As noted in the previous post, Essential Research has adopted Newspoll’s practice of consolidating material from surveys over an extended period to produce results on state voting intention from decent samples. These figures are remarkable in showing the Queensland government in an even worse position than their beleagured counterparts in New South Wales: primary votes are identical, with the Liberal National Party on 50 per cent and Labor on 29 per cent, but the two-party gap is an even wider 59-41, probably reflecting a lower Greens vote of 9 per cent.
Other Queensland happenings:
• The Courier-Mail reported last week that Anna Bligh had asked Attorney-General Cameron Dick to “assess whether confusion over different voting systems was driving a growing number of informal votes”, by way of preparing the groundwork for a return of compulsory preferential voting. Dick need do no more than cut-and-paste Possum’s post from Thursday, which demonstrated that optional preferential voting has indeed led confused voters to “just vote one” at federal elections in the states where it operates (New South Wales and Queensland), while reducing the number of informal votes at state elections. Wayne Goss’s Labor government introduced optional preferential voting in 1992 to make life difficult for the then-unmerged Coalition parties, and it served Labor particularly well during the One Nation interruption. However, Labor now lives in terror of the growing ranks of Greens voters taking the opportunity to exhaust their votes rather than pass them on to its increasingly unpopular state government. Kristina Keneally last week offered rhetorical support for Bligh’s move, and would no doubt be delighted to do the same if the NSW state constitution did not require that any change be endorsed by a referendum.
• Local paper The Reporter says Logan councillor John Grant has joined the Liberal National Party with a view to seeking preselection in Springwood, held for Labor by Barbara Stone on a margin of 4.1 per cent.
• Marissa Calligeros of Fairfax reports Logan councillor Hajnal Ban, who was ousted as Liberal National Party candidate for Forde ahead of the federal election, is hoping to revive her political career by seeking preselection for John Mickel’s seat of Logan.
If the LNP is successful in the next Queensland election and the Federal Coalition is not, does anyone think the Liberals and Nationals may combine at Federal level in the next 10 years or so?
It would be mildly amusing if JH was the last Liberal PM – I had hoped this would happen after 2007.
William,
You’ve missed the Brough Resurrection Shuffle.
OPV, to be fair, was recommended by the post Fitzgerald electoral and administrative reform commission, on principle. The majors had pledged to implement all such recommendations back in 89, though by the time of the 1992 overhaul I spose they could have wheedled out of it.
The LNP in Queesland are totally useless, a lot can happen in eighteen months!.
http://www.couriermail.com.au/news/queensland/mal-brough-targets-peter-slippers-seat-of-fisher-for-renewed-tilt-at-politics/story-e6freoof-1225948135973
I posted this in another thread re Brough. He has decided to stick with his Federal ambitions rather than State by the look of it.
Rocket Rocket comment 1. I don’t think the LNP thing will go federal. Whats more likely in the federal Coalition in the next 10 years is that the LNP, Nationals and CLP will simply become the Liberal Party of Australia. Liberal is the flagship party and brand of the federal Coalition, so they wouldn’t accept becoming the LNP and besides, the Nationals will be dead soon, so there is no point in having a long name like “the Liberal National Party of Australia”.
Why is Anna Bligh suddenly rabbiting on about gay marriage?
A desperate pitch for Green voters?
7
And/or their 2nd preferences (unless they do decide to end OPV)!