Couple of things:
• I haven’t yet watched yesterday’s leaders debate (which can be viewed in full at the Brisbane Times site), but not many observers are crediting the Channel Nine worm operators’ 76-24 decision in favour of Anna Bligh. Rather, the consensus seems to be that it was the usual scoreless draw. Campbell Newman did not repeat his error from the Ashgrove candidates’ debate of refusing to shake his opponent’s hand.
• Michael Madigan of the Courier-Mail offers polling figures for leading Katter’s Australian Party candidates without saying where they came from – presumably from internal ReachTEL automated phone polling which was referred to in yesterday’s edition of the paper. In Mount Isa, Robbie Katter is said to be leading LNP candidate Mick Pattel 37 per cent to 31 per cent, with Labor incumbent Betty Kiernan apparently gone for all money, while the LNP-turned-KAP member for Beaudesert, Aidan McLindon, is said to be on 37 per cent to LNP candidate Jon Krause’s 38 per cent.
• The Courier-Mail reports that what appears to be Labor push-polling has been conducted to sow doubts in voters’ minds about the influence of “big business and developers”. What is particularly of interest is that it has been happening in Labor’s ninth-safest seat of Nudgee, where Labor newcomer Leanne Linard is defending a 14.3 per cent margin after the retirement of Neil Roberts. Both Anna Bligh and the party’s state secretary, Anthony Chisholm, have denied knowledge of the polling, which has reportedly been conducted by market research firm Ask Australia.
• The seat-level implications of the weekend’s Galaxy poll are plotted out by Kim Jamieson at Crikey.
Yes, picking the next election result will definitely be harder than picking this one! I still think the assumption has to be that the LNP will not be at risk till 2018/19.
Ashgrove was a gutsy choice, but I suspect the Qld LNP think they have a decade to re-jig things the way they like, and that seats like Ashgrove will ‘take a jump to the right’ (to badly mangle a famous phrase) in terms of their TPP baselines. Even if that doesn’t happen, he has the sophomore effect not just the premier effect in 2015, so again it is likely to be 2018/2019 when he would be at threat to lose his seat (I am pretty confident he will win Ashgrove on Sat of course!)
Remember that there’s no Upper House in the QLD Parliament, so after Saturday, Newman and his LNP government will have unprecedented power and no Labor opposition of any magnitude to go against them.
And Labor might have so few lower house MPs left that Bligh presumably will have to stay on as Opposition Leader, at least in the short term(because just about every other experienced minister will have either retired or lost his/her seat).
Von Kirsdarke Ashgrove is the type of seat that usually goes with the party in government and has spent long terms with both sides of politics. It’s just as likely Newman would increase his margin even against a swing back to Labor. Of course they could find him a safer seat in the meantime.
Basically Newman got Ashgrove because there were a scarcity of safe LNP metropolitan seats where the sitting member was willing to sacrifice.
@Mod Lib #38:
No, I’m pretty sure it was LNP or at least a sympathetic group. Don’t imagine that the ALP polling would include a question along the lines of “Given that the ALP has badly mismanaged Queensland’s economy … isn’t Campbell Newman great?”.
TLM we have had many years of Labor with absolute power. We’ll survive ok 🙂
Clive may yet be able to snatch defeat out of the jaws of victory:
http://www.theage.com.au/queensland/cia-threatens-australian-coal-industry-palmer-20120320-1vhi7.html
WeWantPaul #25 said
As for the difference between dodgy and criminal just look at the usual conservative / Labor double standard here were the conservatives can actually be convicted of a crime and it is all ok, and if Labor even looks a bit less that a saint it is ‘corrupt’. It is a deliberate and deliberately misleading spin by the conservatives and morons who buy their talking points without engaging their brains.
What do you think of Thompson, he has actually been found to have done wrong by Audit and his own union. Is that a deliberate and deliberately misleading spin by the conservatives?
Those in glass house should not throw stones
Dovif,
An audit is an inanimate object. It does not have the ability to to project guilt or innocence, love or hate and right or wrong. It’s purview is to measure whether columns and rows add up and/or whether stipulated procedures were followed correctly or incorrectly.
So your comment re Mr Thomson above is just wrong.
I saw a bit of ABC Breakfast – yeah I know – and their claim was that ALP is going to get a canning, esp Toowomba because people are unhappy with Labor regarding the floods.
Of course, in true ABC style – they didn’t say why or anything to back the assertion.
Is it true that Qlders blame Labor for
a) the floods (surely they’re not that bloody stupid)?
b) handling of the floods?
And if b) is true, where did Labor fail?
Bad news for ALP is that Qld is a naturally conservative state: since WW2 has voted Labor federally only in 1961, 1983, 1990 & 2007. Now that Qld conservatives have finally got their act together Labor faces uphill road.
David McRae if Labor loses it will have little to do with the floods. The ABC must have been having a bad day to report that.
[Now that Qld conservatives have finally got their act together Labor faces uphill road.]
What you mean is a 1 man band and a bunch of hasbeens?.
He’s too full of himself for my liking!.
Put up a new post overnight, so I’m belatedly closing this thread.