From my paywalled contribution to Crikey yesterday:
Opinion polls have shown the major parties to be running neck and neck for most of the Palaszczuk government’s time in office, but a poll trend analysis points to a break in Labor’s favour in recent months, with all pollsters but ReachTEL crediting them with a slight lead. However, betting markets slightly favour the LNP, which presumably reflects a bullish assessment of One Nation’s chances of holding the balance of power.
Since then though, Sportsbet has gone from having the LNP as very slight favourites to having Labor on $1.75 and the LNP on $2. Ladbrokes’ odds moved around a bit yesterday, but consistently had the LNP just ahead, currently on $1.83 to $1.95 for Labor.
Some events of the past few days have required updates to my election guide:
Pumicestone (notional LNP 0.1%): Labor’s last-minute replacement for Rick Williams is Michael Hoogwaerts, a Bribie Island State High School teacher whose awkward showing at his media conference got air time on last night’s television news. Williams’ disendorsement on Friday was a large part of the rationale for the election being called. He had been a persistent source of bad news for his party since he gaining the seat for it in 2015, the most recent episode involving allegations he had threatened the owner of a local newspaper. This followed earlier allegations of past criminal activity, court action over his refusal to pay water and rates bills in 2013 and 2014, and a series of disputes with constituents. Nonetheless, he survived the party’s candidate suitability panel process and was not challenged for preselection, which some put down to fear he might imperil the government by moving to the cross bench. This fear has proved to be well founded, as Williams announced he would contest the seat as an independent.
Ipswich (Labor 16.0%): One Nation has a high-profile late entrant to its campaign in the shape of Malcolm Roberts, who followed up his Senate disqualification by announcing he would run for the party in Ipswich. The electorate looms large in party mythology as the original home of Pauline Hanson, though it is not in fact a particularly easy target. The party did not win the seat in 1998, and it recorded roughly 14% of the Senate vote locally last year, a solid but unspectacular result. Roberts’ targeting of the seat may partly have been informed by the fact that the party had yet to endorse a candidate.
Logan (Labor 16.0%) and Capalaba (Labor 6.5%): One Nation’s state leader, Steve Dickson, says the party will target the Labor-held seats of Logan and Capalaba. Logan’s expansion into Brisbane’s semi-rural outskirts indeed provide the party with a reasonable base of support there, but what the party sees in Capalaba is harder to fathom. Likewise, TheCourier-Mail‘s account of seats where the party stands to make its mark combine genuine prospects with a few head-scratchers, such as Pine Rivers, where its Senate vote last year barely topped 5%.
The Courier Mail is a Murdoch Paper and it’s uncontested in Queensland, so they can get away with a lot , they engage in conservative favourable puff pieces like today’s and the misleading anti-left wing hit puff pieces*. PHON is precisely the type of thing who’s potentially success they like to over state.
* They really hated Larissa Waters a lot.
Going to be watching that closely. If Ladbrokes keeps the odds where they are, and Sportsbet adjusts a bit further, say to $2.10 for Liberals, you could:
Put $52 on Labor with Ladbrokes and $48 on Liberals with Sportsbet.
If Labor win, you’d get $49.4 profit from Ladbrokes and lose $48 to Sportsbet.
If Liberals win, you’d lose $52 to Ladbrokes and win $52.8 from Sportsbet.
The best kind of gambling.
Queensland politics remains as classy as ever. LNP candidate is sending out Postal Vote Application forms in Queensland Electoral Commission colors, in fairness the applications seem to go directly to the relevant authority rather than his office (as is often the case with these things)) . The main purpose seems to be to get you to read the included self stumping letter + that the LNP tends to do better off postal votes than Labor.
The LNP election themes seem to be cost of living (energy prices and rego particularly) and unemployment.
The letter I got also specifically mentions keeping using renewables and solar (as well as coal of course) but I’d suspect that’s a tailoring to this Electorate. Also weirdly enough in what seem to be the electorate tailored sub dot points is mention of roads / dams / infrastructure across Queensland which is odd for McConnell which is very inner city. I’m guessing it’s something the local candidate genuinely thinks is important ?
test
The madness of the Adani Labor deal is well spelled out here. Will it cost Labor government? Credibility is long gone.
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2017/nov/01/the-adani-problem-will-haunt-palaszcsuks-election-campaign
“The LNP election themes seem to be cost of living (energy prices and rego particularly) and unemployment.”
Surely Labor will point out the main problem with cost of living has been Federal energy policy?
It’ll be interesting to see what some of the first polling of the campaign would have to say at this stage.
The extraordinary nature of PHON and Malcolm Roberts is well summed up in this response to the news that Roberts’ former media adviser has been charged with rape:
“”While it’s terrible that Pauline and I are subjected to lies and smears to try and discredit us politically, it’s totally unacceptable that when they can’t find dirt on us the media go after our staff,” Mr Roberts said in a Facebook post.”
https://www.brisbanetimes.com.au/politics/federal/malcolm-roberts-adviser-sean-black-charged-with-rape-20171101-gzcf4t.html
Its a conspiracy against conspiracy theorists?
A small point that might give a skipped heartbeat to a few people. For updating one’s enrolment there is this page on the ECQ site http://www.ecq.qld.gov.au/voters-and-voting/enrolment which quickly tells you to go to the AEC pages, because of couse the AEC maintains the joint rolls. The AEC server is somewhere south of the border (ay, yi yi yi!) and is of course showing Daylight Shiting Time. My son happened to notify his new address just on 5pm yesterday and the AEC told him it had received it at 6.00pm and given effect to it at 6.01pm. He thought “what if I’d done it just before the deadline of 5pm on Friday?” The AEC would record that as say, 5.59pm. We are both wondering if the ECQ and AEC have made allowance for this, so that everything done up to 6.00pm by the AEC’s clock is transferred to the Queensland rolls. I have asked the ECQ to confirm that things done online in the final hour will show on their new rolls, but have received no answer so far.
Oh for an error-correction facility. Daylight ShiFting Time!!!
Seth, everybody is always conspiring against them. That’s how you recognise conspiracy theorists. Psychiatrists have another word for that of course.
“You can get divorced from reality but you don’t get half of everything!” (Credit to my son Sam for that one!)
The anti-Adani factor will hurt Labor I think. People I’ve spoken to just seem to want to punish Labor even though the other side will make it easier for Adani and every other polluter to wreck havoc. Just doesn’t seem rational to me.
Yes the Adani factor will affect labor badly in some city seats. The ones to watch are:
Maiwar where it is conceivable the Greens could win. Labor has a really, really excelent candidate whuch will help but, given Adani it is quite possible Greens could still edge above Labor and possibly deliver the seat to the Greens.
Kate Jones in Ashgrove will also suffer a bit but here popularity and “known” status should keep her ahead of the Greens comfortably.
Will post onthe others but not sure if this system will allow me to backtrack
The other two seats where the Greens could cause an upset are South Brisbane and McConnel.
In the case of South Brisbane, Jackie Trad is also Planning Minister and has copped quite a bit. As the seat gentrifies the older Greek voters will move out and younger Green leaning voters will move in.
MCConnell is also a bit of a problem ans it is rapidly becoming Greens inner city smashed avocado territory. Grace Grace has connections with the Italian community, but again this is weakening as the demographics change.
Reporting in from NorthQ.
Labor will lose Townsville and Thuringowa to LNP.
After 20 years of the essentially same undelivered promises from both parties these two seats will continue to flip.
Reasons? Record unemployment, dropping house prices and an uncaring attitude from the far away southern government that believes “Ipswich” is regional.
A good amount of one nation seats will make QLD very interesting
William if you can setup a paypal account that I can pay into, I will glady support you monthly
“The Queensland government will veto Adani’s application for a $1bn commonwealth loan to build a rail line for its massive Carmichael mine, Annastacia Palaszczuk has said.” – https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2017/nov/03/palaszczuk-says-she-will-veto-federal-adani-loan-as-she-accuses-lnp-of-smear
If voters believe her Labor could have a chance of forming government, still demonstrates bad judgment thats its taken her this long to read the mood of the people.