Friday miscellany: culture war edition (open thread)

Poll results on republicanism, Australia Day and boycotting Woolworths, plus Roy Morgan voting intention numbers and preselection latest.

Roy Morgan remains the only regularly reporting pollster to have returned for the year on voting intention, but Essential Research presumably isn’t far off. Past experience suggests it should be at least another week before Newspoll is back in the game. Which leaves us with:

UPDATE: There are now voting intention results for the YouGov poll mentioned below. Labor’s two-party lead is out to 52-48 from 51-49 in the final poll last year, from primary votes of Labor 32% (up three), Coalition 37% (steady), Greens 13% (down two), One Nation 7% (steady).

• This week’s Roy Morgan poll found Labor with a two-party lead of 51.5-48.5, after the Coalition led 51-49 upon the pollster’s return for the year a week ago. The primary votes were Labor 31.5% (up two-and-a-half), Coalition 37% (down two), Greens 12% (down one) and One Nation 4.5% (down half). The poll was conducted from a sample of 1727 last Monday to Sunday.

• Pollster DemosAU, which produced accurate polling on the Indigenous Voice referendum, has a poll showing strong support for a republic referendum in the next five years, but also that any given model for a republic will have a hard time ahead of it. On the former count, 47% said yes and 39% no, a notable contrast with Freshwater Strategy’s finding of 55% opposition to a referendum “now”. On the latter, “direct election with open nomination” trailed the status quo 38-41; “executive president/US model” trailed 35-43; “ARM ‘Australian choice’ model” trailed 32-45; the 1999 referendum proposal trailed 27-48; and the McGarvie model, for all its impeccable credentials, did worst of all at 27-49. The aforementioned are summaries of more detailed question wordings that can be found on the methodology statement. The poll was conducted January 8 to 12 from a sample of 1300.

• YouGov has an Australia Day themed poll finding 49% support for keeping the holiday as its present date, 21% for changing the date, and 30% favouring a “two-day public holiday that celebrates old and new”. Respondents were also which of three options was closest to their view concerning Peter Dutton’s call for a boycott of Woolworths and Big W: support for Dutton’s position, which scored 20%; support for Woolworths and Big W, which scored 14%; and “my main concern with supermarkets now is excessive price rises rather than this issue”, accounting for the remaining 66%. The poll was conducted Friday to Wednesday from a sample of 1532.

Other news:

Hayden Johnson of the Courier-Mail reports the by-election for Annastacia Palaszczuk’s seat of Inala simultaenously with Queensland’s local government elections on March 16, and that the Liberal National Party is expected to field a candidate for the safe Labor seat. Labor’s candidate is likely to be Margie Nightingale, former teacher and policy adviser to Treasurer Cameron Dick.

• Liberal preselection nominations have closed for Kooyong and Goldstein, where Josh Frydenberg and Tim Wilson were respectively defeated by teal independents in 2022. As previous reports indicated, Kooyong will be a four-way contest between Amelia Hamer, Susan Morris, Michael Flynn and Rochelle Pattison, with Hamer boasting the support of Frydenberg. In addition to Wilson and the previously reported Stephanie Hunt, the Goldstein preselection will also be contested by IPA research fellow Colleen Harkin. Rachel Baxendale of The Australian reports the preselections are likely to be held shortly after the Dunkley by-election.

Dan Jervis-Bardy of The West Australian reports Patrick Hill, Canning mayor and former police officer, and Howard Ong, a Singapore-born IT consultant, will seek Liberal preselection in Tangney, where the party suffered one of its worst defeats of the 2022 election at the hands of Labor’s Sam Lim. The report says the former member, Ben Morton, is understood to have ruled himself out. It also relates that Senator Michaelia Cash is marshalling support for Moore MP Ian Goodenough in the face of a preselection challenge from former Stirling MP Vince Connelly.

Monday miscellany (open thread)

A preselection opponent for Tim Wilson in Goldstein, update on the Queensland by-election for Annastacia Palaszczuk’s seat, and Eric Abetz announces a state comeback bid.

Three items of electoral relevance to emerge amidst the New Year news and polling drought:

Paul Sakkal of The Age reports Stephanie Hunt, corporate lawyer and former legal adviser to Julie Bishop and Marise Payne, will seek Liberal preselection for Goldstein, which Tim Wilson hopes to recover after losing to independent Zoe Daniel in 2022. Wilson remains the front-runner, in the estimation of a further report in The Age today.

Lydia Lynch of The Australian reports Margie Nightingale, former teacher and policy adviser to Treasurer Cameron Dick, is the front-runner to succeed Annastacia Palaszczuk in her seat of Inala, the by-election for which is “tipped to be held in March”. Palaszczuk’s former deputy chief-of-staff, Jon Persley, had long been mentioned as her likely successor, but he has withdrawn from contention, saying the party’s gender quota rules played a “big factor” in the decision.

Sue Bailey of the Sunday Tasmanian reports that veteran former Liberal Senator and conservative stalwart Eric Abetz will seek state preselection in the division of Franklin for an election due in June next year, assuming Jeremy Rockliff’s government is able to keep the show on the road that long.

New Year miscellany: Dunkley by-election, preselection and polling round-up (open thread)

First reports emerge of preselection contenders for the looming Dunkley by-election, plus state polls from Victoria and Queensland and much else besides.

First up, developments ahead of the Dunkley by-election, which Rachel Baxendale of The Australian reported yesterday was “unlikely to be held before late February”:

• A Liberal preselection ballot scheduled for January 14 is expected to include Frankston mayor Nathan Conroy; Donna Hope, who as Donna Bauer held the state seat of Carrum from 2010 to 2014 and is now an electorate officer to Chris Crewther, former federal member for Dunkley and now state member for Mornington; Bec Buchanan, another staffer to Crewther and the party’s state candidate for Carrum in 2022; and Sorrento real estate agent David Burgess, who was on the party’s Legislative Council ticket for Eastern Victoria in 2022.

Paul Sakkal of The Age today reports the widower of the late Labor member Peta Murphy, Rod Glover, is being encouraged to seek preselection by “senior Labor figures”. The report describes Glover as a “respected former staffer to Kevin Rudd, university professor and public policy expert”. Also mentioned in Rachel Baxendale’s report were Madison Child, an “international relations and public policy graduate in her mid twenties who grew up in Frankston”, and has lately worked as an electorate officer to Murphy; Georgia Fowler, a local nurse who ran in Mornington at the November 2022 state election; and Joshua Sinclair, chief executive of the Committee for Frankston and Mornington Peninsula.

Other preselection news:

• Tim Wilson has confirmed he will seek Liberal preselection to recover the Melbourne seat of Goldstein following his defeat at the hands of teal independent Zoe Daniel in 2022. Paul Sakkal of The Age reports he is “unlikely to face a challenger”.

Lydia Lynch of The Australian today reports nominations for Liberal National Party preselection will close on January 15 in the inner Brisbane seat of Ryan, which the party lost to Elizabeth Watson-Brown of the Greens in 2022, and the Gold Coast seat of McPherson, which will be vacated with the retirement of Karen Andrews. The front-runner in the former case is said to be Maggie Forrest, barrister and the party’s honorary legal adviser. In addition to the previously identified Ben Naday, Leon Rebello and David Stevens in McPherson (the first two being rated the front-runners) is Adam Fitzgibbons, head of public affairs at Coles. Party insiders are said to be “increasingly concerned” about the emergence of a “McPherson Matters” group that is preparing a teal independent bid for the seat.

Lily McCaffrey of the Herald-Sun reports Emanuele Cicchiello, deputy principal Lighthouse Christian College deputy principal, has been preselected as Liberal candidate for Aston, the Melbourne seat that was lost to the party in a historic by-election result on April 1. Cicchiello ran unsuccessfully in Bruce in 2013 and has made numerous other bids for preselection.

• Rochelle Pattison, chair of Transgender Victoria and director of corporate finance firm Chimaera Capital, has nominated for Liberal preselection in Kooyong, joining an existing field consisting of Amelia Hamer, Susan Morris and Michael Flynn.

• The New South Wales Liberal Party website records two unheralded federal election candidates in Sam Kayal, a local accountant who will again run in Werriwa following an unsuccessful bid in 2022, and Katie Mullens, conservative-aligned solicitor at Barrak Lawyers who ran for the state seat of Parramatta in March and has now been preselected for the federal seat of the same name.

Polling news:

• The Courier-Mail sought to read the temperature of Queensland politics post-Annastacia Palaszczuk without breaking the budget by commissioning a uComms robopoll, crediting the Liberal National Party opposition with a two-party lead of 51-49. The only detail provided on primary votes was that the LNP was on 36.2% and Labor 34.4% – no indication was provided as to whether this was exclusive of the uncommitted, which is often not the case withuComms. Steven Miles was viewed positively by 42.7% and negatively by 27.6%, with only the positive rating of 37.8% provided for David Crisafulli. A forced response question on preferred premier had Crisafulli leading Miles by 52.2-47.8. True to the Courier-Mail style guide, the report on this unremarkable set of numbers included the words “startling”, “explosive”, “whopping” and “stunning”. The initial report on Tuesday was accompanied by a hook to a follow-up that promised to tell “who Queenslanders really wanted as Annastacia Palaszczuk’s replacement”. The answer was revealed the next day to be Steven Miles, favoured by 37.8% over Shannon Fentiman on 35.0% and Cameron Dick on 27.1%. The poll was conducted December 21 and 22 from a sample of 1911.

• RedBridge Group has a poll of Victorian state voting intention showing Labor leading 55.9-44.1, little different to the 55.0-45.0 result at the November 2022 election. The primary votes are Labor 37% (36.7% at the election), Coalition 36% (34.5%) and Greens 13% (11.5%). Extensive further results include leadership ratings inclusive of “neither approve nor disapprove” option that find Jacinta Allan viewed positively by 24%, negatively by 30% and neutrally by 32%, John Pesutto at 16% positive, 36% neutral and 29% negative, and Greens leader Samantha Ratnam at 14% positive, 29% neutral and 35% negative. The poll was conducted December 2 to 12 from a sample of 2026.

• Nine Newspapers published results from Resolve Strategic on Thursday on whether various politicians were viewed positively, neutrally, negatively or not at all, which it had held back from its last national poll nearly a month ago. Whereas a similar recent exercise by Roy Morgan simply invited respondents to identify politicians they did and didn’t trust, this one took the to-my-mind more useful approach of presenting respondents with a set list of forty names. In the federal sphere, the five most positively rated were Penny Wong (net 14%, meaning the difference between her positive and negative results), Jacqui Lambie (10%), Jacinta Price (6%), David Pocock (5%) and Tanya Plibersek (3%). The lowest were Scott Morrison (minus 35%), Lidia Thorpe (minus 29%, a particularly remarkable result given what was presumably modest name recognition), Barnaby Joyce (minus 27%), Pauline Hanson (minus 25%) and, interestingly, Bob Katter (minus 15%). Of state leaders, Chris Minns (plus 14%) and David Crisafulli (plus 9%) did notably well, and John Pesutto (minus 7%) and the since-departed Annastacia Palaszczuk (minus 17%) notably poorly. The poll was conducted November 29 to December 3 from a sample of 1605.

Annastacia Palaszczuk resigns

Annastacia Palaszczuk’s departure after nearly nine years as Premier brings on a by-election and a potentially messy leadership contest.

Annastacia Palaszczuk has announced her imminent retirement from politics, two months short of her ninth anniversary as Premier of Queensland. This follows a period of mounting pressure on her leadership amid deteriorating opinion polls ahead of an election to be held on October 26. Palaszczcuk has endorsed Deputy Premier Steven Miles as her successor, but it appears that does not settle the matter, with one MP so far declaring support for Health Minister Shannon Fentiman. The parliamentary party has a strong incentive to settle on a consensus candidate, as a contested vote would require a process lasting several weeks in which equal weight would be given to votes of the caucus, affiliated unions and the party rank-and-file, a process that has never been tested since the state party introduced it a decade ago.

Both Miles and Fentiman are members of the Left, which commands a majority at state conference. However, the United Workers Union, and in particular its state secretary Gary Bullock, works as an individual source of power within it that has lately been allied with the Old Guard sub-faction of the Right (UPDATE: Comments feedback suggests categorising the Old Guard as part of the Right may be out of date – it has typically been identified as a third faction in recent times). The other sub-faction of the Right is the Labor Forum, dominated by the Australian Workers Union, which counts among its number Annastacia Palaszczuk and Treasurer Cameron Dick. In August, Dick took it upon himself to release a “blueprint” for how Labor could win the next election, which was widely seen as an effort to deal himself into the game. However, James Hall of the Courier-Mail assessed he would “find it challenging to secure sufficient support”.

Palaszczuk will resign as Premier later this week and from parliament next month, resulting in a by-election for her south-western Brisbane seat of Inala, which she retained in 2020 with a margin of 28.2%, making it Labor’s safest seat. It was also among the seven that remained to the party following its near annihilation at the 2012 election, which left Palaszczuk as the only plausible contender for the leadership of what remained of the parliamentary party. It has long been reckoned Palaszczuk’s successor in the seat would be her deputy chief-of-staff, Jon Persley. However, The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column noted in December that his candidacy would raise difficulties with affirmative action and the optics of imposing a political apparatchik on a multicultural electorate. Right faction sources identified an alternative in Nayda Hernandez, ward officer to local councillor Charles Strunk, who had “grassroots support”.

Resolve Strategic: LNP 37, Labor 33, Greens 12 in Queensland

A relatively positive poll result for state Labor in Queensland, plus a round-up of preselection news from the state over the past month.

The Brisbane Times has published one of its occasional slow-release polls on Queensland state voting intention that combine results from Resolve Strategic’s monthly polling, in this case going back to September with a combined sample of 940. Just as Resolve Strategic’s federal polling has become noted for being more favourable for Labor than its competitors, this one tells a relatively positive story for Annastacia Palaszczuk’s government, putting the LNP ahead of Labor by 37% (down one on the mid-year aggregation) to 33% (up one) with the Greens up a point to 12% and One Nation steady on 8%. This suggests a fairly even split on two-party preferred, for which Resolve Strategic does not provide a result. However, LNP leader David Crisafulli now leads Palaszczuk 39-34 as preferred premier, out from 37-36, and Palascszczuk’s “net likeability” rating has slipped further from minus 15 to minus 17, while Crisafulli is up from plus seven to plus nine.

Developments since the previous Queensland state post relating to an election due for October 26 next year:

• Rockhampton MP Barry O’Rourke announced last month that he will retire at the election. Biomedical engineer Craig Marshall had expressed interest in preselection, and has the support of O’Rourke and the Old Guard sub-faction of the Right. As The Australian’s Feeding the Chooks column puts it, O’Rourke “pulled a swifty, and didn’t let on publicly that he was retiring until after the expressions of interest for candidates closed”, a move that granted the “inside running” to Marshall.

The Australian reports the only Labor incumbent facing a preselection challenge is Stafford MP Jimmy Sullivan, who is up against Susan Lynch, “a one-time staffer of former Stafford incumbent Anthony Lynham”.

Hayden Johnson of the Courier-Mail reports the LNP has again preselected Marty Hunt, who held the seat from 2017 until his defeat in 2020 by Labor’s Rob Skelton, as its candidate for the Sunshine Coast seat of Nicklin. Gold Coast councillor Hermann Vorster has been confirmed as the candidate for Burleigh, which will be vacated with the retirement of LNP incumbent Michael Hart.

The Australian reported last month that polling for the Together public sector union showed Labor on track to lose its three Townsville seats of Townsville, Mundingburra and Thuringowa to the LNP and the inner Brisbane seats of Bulimba, Cooper and McConnel to the Greens, but maintaining leads in the Brisbane marginals of Aspley and Mansfield and the seats in and around Cairns.

YouGov: 52-48 to LNP in Queensland

Another poll finds the tide ebbing out on the Palaszczuk government, plus a panoply of news relevant to a state election now exactly a year away.

The Courier-Mail reports a YouGov poll of state voting intention Queensland, its first such in six months, has the Liberal National Party opposition leading Labor 52-48 on two-party preferred, out from 51-49 in the previous poll. The LNP is up two points on the primary vote to 41%, with Labor and the Greens steady on 33% and 13% and One Nation down two to 8%. Annastacia Palaszczuk records poor personal ratings, her approval down eight to 32% and disapproval up eleven to 52%, while Opposition Leader David Crisafulli is up to six to 37% and down one to 26%. Crisafulli has opened up a 37-35 lead as preferred premier, reversing Palaszczuk’s 31-29 lead last time, with a notable reduction in uncommitted.

Also featured are a series of questions gauging more specific reactions to Palaszczuk, and while 44% rate that she has been a good Premier compared with 37% who disagree, the other results break strongly against her: on negative questions, 55-26 for out of touch, 54-23 for out of ideas, 49-29 to the much-promoted line that she “prefers red carpet events to working hard for Queenslanders”; on positive ones, 34-46 for working hard to tackle key issues and 34-35 for Labor’s best chance to win the next election. The poll was conducted a little while back, from October 4 to 10, with a sample of 1013.

UPDATE (27/10): The Courier-Mail today has further results from the poll, including a finding that 15% say they would be more likely to vote Labor if Annastacia Palaszczuk were replaced, 10% less likely and 61% no difference. A question on who respondents felt would make Labor’s best replacement for Palaszczuk did not prove too productive, with Steven Miles on 10%, Shannon Fentiman and Cameron Dick each on 8%, “someone else” on 22% and uncommitted at 52%. Among Labor voters, Miles scored 17%, Dick 14% and Fentiman 10%.

There has been a mounting accumulation of news concerning an election now under a way since the previous post on a Queensland poll in August, all but a bit of which involves Liberal National Party preselection:

Continue reading “YouGov: 52-48 to LNP in Queensland”

Weekend miscellany: Voice and Queensland polls, Liberal Senate preselections (open thread)

Bad news for the Indigenous Voice and Queensland Labor from RedBridge Group, and three doses of Liberal Senate preselection news, including Marise Payne’s looming casual vacancy.

We should be due for the monthly Resolve Strategic poll next week, followed shortly by a New South Wales state result, and there’s no telling when something might pop up on the Indigenous Voice front. For the time being, there is the following news to relate:

• Two reports on RedBridge Group polls in the News Corp papers today, one showing the Indigenous Voice headed for a 61-39 defeat nationally after the exclusion of 15% persistently undecided, the other putting the LNP ahead 55-45 on state voting intention in Queensland. Primary votes in the latter case were LNP 41%, Labor 26% and Greens 14% (UPDATE: Further detail from the ABC). The former poll was conducted at some point following Anthony Albanese’s announcement of the October 14 date the Thursday before last, the latter was conducted August 26 to September 6 from a sample of 2012.

• New South Wales Liberal Senator Marise Payne has announced she will retire from parliament on September 30. Two names are dominating speculation about the vacancy: Nyunggai Warren Mundine, presently enjoying an elevated profile as a public face of the Indigenous Voice no campaign, and Andrew Constance, former state government minister and narrowly unsuccessful candidate for Gilmore at the May 2022 election. Liberal sources said Mundine would enjoy strong support from conservatives and Alex Hawke’s centre right, and would “even peel off moderate voices”. The Australian further reports Catholic Schools NSW chief executive Dallas McInerney could again be in a preselection mix, although some doubted he was “a realistic candidate, particularly given his affiliation to the ‘imploded’ Perrottet/Tudehope right faction”. Further possibilities named by the Sydney Morning Herald are “former RSL head James Brown and Jess Collins”.

• Liberal sources cited by Alexi Demetriadi of The Australian say it is now considered unlikely that Scott Morrison will vacate his seat of Cook before the next election. Cook is a notable exclusion from the list of seats where the New South Wales Liberals are proceeding to preselection, together with Mackellar, where it is speculated that the way is being left open for an attempted comeback by Jason Falinski. An imminent preselection would present an obstacle to Falinksi given his present role as state party president.

Matthew Denholm of The Australian reports Clarence mayor Brendan Blomeley and Hobart alderman Simon Behrakis will seek preselection for the two winnable positions on the Tasmanian Liberal Senate ticket. This involves challenging incumbents Richard Colbeck and Claire Chandler, though Behrakis “is understood to be content with the No. 3 spot, should party preselectors prefer to favour the two incumbents”. Both prospective challengers are conservatives, but Behrakis is associated with Senator Jonathan Duniam and Blomeley with rival powerbroker Eric Abetz. The issue will be decided by the party’s 67-member preselection committee on November 25.

Shane Wright of the Age/Herald made the case last week for an enlarged parliament, a subject that appears likely to be addressed when the Joint Standing Committee on Electoral Matters completes its two-stage inquiry into the 2022 election. A motion carried at Labor’s recent national conference calling for the Australian Capital Territory and Northern Territory to go from two Senators to six prompted opposition Senate leader Simon Birmingham to call for the government to rule out changes to the parliament or electoral system before the next election.

Resolve Strategic: LNP 38, Labor 32, Greens 11 in Queensland

Further signs of weakening in state Labor’s position in Queensland, including a statistical tie on the question of preferred premier.

The Brisbane Times has published a set of Queensland voting intention numbers compiled over long range from four sets of Resolve Strategic’s monthly national polling, achieving a sample of 947 from a period running from mid-May through to last week. It adds to an impression from other polling this year by YouGov and Freshwater Strategy that Labor is likely to struggle at an election to be held in October next year, with the Liberal National Party opposition opening a primary vote lead of 38% to 32% after trailing by 35% to 33% in the period from January to April. The Greens are down a point to 11%, One Nation is up one to 8%, and a generic independent category is down two to 8%.

As always, Resolve Strategic does not provide a two-party preferred result, but a judicious estimate of four-fifths of Greens preference to Labor plus two-fifths of everybody else’s comes out at 51.5-48.5 in favour of the LNP, a swing of about 4.5% compared with the result in 2020. David Crisafulli also records a 38-37 lead over Annastacia Palaszczuk as preferred premier, after trailing 39-31 last time, and his name recognition is up ten points to 68%, with Palaszczuk on 96%. Palaszczuk’s “net likeability” has gone from plus 8% late last year to minus 5% early this year to minus 15% in the latest result, while Crisafulli has tracked from plus 8% to plus 1% to plus 7%.

Now to other electorally relevant news from the Sunshine State, encompassing the Brisbane lord mayoral election in March and everything I’ve been able to ascertain so far about preselection for the state election:

• Labor has announced Tracey Price, Brisbane lawyer and sewing shop owner, as its candidate for the Brisbane lord mayoralty when local government elections are held on March 16 next year. The LNP incumbent, Adrian Schrinner, who has held the post since 2019 and was re-elected in 2020, is seeking another term. The LNP has held the lord mayoralty since Campbell Newman’s win in 2004, together with majorities on council since 2008.

• In April, Labor state secretary Kate Flanders said the new affirmative action rules requiring female candidates in 45% of seats held by the party could only be met if three currently serving men made way at the next election. One such will be Jim Madden, who announced he would not seek re-election in Ipswich West after weathering bullying allegations. The Australian reported others who might be “tapped” included Sandgate MP Stirling Hinchliffe and Ferny Grove MP Mark Furner, both ministers and members of the Right, and Toohey MP Peter Russo, who like Madden is a back-bencher and a member of the Left. A further report from The Australian in April said that Wendy Bourne, Annastacia Palaszczuk’s “caucus liaison”, was “positioned as a likely replacement” for Madden in Ipswich West. Madden defected from the Right to the Left before the last election, whereas Bourne has recently done the reverse.

• In pursuit of David Crisafulli’s target of seven women candidates four the fourteen seats identified as decisive at the next election, a number of preselections have been rolled out well in advance of an election to be held next October. In the most recent case, local mayor Clare Stewart was preselected unopposed last weekend for Noosa, a normally conservative seat that has been held since 2017 by independent Sandy Bolton.

• The LNP unveiled three women as candidates in March: Yolonde Entsch, founding director of charity Wheels of Wellness and wife of veteran federal Leichhardt MP Warren Entsch, in Cairns; Natalie Marr, real estate agent and former Townsville councillor, in Thuringowa; and Rebecca Young, managing director of Personalised Freight Solutions Global and former president of the local Chamber of Commerce, in Redlands. Entsch received unwelcome publicity in June over Indigenous grants awarded to her private company under the previous federal government.

• With the imminent retirement of incumbent Mark Robinson, the LNP preselection for the Redland City seat of Oodgeroo is developing into a high-profile preselection contest involving two former federal parliamentarians – Amanda Stoker, who failed to win re-election to the Senate last year and now hosts a show on Sky News, and Andrew Laming, who bowed out last year as member for Bowman, which he had held since 2004 – together with Daniel Hobbs, ordained Anglican priest and former staffer to Barnaby Joyce.

Lydia Lynch of The Australian reported in January that the LNP preselection for the Sunshine Coast seat of Caloundra, which Labor won for the first time in 2020, was expected to pit Alister Eiseman, a local car salesman, against Kendall Morton, former director of Home Care Assistance Sunshine Coast. The report said David Crisafulli was favouring Morton in pursuit of his target of women candidates, but that he was loath to push the issue out of fear of prompting the kind of local membership backlash that repeatedly thwarted Dominic Perrottet’s efforts to recruit women in New South Wales.

The Australian reported in June that Gold Coast councillor Hermann Vorster was expected to be the LNP’s candidate for Burleigh, with unidentified sources tipping the imminent retirement of Michael Hart, who has held the seat for the party since 2012.