the Sunshine Coast is traditionally a conservative area, Fairfax is located in a particularly conservative portion of it, and so has always been held by a right-of-centre party. Originally a safe seat for the National Party, demographic change has made it equally safe for the Liberal Party.
The electorate came to national attention at the 2013 federal election, when Clive Palmer, the founder of the Palmer United Party, narrowly won it by 53 votes. Before then, the Coalition's hold on the seat had only been seriously threatened twice, in 1998 and 2007. At all other times, it was a safe, or fairly safe, Coalition seat.
Palmer did not run for re-election, and it was widely expected that the seat would revert to the merged Liberal National Party because, in 2013, the LNP would have retained it easily in a "traditional" two-party-preferred vote contest with Labor. As expected, Palmer's 2013 opponent, Ted O'Brien, won the seat resoundingly at the 2016 federal election and has held it without serious difficulty since.