A look at two seats in very different parts of Queensland which the Liberals are reckoned to be in serious danger of losing, despite double-digit margins. Leichhardt covers Cairns and the Cape York Peninsula, combining naturally marginal Cairns with strongly conservative Cooktown and rock-solid Labor indigenous communities to the west and north. The seat has the nation’s third highest proportion of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, behind Lingiari in the Northern Territory and Kalgoorlie in Western Australia. Its other distinguishing features are a lare number of voters over 55, reflecting the popularity of Cairns as a retirement haven. With all three local state seats held by Labor, Leichhardt is considerably less secure for the Liberals than the 10.3 per cent margin makes it appear, particularly in light of the looming retirement after 11 years of sitting member Warren Entsch.
Leichhardt was created in 1949, Cape York Peninsula having previously been in Herbert until 1934 and Kennedy thereafter. It was won narrowly by the Country Party at its first election, but fell to Labor in 1951 and stayed with them until the Queensland wipeout of 1975. It has since changed hands along with government in 1983, when the seat was lost by the Nationals, and 1996, when it was won for the first time by the Liberals. New member Warren Entsch suffered only a 0.5 per cent swing with the 1998 correction, and subsequently built his margin up to double figures with swings of 2.3 per cent and 3.6 per cent. With Entsch’s retirement the Liberals have nominated businesswoman Charlie McKillop (left), while Labor has again nominated 2004 candidate Jim Turnour (right), an agricultural consultant and former staffer to Senator Jan McLucas.
Reports emerged in late September that the Liberals were continuing to beg Entsch and a number of other departing members to reconsider their retirement plans. Lisa Allen of the Financial Review quoted a Liberal source lamenting the loss of Warren Entsch’s “98 per cent name recognition” in the electorate. By early October, Madonna King was reporting in the Courier-Mail that Labor considered the seat to be “in the bag”, which Liberal insiders “struggled to dispute”. This was supported by Tony Wright of The Age, who wrote later in the month that the Liberals regarded the seat as a “lost cause”. None of this was supported by last week’s Cairns Post poll of 310 respondents, showing McKillop on 41 per cent, Nationals candidate Ian Crossland on 6 per cent and Jim Turnour on 36 per cent. A similar poll published on September 22 had Turnour on 44 per cent, McKillop on 37 per cent and Crossland on 5 per cent.
The western Brisbane seat of Ryan was created in 1949 and currently covers the suburbs on the north bank of the Brisbane River to the west of the city, from St Lucia and Indooroopilly through Fig Tree Pocket and Moggill to Karana Downs, extending across D’aguilar Range to Peewee Bend and The Gap. The seat has been easily won by the Liberals at every general election since its creation, being held by Nigel Drury until 1975 and John Moore thereafter. After serving as Defence Minister in the early years of the Howard government, Moore retired in early 2001, precipitating a by-election which produced a 9.8 per cent swing to Labor and a narrow victory for their candidate Leonie Short. While this provoked much excitement in Labor ranks at the time, it in no way proved a pointer to the election held nine months later, at which the seat was recovered for the Liberals by Michael Johnson (left), a 34-year-old Hong Kong-born Cambridge-educated barrister of part Chinese extraction. Johnson had nominated for preselection at the by-election but was compelled to withdraw as he had not sorted out his British citizenship issues, the dubious prize going to former state party president Bob Tucker. Rivalries that simmered during this contest boiled over during the re-match, with Tucker successfully taking Supreme Court action against a move by the state executive to bypass a local branch plebiscite and install Right candidate Matt Boland. The plebiscite was duly held but Tucker was defeated by Johnson, who was widely accused of branch stacking.
Over and above the general difficulties facing the Liberals in affluent city seats, Ryan is thought to be in danger due to the government’s determination to build the Goodna bypass in the electorate’s far south, which has voters in the affected area complaining the value of their homes will be halved. The bypass was favoured over the almost universally preferred option of widening the Ipswich Motorway, with a view to shoring up the Ipswich-based seat of Blair. As Graham Young of Online Opinion puts it: “People in Ipswich refer to the current motorway, which serves as their major link to Brisbane, as a carpark, and people in the western suburbs of Brisbane are happy to live in a quiet cul-de-sac and don’t want another link road with connections to them put through their area”. The Prime Minister’s support for the bypass was put down to factional alignments, in which Thompson as a member of Santo Santoro’s faction was favoured over Michael Johnson and Bruce Flegg, the moderate state party leader and member for the corresponding state seat of Moggill. 
In early October, Michael McKenna of The Australian reported that the Liberals’ internal polling was worse in blue-ribbon Ryan than in any other Coalition-held Queensland seat, apart from Bonner. On Tuesday, the Courier-Mail cited “leaked Labor research” which had the party extremely confident of its chances of taking the seat. Labor’s candidate is Ross Daniels (right), Queensland University of Technology lecturer, former international chairman of Amnesty International and president of the Queensland Council of Social Services.
Prediction, Labor to come close in Ryan but fall short. Labor to not even come close in Leichardt.
I thought William said there was a “couple” of new threads up.
Looks that way to me, Optimist.
Oh, missed the one about the Galaxy poll – d’oh.
Ryan is my seat LTEP, and your concern trolling is laughably inaccurate here. Johnson is detested here and will lose. Note that that is a 10.5% swing. EI has bitten in the horsey set and they know it was the Lib’s fault. The seat is home to more professionals than anywhere else in Qld and they are angry at the racism and deceit of the Howard Government. Johnson has been a cowardly member – his favourite trick is to distribute letters at one end of the electorate saying there will be a community forum at the other end…and then not turn up. (the anger of the few who attend and get stood up presumably balanced by the thousands who don’t attend but get the impression from the letter that he is ‘engaged with the community’) The labor candidate has an excellent campaign team this time – it’s been very professionally run. Yes it will be close, but fakepamphletgate and race-hate dog whistles will sink the Libs here.
Labor probably won’t win either, but if the swing to Rudd in QLD is a big one, anything could happen.
I’ll believe all that when I see it Tubbel at Mill. I’m yet to be convinced this army of so-called deserting ‘wets’ is real. The same thing was said at the ’04 election.
Two friends of mine who live in Ryan (one voting Labor, the other I can’t tell) were surprised when I suggested Ryan will be close. Michael Johnson is a pretty good local member by most reports, but Ross Daniels is a good candidate, also the Goodna bypass is very unpopular. And the swing is on in Qld for sure… Ryan was one of my “free” $100 bets at SportingBet, for good odds @ $2.80.
Leichhardt I reckon will go. Many years since I lived there; so no on-the-ground knowledge; just a gut feeling. Discount anything from the Cairns Post including their polls. I put a “real” bet on this @ $2.15 and the odds are shortening FWIW.
Usually I don’t gamble whatever, and wouldn’t encourage it (been there), but some of the odds have been too good!
Could the polling in Leichhardt be undercounting indigenous voters?
Labot will win both, easily.
Ryan is the seat I’m most interested in, after Bennelong and Wentworth. Months ago Possum called it for Labor when it was paying $5.40, and I couldn’t help throwing $10 on. At the same time, he was making big noises about McPherson, which is more of a long shot but was paying $11 at the time.
It’s the weirdest thing, betting on elections, but there does seem to be some information gaps in the odds…
The CM ran an article yesterday saying that “the road” was causing real problems for Johnson and his seat was in real danger. He of course has been involved in many factional battles and a lot of Libs hate his guts. Would not be surprised if Labor capture this seat particulaly with the scandals this week.
Leichhardt is very much in play. Ensch was like an independent and had a large personal following. The polling also would not take the large indigenous population into account. If the swing gains momentum, Leichhardt will be a gain for Labor.
Ryan will go to Labor.
Michael Johnson is possibly the second worst MP in Australia (I would have said worst but that was before the Jackie Kellly interview on AM this morning, which will go into the annals of history).
The main election story in last week’s local paper was about how Johnson had (again) failed to show up for a candidate’s forum. This time the journo went looking for him and found him at a local business friend’s restaurant for a photo op. When the journo tried to ask him questions as to why he was not at the forum he told her to go away as he was busy holding discussions with constituents.
The main election story in this week’s local paper was about how he had been spring for speeding after prosletysing about the evils of hoons and speeding.
He will experience possibly the largest swing against a sitting member in the country.
Music to my ears, Lukas.
Ross Daniels has firmed from 2.95 to 2.40 on CBet in little over a week.
So, what’s playin’ in Ryan?
-OUR Local Boys Made Good(Kev ‘n’ Wayne). Sorry, Mr. Howard, but at the end of the day you really are a cockroach and a pretty disgusting one at that. Only fools and foreigners underestimate the parochialism of us Quuenslanders!
-Equine influenza,(some neddy lovers are more honery than a pig-rootin’ pony because the throughbred set got all the attention)
-SerfChoices, (cheesed off youth and part timers, heaps of ’em. )
Goodna bypass(slashing real estate values),
-Bulk Mortgage Stressees/Maxed-Out Plastics, (interest rates)
– Long Dormant Wets (Rising Damps) in the aftermath of Salon, Rau, Hicks, Haneef, Ul-Haque, and now, Liberal Party’s direct involvement at the highest levels in Leafletgate.
Looks to me as if “Hoonster” Johnson has chucked his last political wheelie for a while, ‘cos his representative career is about to end in a stunning defeat.
Lukas is correct. Ryan will go to Labor because 1) it contains a lot of doctors wives who love KR and hate JH 2) the freeway 3) Michael Johnson is hated by large slabs of his own party.
I got this letter from Kevin Rudd’s office today. I’d thought I share it with you all. In part.
When the ballot box close,the after party for the Griffith campaign team will be held @ Suncorp Stadium from 6pm. Please accept my invitation to come to the after party – &,if you like,bring a guest as well.
This will be a nationally televised event so I would encourage you to attend & wear your Kevin 07 gear.
Kind regards ….. Kevin Rudd.
Can’t wait 🙂
Oh happy days, I got set on Ryan a fair while ago and now this thread confirms many of my theories! The killing field, yeaaaah.
I’m set too Basil. $200 on Ross Daniels at $5.75 (before the sleepy bookies woke up). WOOHOO!!
Used all my free bets on Maxine, and that’s also looking mighty fine. …err, the bets are looking mighty fine, not Maxine. …err , I mean Maxine looks mighty fine too – hornbaggiest journo in history IMHO!!