Beautiful one day

A few items worth noting from the Queensland state scene:

• The state’s Electoral Commission has published preliminary submissions for the redistribution currently under way. The proposed redistribution report is still a few months away.

• Brisbane’s Sunday Mail has published an interesting Galaxy poll of 800 respondents showing Anna Bligh with a 68 per cent approval rating, compared with just 12 per cent for Nationals leader Jeff Seeney. The poll puts Labor’s two-party preferred lead at 55-45. It also found Mal Brough favoured by 32 per cent to lead the state Liberals against 8 per cent each for the recently departed Bruce Flegg and his replacement Mark McArdle, and 7 per cent for thwarted contender Tim Nicholls. McArdle doesn’t seem too upset at the prospect of being replaced by Brough, though it’s far from clear whether Brough is really interested in state politics.

• A recent Queensland Newspoll got overlooked in my earlier post on state results, so here’s a chart showing the two-party preferred score going back to 2004. I have gone for a time-series X axis on this occasion, which is messier but more accurate.

Author: William Bowe

William Bowe is a Perth-based election analyst and occasional teacher of political science. His blog, The Poll Bludger, has existed in one form or another since 2004, and is one of the most heavily trafficked websites on Australian politics.

26 comments on “Beautiful one day”

  1. I like the MalBrough man, but it will take more than one man for a party to become an option.

    There is a lot of in-fighting still going down behind the scenes.

    The population movement this century certainly warrants a change to the boundaries, but that won’t worry Anna, as I believe she is doing an excellent job.

    She’s very open to new ideas…

  2. Hi, can someone help me please.

    Before the election, Labor had a website showing which government ministers voted, and how many times, for WorkChoices. There were mugshots of those concerned with a caption for each relating how many times they voted to hurt working families.

    The site was called something like HowTheyVoted or VotingRecord or somesuch.

    Anyone know the URL?

    Thanks.

  3. Hi again. Sorry, found the URL, but the site is no more. Labor must have considered it had served its purpose.

    votingrecord.com.au

    Thanks for your attention.

  4. Is Brough seriously considering moving to state politics? Why? Even the gods would be hard pressed to turn the Queensland state Lib/Nat pig’s ear into a halfway electable silk purse.

    He’d be better off having another go at the federal level with a good chance of becoming leader. Surely, one of the seat warmers can be persuaded to take early retirement after a decent interval.

  5. It would only be worthwhile for Bough if and only if he could get an agreement that he and he alone would lead the opposition. Then he could get the conservative side into at least a winnable position in two elections time.

    Plus has the Courier Mail used the headline “Mutiny against Bligh” in any context yet? I think we need to run about a book on when it will happen. Because we all it will happen (the headline, not the mutiny).

  6. Our old mate Gridlock Campbell is running a nice old scam with the Brisbane City Council minutes too. Just have the minutes of Council meetings on the internet for twelve months. Liberals and ‘openness’ or ‘accountability’ just do not seem to go together too well in Queensland.

    http://www.brisbane.qld.gov.au/BCC:BASE::pc=PC_9

  7. Suppose someone was to claim early in their term that they were only going to have rate increases in line with inflation. If they did a backflip in the pike position with half twist why would the full term’s contortions not be available on the internet for all to see. The Liberals may well be a spent force but Gridlock Campbell is a spending force.

  10. While Mal may be the popular vote for a conservative Premier, don’t forget the current agreement states the Nats leader of the time is the anointed one (Seeney – the Nats leader – is somewhere around 12%).

    So the Libs real question (assuming Mal finds a seat – there isn’t many safe Liberal seats either) is do they either re-negotiate or walk away from the agreement to take a punt on Mal? He still only has half the popularity of Bligh.

    Terry White (yes – he of the Chemist Shop chain) walked away in the mid 80’s – the cause of many of the Qld Liberals problems today. The Nats have a “proud” history of supplying conservative Premiers (Bjelke Petersen for one). They are hardly likely to agree to re-negotiate to effectively loose face amoungst their membership.

  12. Just saw this thread and I thought it wasn’t so bad until I realised that Bligh was ahead of Seeney 42-29 per cent among Coalition voters! ROTFL.

    After seeing the leadership results I think we should give credit where credit is due – well done “Undecided” with 42% of voters preferring this choice as Liberal leader, ahead of any other candidate. Perhaps if one of the Liberal leadership aspirants changed their name by deed poll to Mr Undecided they might sneak in?

    Seriously, given the fact that the redistribution thread suggests Queensland will gain another seat, if the coalition in Qld stays like this, won’t Labor just pick up another seat in 2010?

    Does anyone have any comments on exactly what is teh source of the feud in Qld Liberals? It can’t just be due to Howard’s influence. I didn’t think he had much to do with Queensland.

  15. A whole new conservative party in Qld would effectively be a Nationals takeover of the Liberal Party, which is why the Libs don’t want it. My guess is that such a party, led by the former Nationals leader, would further alienate Lib voters and see what’s left of them move to Labor.

  17. They should combine, write a new charter and call themselves something completely different.

    It’s the only way to escape the culture.

    Leave the rednecks on the outer.

  18. Trouble is Scaper, they won’t leave the rednecks on the outer. A combined Party would be run by the rednecks as the Nats are now. The power imbalance of the Nats and Libs is so stark at the moment that any ‘combining’ would really be a Nat takeover – thats why the Nats are pushing it but the Libs are running away. Lib voters would be disenfranchised by this move.

    What the conservatives need is not a united party (cos it would never be united anyway) but some decent leadership and ideas. If they think that just by combining their assets the electorate will follow them they’ve got rocks in their head.

  19. Ferny Grover

    You are right…would it be out of the question to create a coalition of independents to reshape the political landscape?

    Maybe fed from the national boy who is still wet behind the political ears?

    I’m not sure that democracy will be served under the so called political two party system.

    To progress, maybe the ideology needs a shift.

  26. The QEC has been compelled to undertake a redistribution of Queensland’s state electorates, because there have been three elections since the last redistribution.

    As evidenced by the regularly increasing number of federal seats that Qld is entitled to, the population has been increasing rapidly over the last few years. Most of that population growth has occurred in the south east corner, primarily in Sunshine Coast / Pine Rivers and Gold Coast / Albert regions.

    Some other areas such as Brisbane City, Cairns and Townsville have also been growing very quickly. Other areas have struggled to keep up with the average growth rate, and yet others, primarily in the bush and the non-coastal areas of Far North Queensland (excepting around Kuranda) are falling way behind.

    What this comes down to as that two or three (probably three) seats from outside the SEQ growth area need to be abolished to allow for three new seats to be created. These new seats would be in the Sunshine Coast / Pine Rivers area (probably two) and Gold Coast / Albert region (probably one).

    The Liberal Party has opportunistically suggested that the one One Nation seat (Tablelands in Far North Queensland) & one Independent seat (Nanango in South East Queensland), and one ALP seat (Fitzroy in Central Queensland), be abolished to allow for the creation of three new seats in South East Queensland

    In my view the Liberals have sited very questionable reasons for the selection of those seats for abolition, excepting perhaps Tablelands, which I had also independently selected as one of my choices prior to seeing the Liberal Party submission. Further consideration however, based on the detailed submissions made by Mr R.J. (Bob) Richardson of Gordonvale leads me to believe that Tablelands should not be abolished (of which more in a future post).

    The National Party submission is fairly similar to that of the Liberal submission, the main difference being that the National Party argue for the abolition of only two seats instead of three. They also suggested Tablelands and Fitzroy as the seats to be abolished, but not Nanango, which presumably they think that they can regain in the near future.

    At least the Liberal Party put a lot of work into their submission. The ALP’s ‘effort’ is a disgrace in my view, and appears to have hastily cobbled together in half an hour before knock off time on a Friday afternoon. To make matters worse, the ALP couldn’t apparently be bothered to make any follow up comments at all, unlike the Liberals and Nationals and various other private contributors such as the aforementioned Mr Richardson, who went to considerable and commendable effort to make very detailed submissions and comments.

    For anyone with the time and interest to read Mr Richardson’s work, I suggest that you read his comments before you read his actual submission, as it will then be easier to understand the considerable detail of his submission. It is well worth the effort. Mr Richardson’s comments begin a few pages from the start of the second comments link on the QEC page.

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