Perfect the next

There’s so much going on in Queensland at the moment that a progressively updated post on developments seems in order, starting with the relevant entries from last night’s general post.

Monday, February 23

• Missed a spot from Steven Wardill’s Courier-Mail report on Chris Bombolas’s departure from Chatsworth: “Frontrunners to replace Mr Bombolas include his electorate officer Margaret Young and Police Minister Judy Spence’s policy adviser Simon Tutt.”

• Chris Pianta, who as of 2005 was Bundaberg secretary of the Australian Federated Union of Locomotive Employees, has been nominated as Labor’s candidate to run against Rob Messenger in Burnett.

• Déjà vu all over again: Pauline Hanson in shock comeback bid, and Greens threats to withhold preferences from Labor.

• Liberal National Party television ads viewable here.

• Tony Raggatt of the Townsville Bulletin on Mandy Johnstone’s preselection win in Townsville:

Even in Labor circles, there are questions. Not the least of which is why Mike Reynolds suddenly changed his mind after only days before going to the expense of preparing his advertising material, including video shoots with the other Townsville Labor candidates. Mr Reynolds told the Townsville Bulletin he made the decision during the past week due to health problems and rejected any suggestion he had been pushed …

Another question surrounding the preselection is why Labor’s factional bosses in Brisbane preselected a Left candidate from the Nelson-Carr group which is so openly hostile with Reynolds’ own Left group … There is a split between the Socialist Left factions of Mike Reynolds and Lindy Nelson-Carr (there is also a separate Labor Left faction). The Nelson-Carr faction would appear to have won the day by gaining the Townsville seat with its candidate Mandy Johnstone, apparently a cousin of Ms Nelson-Carr, while the Reynolds’ hopeful, Cathy O’Toole, his sister-in-law, will have to wait her turn.

Sunday, February 22

• The latest from the Courier-Mail:

ON YOUR marks, get set . . . The 2009 election race is almost under way. All that’s required to start the contest proper is for Anna Bligh, above, to take a quick drive up Paddington’s Fernberg Rd to visit Government House. That road trip will almost certainly happen some time in the next 10 days, with some predicting she’ll visit the Governor on Monday for a March 21 poll. Or will she wait a week and pull the trigger on a March 28 election?

They’ll have to be right eventually.

• Madonna King in the Courier-Mail sees things from Anna Bligh’s perspective:

Of course we’re going to lose seats. We’ve been in power for 11 years for goodness sake. But the boys (advisers chief-of-staff Mike Kaiser, Treasurer Andrew Fraser and state secretary Anthony Chisholm) all reckon we can win Gladstone, Mirani and Burdekin … The redistribution should deliver Mirani and Burdekin, and Gladstone should never have gone to an Independent in the first place. And don’t forget Bundaberg. The LNP might have sneaked across the line there, but this was Labor’s heartland for a century … Chris Bombolas just handed Chatsworth to the LNP … And there are other seats looking bad, too. Hervey Bay, where that former mayor Ted Sorensen is in with a good chance; Pumicestone; Aspley; not to mention Indooroopilly … Cleveland, Mansfield, Redlands – they’ll all be hard to hold and that’s not even considering those Gold Coast seats.

• Queensland’s very own Pitt the Younger, Curtis Pitt, is inevitably having to field questions about nepotism after succeeding his father as Labor candidate for Mulgrave. Curtis’s story seems to be that he worked locally as a cinema manager before moving to Brisbane in 2003 to take up a public service position, where he still remains.

• Elsewhere: Larvatus Prodeo, Woolly Days and Leon Bertrand.

Thursday, February 19

Fairfax confirms that Mandy Johnstone and Cameron Dick have won Labor preselection for Townsville and Greenslopes. ABC Radio reports the Mulgrave preselection has gone to Curtis Pitt, the son of outgoing member Warren. What’s more, a new front has opened with the surprise retirement of Chris Bombolas in Chatsworth, saying doctors have advised him to reduce stress due to diabetes. The ABC reports a successor will be chosen on Monday. A former Channel Nine sports reader, Bombolas won the seat in 2006 from Liberal powerbroker Michael Caltabiano in 2006, who in turn won it from Labor at a by-election a year before. Caltabiano’s personal vote as state member and earlier as a Brisbane City councillor would have meant the 0.8 per cent margin (reduced to 0.1 per cent after the redistribution) exaggerated Labor’s vulnerability, so long as Bombolas remained candidate – and assuming Caltabiano’s personal vote doesn’t transfer to his wife Andrea, who is the new Liberal National Party candidate. Now he’s gone, the seat can be ranked among those that will fall to the LNP barring a total disaster. Anna Bligh has intimated there might be more departures to come. Elsewhere: Cate Molloy to run again as an independent in Noosa (UPDATE: Make that “likely to run”).

Wednesday, February 18

• Queensland election speculation has stepped up yet another notch in recent days with three Labor members announcing their retirements (see below). The most excitable stories had it that the election would be called two days ago for March 28. The minimum election period is 26 days, so I gather an election for that date could be called as late as March 2. Darryl Rosin lays out the obstacles for various election dates beyond that in comments at Larvatus Prodeo, which are considerable if the government is of a mind to get in before the budget. The Courier-Mail reports outgoing Labor MP Mike Reynolds has told a radio interviewer the election “could be in late March”, while Tourism Minister Desley Boyle says she “suspects the election is not far away”. While you wait, enjoy Antony Green’s guide to the election, which went live this evening. My own effort remains a work in progress.

• Labor’s retiring Queensland MPs have made three seats available for new passengers on the Anna Bligh express ride to death or glory. Open for preselection are Townsville, where Mike Reynolds is calling it a day after 11 years; the outer Cairns seat of Mulgrave, home to Warren Pitt on-and-off-and-on since 1989; and the inner southern Brisbane seat of Greenslopes, vacated by another class of 1989 graduate in Gary Fenlon. Acting with remarkable haste, Labor set up preselection processes to replace Reynolds and Fenlon within three days of their retirement announcement on Sunday, with Pitt’s successor to be chosen two days after his announcement on Tuesday. In each case the decision will be made by the party’s administrative committee. Yesterday’s Townsville Bulletin reported that “insiders are tipping failed Townsville City Council contender Mandy Johnstone will get the party nod ahead of former mayor Tony Mooney” (who was defeated at the 1996 Mundingburra by-election which spelled the end for the Goss government). The ABC reports that Cameron Dick, brother of Brisbane City councillor Milton Dick, is likely to get the nod in Greenslopes. I gather we will find out in each case very shortly. The Cairns Post rang around trying to find someone who would admit to being interested in the Mulgrave preselection, apparently without success.

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.

188 comments on “Perfect the next”

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  3. No it doesn’t steve. For the marginality to be “exaggerated” must mean that Michael Caltabiano isn’t running this time.

    But William, you did get the margin wrong. It’s 0.1% on the new boundaries.

  4. There’s a lot of discontent in Chatsworth. Chris Bombalos wasnt the most popular ALP candidate and some might think his retirement may have had a helping hand.

    There will be an independent- DLP candidate in that seat that will surely decide the result. Who the new ALP candidate is, and how they communicate with the DLP might very well decide this one

  5. I hope the ALP stays right away from the DLP. The DLP are a hopeless party who get a pathetic primary vote. And the people who do end up voting for the DLP will preference who they want. This isn’t the 1950s/1960s.

  6. Oh dear, the Rudd stimilus won’t protect any jobs because the one-off money went to card debt repayment, pokies machine or went overseas to plasma tv. This is a very poor way of trying to stimulate the economy, Rudd really need to get a clue, rather than stumbling into everything. Ways of better spending the 22 billion wasted is to either hand out spending vouchers (Westfield for example), give tax cut, or the government spending on infrastructure, which will cost less and creates job (ie Rail staff)

    The Sub prime crisis hit us in Sept 07, it seems like the government just woke up last Sept and find out something is wrong …. totally incompetant

    http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/money/story/0,26860,25078471-5015795,00.html

  7. Oh dear, the Rudd stimilus won’t protect any jobs because the one-off money went to card debt repayment, pokies machine or went overseas to plasma tv. This is a very poor way of trying to stimulate the economy, Rudd really need to get a clue, rather than stumbling into everything. Ways of better spending the 22 billion wasted is to either hand out spending vouchers (Westfield for example), give tax cut, or the government spending on infrastructure, which will cost less and creates job (ie Rail staff)

    The Sub prime crisis hit us in Sept 07, it seems like the government just woke up last Sept and find out something is wrong …. totally incompetant

    http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/money/story/0,26860,25078471-5015795,00.html

  8. dovif #7

    “The Sub prime crisis hit us in Sept 07, it seems like the government just woke up last Sept and find out something is wrong …. totally incompetant”

    Remind me. Who was the govt back in Sept 07? Now, think hard…

  9. Dovif, your second comment was much clearer than your first. If people pay off their credit cards it still gives them more money to spend from that point on anyway. Even if the TV plasmas are manufactured overseas there is still a whole chain of businesses in Australia that benefit from importers to transporters to retailers. Why the the Liberals anti business these days?

    Dovif, you know there is a lagtime before infrastructure spending cuts in and the cash handouts are crucial to keeping the economy ticking over in the meantime.

  12. Anyone from QLD know any more about this?

    http://www.smh.com.au/national/priest-fired-for-unholy-communion-20090219-8cmq.html

    [THE first Australian priest to be sacked from his parish for being “not in communion” with Rome has defied the Catholic hierarchy by promising to conduct Mass as usual this weekend.

    In a decision that is likely to reverberate throughout the Catholic community, the Archbishop of Brisbane yesterday fired Father Peter Kennedy for unorthodox practices.

    Father Kennedy, of St Mary’s in South Brisbane, allows women to preach, blesses gay couples, denies the Virgin birth and claims the Church is dysfunctional.]

    Any politicians talking about it?

  15. steve,

    the problem is people are not spending, that is why the first stimulus did not prevent job loss/create job loss. People are worries, since Rudd and Swann keep saying this is the worst recession since the depression, people used the money to repay debt and are not spending, that is the problem. Rudd and Swann has created a atmosphere of worry and fear, and they are trying to tell people to spend in this atmosphere, and that is not going to work. They need to come out and say we have one of the best economies in the world, Japan/China/US will affect us, but not by that much. Instead they are constantly talking down the economy, and wondering why people are not spending

    Re lag time with infrastructure, for example the North – West rail network in NSW had been promised since 1997, the project should be able to be commence straight the way. Port facilities should be able to be build or upgraded straight the way. This will ensure construction worker are employed, planners and managers are employed

    Most project can be online within 3-6 months, the stimulus will hit our bank account and pay off my mortgage in April, so the lag is only 1-4 months. While our stimulus will go stright into paying off my mortgage (ie wasted)

    Infrastructure will directly pay for jobs.

    kukuru
    Liberal want in at Sept 07, but what is your point? The mess was not an Australian problem. The job of preventing us going into a recession starts after the November election. It was the job of the government in 2008 to keep us out of this mess we are in. Instead of stopping people spending for most of 2008 and grinding out economy to a halt, when the growth rate was good.

    We instead was increasing interest rate and scaring people into not spending (inflation genie is out of the bottle). This wracked the economy and caused job losses

  16. Steve, although I don’t think either side of politics are great managers of society or the economy, I also don’t think any political party even the US Republican’s want that for their citizens.

  17. dovif #15

    The Rudd govt is only describing reality. What would you prefer; that the govt treat us like mushrooms – keep us in the dark and feed us on bullsh*t?

    People watch the news. They now how bad this world economic crisis is. They also know that Australia is part of the world. So what’s the point of whistling Dixie and blindly hoping that everything will turn out OK?

  20. Now, would be an apt time for the National Party to tell us how their unfunded promises of almost $70 Billion fit into the scheme of things and which services would be axed if they are going to keep all their promises made to the electorate so far.

  21. Breaking news heard on Radio Courier Mail:

    Some LNP staffer has posted comments about Premier Bligh being u**y online.

    What a party of juvenile idiots.

  22. Yeah because of course one staffer making a comment online = a party of juvenile idiots.

    You’re the only one looking like an idiot.

  23. Ryan, get another bucket of popcorn out, it is all beginning to get entertaining.

    [A serial internet squatter who shot to infamy after buying the domain name BindiIrwin.com has been accused of meddling in the upcoming state election by “hijacking” two websites in the names of government ministers to help raise money for the Opposition.]

    http://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/news/queensland/hightech-highjinx-as-website-hijacked/2009/02/20/1234633046342.html

  25. Maybe I’m a pessimist, but I worry about Bligh going to an election so early. Look what happened to Carpenter. Moreover, the government is 11 years old and Bligh is trying to become the first elected female Premier. I know very little about the intricacies of QLD politics, but there is no Beattie there for Labor, there is the LNP, so I think this could turn into a close election.

  27. Looks like spence has tried to capitalise on it pretty solidly.

    It must be National Party sabotage!!

    Seems that all Labor MPs are being instructed to refer to the LNP as the National Party to try and alienate suburban voters. Whether it works, only time will tell.

  28. I think we are in much need of a poll. Everything is so different from the last election that making any prediction is almost impossible.

    Does anybody know if there is a relationship between past Brisbane Council results and past results at a state level in Brisbane? If there is a relationship it may help to predict the results in some seats.

  29. [Does anybody know if there is a relationship between past Brisbane Council results and past results at a state level in Brisbane? If there is a relationship it may help to predict the results in some seats.]
    I doubt it, isn’t the Brisbane Lord Mayer a Liberal?

  30. ShowsOn, he was until the Liberals capitulated to the Nations last year. Now it’s just easier to call them all Nationals as they are the dominant people with the numbers to have all the say.

  33. OMG! How backwards are LNP voters, they are arguing against water fluoridation!
    http://www.facebook.com/group.php?sid=68cb5b78585137ad2e79daa7db949f8c&gid=24853453365
    [Anna Bligh
    What a LIE!!
    Forced fluoridation is so SLY!]

    [That moron put Flouride (rat and cockroach poison) in our water. She did not bother to gogle it or listen to any of the protests.]

    They are like General Jack D. Ripper from Dr Strangelove:
    http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0057012/quotes
    [General Jack D. Ripper: Mandrake, do you recall what Clemenceau once said about war?]
    [Group Capt. Lionel Mandrake: No, I don’t think I do, sir, no.]
    [General Jack D. Ripper: He said war was too important to be left to the generals. When he said that, 50 years ago, he might have been right. But today, war is too important to be left to politicians. They have neither the time, the training, nor the inclination for strategic thought. I can no longer sit back and allow Communist infiltration, Communist indoctrination, Communist subversion and the international Communist conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids.]

  35. Bruce McIvor on ABC radio recently claimed the new Party has 13500 members. This is well down on the numbers claiming to be merged from the old parties. A few people seem to have walked away.

  36. WB,

    Please correct me but I live in the Greenslopes electorate & the current Labor member is Gary Fenlon.

    Has he been rolled by Cameron Dick? I’M CONFUSED.

    Regards…

    Aussieguru 01.

  37. The Duke Returns…

    In regards to comments #12 and #13, I think we can all agree on one thing about Father Kennedy. REMOVE HIM!

    Oh, and greetings to all once again!

  38. Guru;

    Fenlon retired, and Cameron Dick was selected as the new ALP candidate for the Greenslopes. No-one was rolled, at least publicly. I figure this more or less hands the seat back to the Tories. Their candidate in Greenslopes is a well known local cop, and he seems good quality.

  39. Ryan, what is it with the National Party and cops? I understand the Nationals candidate in Mulgrave is some sort of law and order fanatic who was a cop in England or so somesuch outpost in the past. Oh, hang on, the Fitzgerald Inquiry explained all that didn’t it?

  40. One Nation had a cop from Caboolture as their leader when they spectacularly imploded after being voted into parliament too. In the same era, another One Nation cop became the Member for Ipswich West and he achieved little too.

  41. There also was a curious Memorandum of Understanding the Police Union signed while campaigning actively against Labor in Mundingburra during a by election. Perhaps cops, conservative parties and the Queensland parliament are just not a good fit for democracy.

  42. [Seems that all Labor MPs are being instructed to refer to the LNP as the National Party to try and alienate suburban voters.]

    I saw an article where Springborg was complaining about that, he said that labor was deliberately shortening the name of the LNP to the Nationals to confuse people.

    That is how it was reported, but I’m not sure whether the paper kept shortening Liberal National Party to LNP or whether Springborg actually kept saying LNP. If its the later its quite funny and very Joh like.

  43. Castle it’s just an old marketing ploy. Kentucky Fried Chicken shortened their name to KFC because their product was about as attractive to customers as the National Party is to voters in Queensland.

  46. Foe all the hull-a-bahoo about Anna Bligh’s $1.5B forcast budget defecit, it is just a drop in the bucket compared with California and 46 other US States.

    [IT SEEMS almost unthinkable but California – the world’s 10th biggest economy, mecca for sunlovers, home of the Beach Boys, hippies and Hollywood – has just staved off insolvency after its legislature approved a plan to patch the $US42 billion ($66 billion) hole in the state’s finances.]

    [The state is not alone in facing the financial precipice. The Centre on Budget and Policy Priorities, a Washington think tank, estimates that 46 states will have shortfalls this financial year because of the worsening economy. One of the worst affected is New Jersey, whose Governor, Jon Corzine, has ordered all state employees to take two days unpaid leave.]

    http://www.smh.com.au/world/california-screaming-state-almost-broke-20090220-8dme.html?page=-1

  47. [the problem is people are not spending]

    That is exactly why SerfChoices was an economic disaster in the making. Cutting people’s pay, making them easier to sack, reduces their ability and willingness to spend.

    This would reduce business takings and business confidence, resulting in more SerfChoices paycuts and lay-offs. A vicious decreasing circle.

    The Liberals must have foreseen this, leading me to agree with Steve at number 11: they desire an economy for Australia that looks like this:

    http://www.nytimes.com/2009/02/20/nyregion/20food.html?_r=2&hp

  48. WorkChoices wasn’t about cutting peoples pay, you idiot.

    It was about freeing up the labour market so employers could hire and fire staff more easily. Basically, it was was intended to contribute to a lower unemployment rate.

    We can thank these imbeciles in Canberra for reversing a macroeconomic reform and increasing the costs of labour. When unemployment rises to new highs within the next 12-18 months we have these guys to thank for it.

    By the way, Cuppa, I presume you’re a unionist, make the most of these Luddite, economically illiterate laws while you can. When these juveniles get the boot they so justly deserve I’m looking forward to those evil IR laws being repackaged, reintroduced and union membership continuing to plummet.

  49. Of course it is about decreasing paypackets. That is exactly what happened to employees under SerfChoices “agreements”, who, in the overwhelming percentage of cases, lost pay and conditions.

    You might recall the Spotlight case, where workers “bargained away” pay and conditions in exchange for TWO CENTS PER HOUR. Spotlight said:

    [“We are doing what we were told to do by the legislators.”]
    http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,19259698-421,00.html

    [When unemployment rises to new highs within the next 12-18 months we have these guys to thank for it]

    Ever heard of the global financial crisis? Who’s the idiot?

    I hope you’re proud that you support the party that wants to cut your kids’ pay and conditions. (Again, who’s the idiot?)

  50. Cuppa, the major problem for both sides of politics is they don’t understand the economy, or at least the world economy. In the case of the Howard government they pushed our internal economy too hard durring the good times causing high inflation, high individual debt and an unsustainable standard of living. In the case of the Rudd government they are trying in the bad times to keep the unsustainable standard of living by putting the costs on the nations credit card. I wish we could find a government who could see further in the future than the next election.

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