Campbell Newman should give Anna Bligh a ministry

A historic election tomorrow with the first ever victory by an organisation called the Liberal National Party in the state where it was founded. Queensland may not be the template for a conservative party merger but its stunning success will make the rest of the country take notice. I said in January the LNP would win comfortably and my then prediction of 13 seats to Labor now looks on track. (photo of Anna Bligh in Mitchell: Derek Barry)

Yet by March there was a bit of a narrowing and I doubted my own prediction. When I did the seat by seat Crikey poll on 13 March, my results were LNP 55, ALP 28 (including Ashgrove) and Independents 6. This still would have amounted to a handsome win for the LNP though tainted by the polls showing Kate Jones was ahead of the presumptive premier Campbell Newman.

Now just ten days later, that forecast appears hopelessly optimistic for the Labor and I won't be winning the Crikey comp. The tainted polls on Newman have been wiped away as is possibly the Queensland Labor Party itself. Labor's rump of 11 to 15 seats leaves hardly any ministerial talent and precious little room to grow in the near future.

Anna Bligh will be one of the few to survive but almost certain to take responsibility for the crushing loss and resign the leadership. Kim Jameson is tipping Annastacia Palaszczuk to be leader of the rump. Jones won’t survive in Ashgrove where the Newman polls have swung almost 10 percent and he is favourite again to get in as Premier. He may have a dislikeable glass jaw but there is no doubting his cojones in taking on a difficult seat and winning. He will owe nothing to his powerbrokers, many of whom would not have mourned his loss.

Because of this, Newman will have a lot of personal power when dealing out the spoils of office. He will lead a huge party with much jostling for position and granting of favours. He is guaranteed at least three terms of office to entrench that power. So here is an out of left field suggestion for him: Offer Anna Bligh a job.

The worst that could happen is that she refuses it, finding it too hard to work for a government she fought hard to resist. Newman would not lose any face and could get on with the largesse. But if somehow she agreed to take a role, the incoming government would be able to make a big statement of intent about inclusiveness and incorporation of ideas of the best people in the state.

Though neither side would admit it, their philosophies are broadly similar with a small tendency for Labor to prefer inclusion over wealth creation with an equally marginal tendency the other way for the LNP. Queensland Labor’s time is now up. In power for all but two of the last 20 years, voters are tired and want a change. That impression has been hammered home by a relentless advertising campaign powered by a huge budget that only winners attract. Newman is not exactly charismatic but has milked his “can do” reputation to the hilt to persuade enough people he will be a better leader.

Yet it will be a hard act to follow. I’ve met Bligh on a number of occasions on her visits to Roma and Mitchell and she is impressive in action. In every situation I’ve seen her in, she has always struck me as the one in charge and the master of every brief. Watching her from afar in last year’s 2010-2011 flooding, she was an effective commander-in-chief, overshadowing the Prime Minister in her visits to Brisbane.

There is also no doubting Bligh’s personal energy and commitment to Queensland, again on first hand observation. In any speech I heard her give, her vision always came around to getting a wealthy future for all Queenslanders. As such she saw the positives in coal seam gas while looking for ways to control the negative impacts. Newman won't change much because he too will rely on the royalties from this massive industry to pay Queensland's debt. There is no way a moratorium will ever be imposed on the industry.

Meanwhile Bligh has led the state through a succession of natural disasters that have emptied the state coffers as quickly as CSG is filling them. Where the gas is mined here in the Maranoa (a council region bigger than Togo or Croatia), the road damage bill alone is well north of $100 million with much of the devastation of the most recent floods last month still unaccounted for. It is reasonable to assume Mother Nature has not finished punishing her errant children and further severe storms in the years ahead are likely if the latest Bureau of Meteorology/CSIRO guide to the weather is correct.

So I could think of no better person to lead the Queensland Reconstruction Authority (or whatever it is renamed to in the LNP era) than Anna Bligh. The role has been filled by army personnel so it is reasonably non-political. There is no doubt that Bligh would throw herself into the ministry with the same gusto she finished the campaign on with 50 seats in a week (ours was one of the missing 39) and a laundry list of Love’s Labor’s Lost at the death.

As the first elected female Premier in Australia, Anna Bligh’s reputation will only grow after she leaves power. People will forget the failures of her watch, most of which were inherited from Peter Beattie. Instead they will remember a likeable and very able leader. The Newman at the current helm should capitalise on this in his moment of greatest power and offer her a ministry.

Queensland election 2012: Bligh to go down with the ship

With everyone expecting the good ship Labor to sink without trace in this year’s Queensland state election, the biggest unknown is the timing. Anna Bligh made history in the 2009 election by being the first woman to win a poll outright at state level. But it seems highly unlikely she will be Premier for much longer. Most polls are predicting at least a 10 percent swing against Labor which if applied uniformly would mean the loss of 38 seats and remaining with just a rump of 13 seats in an 89-seat parliament. (photo: Derek Barry)

There may be some narrowing between now and polling date but not enough to change the outcome. The election defeat is less a matter of if than when. Legally Anna Bligh can wait until 16 June before calling the election but it is unlikely she will hold out to the bitter end, however tempting it might be. As former premier Peter Beattie argued last week, such a strategy would allow LNP leader Campbell Newman to run an campaign against the government, claiming its time up for the people to decide the future of Queensland. “The government would be seen to be running scared if there was a delayed election and a winning momentum would move solidly to Newman and the LNP,” Beattie said. He said Bligh needs to go before the third anniversary on 21 March.

The problem is that this year is also the end of the four year terms of Queensland councils. Electoral Commission Queensland has to manage both elections and wants a clear six-week gap between them so they can best manage their finite resources. Nearly everyone in local government and media is convinced the Council elections are happening on Saturday, 31 March yet I have seen no formal statement to that effect by the ECQ (whose website merely says “March 2012” or the State Government.

In a New Year’s Day article in the Courier-Mail, Darrel Giles was convinced the council election would be on 31 March which would mean no state election between 18 February and 12 May. But electoral commissioner David Kerslake denies this 6-week window in the same article and I cannot imagine Bligh accepting such a demand, no matter how well meaning. An election on the same day would be too big a logistical headache and might remind some angry voters who foisted the unpopular council amalgamations on them.

But a four weeks’ gap is not beyond the ECQ's ability to manage. Saturday, March 3 is seven weeks away and gives enough time to Labor to nut out their election strategy and announce candidates in each electorate before running a three or four week campaign. The Queensland ALP website is surprisingly silent on candidate details with only a list of sitting members and the “renew for 2012” option taking you to a membership form. Here in Roma the party have yet to announce a candidate for the seat of Warrego, which is one of the safest LNP seats in Queensland (though won by Labor as recently as 1974). It seems clear Labor will be investing all its resources into defending sitting members rather than encouraging new talent to take on other seats.

Such a strategy seems wise enough given the need to contain a heavy defeat. Antony Green’s December analysis mapped the 2010 Federal Election result onto state seats and even with the caveat State Labor do better than Federal Labor in Queensland, the news is grim. Green expects Labor to be wiped out on the Gold Coast and in Cairns, lose two of three in Townsville, and also lose Cook, Mount Isa and Whitsunday. He said Labor would also lose many seats in western Brisbane, and key seats in the south-east corridor to the Gold Coast and north towards the Sunshine Coast.

The prospect of such a landslide has left Campbell Newman in the pretty position of not having to sell many policies to win. Newman’s biggest asset is he has not been in Government 20 of the last 22 years. His LNP website rebadged cornily as Can Do Queensland is bursting with news and information about fresh-faced candidates, many of whom will soon become first-time parliamentarians. But the policies such as “build a four pillar economy” are light on detail about what exactly they would do differently in areas such as tourism, CSG, the environment and education. Newman can afford to deal in generalities and be a small target while Labor faces the hostility of an electorate fed up with its longevity, geed on by a media that wants to see a change of government.

Larvatus Prodeo's Mark Bahnisch would not be among those wanting a change of government but even he concedes its likelihood in a series of perceptive posts exploring the lie of the land in the lead up to the election. I agree with most of his conclusions except when he says a Newman failure in Ashgrove would mean an implosion of the LNP state wide campaign will almost necessarily follow.

It is entirely possible the LNP could win by a landslide and yet fail to take Ashgrove. Kate Jones is proving a skilful and dangerous opponent. She knows the territory and quit cabinet to focus on retaining her seat. The news One Nation is putting up a candidate, shows it will be unpredictable and may act as a "first past the post" contest. Kate Jones is popular – particularly among the young and the greens who are likely to give her a strong second preference - despite optional preferential voting. If only another 30 or 40 jaded looking Labor members had her enthusiasm, then defeat might not be a fait accompli.

A Newman at the helm of Queensland's LNP

An extraordinary week in Queensland State Opposition politics has ended with Brisbane Mayor Campbell Newman being catapulted to LNP leader despite not being in parliament. The current leader and his deputy, John-Paul Langbroek and Lawrence Springborg, resigned their positions today leaving Jeff Seeney as “leader of opposition business” in parliament. Newman prompted their resignations by declaring two hours earlier he would stand for the Brisbane seat of Ashgrove held by Labor Climate Change Minister Kate Jones. Newman said if successfully preselected for that seat, he would challenge Langbroek for the leadership. Seeing the writing on the wall, Langbroek fell on his sword. Newman’s elevation to leader-in-waiting as a non-MP is unprecedented in Australian politics. (photo: Tony Moore)

Premier Anna Bligh reacted to the news at a media conference by accusing Newman of abandoning the people of Brisbane and she also hinted at an early election. “What I see in Campbell Newman is a man who when his city faced its worst disaster, when families across our suburbs are in shells of homes, Campbell Newman decided to cut and run when people needed him most,” Bligh said. “What I say to the people of Queensland is that I will never cut and run when you need me.”

Bligh used the phrase “cut and run” five times in the interview setting the tone for a likely plan of attack during the election. With three year terms in Queensland, the next election is due by 2012. But with Council elections mandatory in March 2012, the likelihood was always that Bligh would go early to avoid any residual taint from the loathed forced council amalgamations of 2007. Tanking in the opinion polls in 2010, Bligh’s stocks rose with the rivers during the 2010-2011 Queensland flood and cyclone crisis when there was almost universal praise for her leadership, while Langbroek was perceived to be missing in action.

While recent polls showed Bligh’s approval rating more than doubled to 60 percent, they also showed the LNP would still comfortably win the election with a 55-45 lead in 2PP terms. Bligh was preferred premier, but despite the floods it was still looking like a proverbial “drover’s dog election”.

The only question would be who would get to be drover. The internal campaign against Langbroek had been brewing for some time and came to a head earlier this month when MPs complained the organisation had not yet endorsed a single sitting MP for the next election. LNP President Bruce McIver claimed this was merely procedural, but MPs were not convinced.

One MP told The Courier-Mail the relationship between Langbroek and McIver had deteriorated significantly. Yesterday, Langbroek was reported calling for the faceless men in the party to resign. “Faceless men” has long been a metaphor in Australian politics for those who count the numbers in backrooms, and in this case it was a clear reference to McIver.

Labor gleefully upped the ante on the weekend when Treasurer Andrew Fraser said McIver offered an illegal inducement. He asked the Crime and Misconduct Commission to look into suggestions LNP president Bruce McIver offered Bruce Flegg a top job in London if he quit his seat of Moggill so Newman could be parachuted into state politics. Fraser said it was an offence under section 87 of the Criminal Code to promise a public office holder a favour or benefit.

Fraser’s allegation remains to be tested, but it blew apart any hope of Newman taking a safe seat. Hence the announcement today about Ashgrove where Kate Jones won in 2009 with a margin of 7.1 percent on Green preferences. She won’t be easy to unseat. Queensland’s optional preferential voting makes preferences difficult to predict but Kate Jones as climate change minister can expect a good preference flow. According to Andrew Bartlett today, “the Greens will have a good candidate in Ashgrove who may well also be announced fairly soon”.

Bartlett admits it is to Newman’s credit he is not being parachuted into a safe seat. Newman will be relying on his own personal popularity to carry him over the line. It has been a while since Newman was Australia’s most senior Liberal (that honour was taken in turn by WA Premier Colin Barnett then Victoria’s Ted Baillieu and next week by NSW's Barry O’Farrell) but it was always in his blue blood that Brisbane would not be big enough for his ambitions.

His mother Jocelyn was a Tasmanian Senator and minister in the first two Howard Governments and his late father Kevin was a Tasmanian MP and a minister in the Fraser Government. Campbell followed Kevin into the army and then into politics.
He was elected Brisbane Mayor in 2004 and comfortably retained his position with a big win in 2008. His second win also helped cement a Liberal victory in the council elections.

In December 2010 he finished fifth in a competition to find the best mayor in the world behind Mexico City, Oklahoma City, Riace (Italy) and Surrey (Canada). Testimonials for Newman praised his vision, drive and passion. These will be qualities he will need in abundance if he is to steer the LNP to victory in the next election from outside the gates of parliament.

LNP's balancing act as they head to drover's dog election win

The Liberal National Party held a shadow cabinet meeting in Roma last week where they re-committed their support to the Surat Basin resource region at the centre of the $30b mining approvals given by Environment Minister Tony Burke last week. The fact the Queensland Liberal National Party is in favour of the massive coal seam gas developments might usually be assumed at a matter of course. The party has been pro-development in most of its guises through the years.

But the ruling Bligh Government is also in favour, desperate for what they will earn in royalties from the deals. The Opposition has been forced to play the green card in order to make a point of differentiation. They are adding their voice to concerns about the groundwater released during the gas extraction and possible damage to the water table. But the position hides tensions: the Nationals half are comfortable digging in for the farmers who grumble about wells on their properties while the more Liberal end of town wants to see the deals with China sealed as soon as possible.

There is a good reason for this haste; they want to be in power when the money arrives. Bligh’s trickery and the loss of Prime Ministerial power has left Labor on the nose in Queensland. The LNP won 21 out of 30 Queensland seats in the 2010 Federal election. Queensland too will go to the polls in either late 2011 or early 2012. If all recent polls are to be believed, the LNP will win in some comfort. The party will need to adjust to the mindset of government over the next 18 months as it lords over the Queensland political scene and grapples with what kind of administration it wants to be.

The LNP is a hybrid party formed in mid-2008 after a long and difficult birth. Uniquely the Nationals were always the bigger entity in Queensland and their members were enthusiastically in favour of merger. After four straight defeats to Labor, they were anxious to regain power by any means. But the Queensland Liberals were much more divided with the right faction in favour but the moderates opposed. John Howard categorically rejected the idea of a stand-alone Queensland amalgamation in 2005. In 2006 Senator Barnaby Joyce pronounced the last rights on it in 2006 saying because it looked and smelled like a dead duck, it probably was one.

But two events in 2007 conspired to put the dead duck back on the agenda. When the Liberals did not contest Brisbane Central after Peter Beattie resigned, it angered the Nationals and even Liberal's own Deputy Leader Mark McArdle who publicly admitted they had failed the people of the electorate. Then in November, the Federal Coalition lost the election and Howard lost his seat. The biggest obstacle to merger was gone. When Lawrence Springborg replaced Jeff Seeney as Nats leader in January 2008, he pressed forward the amalgamation agenda over the head of opposing Liberals.

They outmanoeuvred their opponents in several key ways. Firstly they got the Federal MPs onside by guaranteeing them pre-selection for the next election. Secondly the two party presidents (who were both in favour of merger) conducted polls of branch members which found an overwhelming majority in favour of merging. Thirdly the new party would become the Queensland division of the Liberal Party and an affiliation with the federal Nationals.

Nats President Bruce McIver set a timetable for amalgamation calling a constitutional convention for 26 July 2008 to make a decision. Pro-merger Libs agreed to meet on the same day. Two days before the appointed date, Lib state council narrowly voted to postpone, but the pro-merger faction went to the courts and secured a Supreme Court judgement to ensure it went ahead. At both conventions on 26 June, the merger was approved. McIver was elected president and former Libs state president Gary Spence became deputy. Springborg was anointed leader of the combined entity with McArdle his deputy. It wasn’t until eight months later the Federal Council of the Liberal Party ratified the new LNPQ as its Queensland Division.

Electoral desperation had driven the two parties together but it did not pay immediate dividends. Anna Bligh clung to power in the 2009 state election despite losing eight seats. Springborg resigned after his third defeat and handed over the reins to former dentist John-Paul Langbroek. Langbroek is an ex-Liberal and his succession wasn’t an easy one, winning possibly by as little as one vote.

Almost 18 months later, the rumblings in the cabinet room continue with Infrastructure and Planning spokesman David Gibson resigning from the frontbench after Langbroek called for a ministerial reshuffle without first consulting colleagues. Tim Nicholls, who Langbroek defeated for the top job, is not ruling out a challenge.

But Nicholls is just noise. Only one of two people can become Premier in the next Queensland election and Nicholls is not one of them. Given Labor’s latest catastrophic polling in Brisbane, neither is Anna Bligh nor anyone in the party that might overthrow her.

In what is shaping up to be a drover's dog election, the next Premier of Queensland will be either JP Langbroek or Lawrence Springborg. The “Borg”, as he likes to be known, remains extremely powerful as deputy and the unofficial head of the Nationals wing of the party. But three defeats have shown he is not trusted in the metropolitan areas. It is up to the more likeable Langbroek to step up in the next 18 months to show he is Premier material.

I saw signs of it when he made a major speech here in Roma last weekend when the Shadow Cabinet met in town. Springborg was notably absent, but the rest of Langbroek's cabinet had the steely determination of a party about to seize government and were looking seriously at the problems that will bring. Langbroek's style is consensual but philosophical differences means the marriage of the Nats and Libs remains fragile. Langbroek will be looking for the smell of victory to keep them away from the divorce courts in the shorter term.

Queensland election: stumbling to the finish line

The final Galaxy Queensland election poll released Saturday show the Liberal National Party steadying with a 51-49 lead over Labor on two-party preferred. The two-point margin represents a 5.9 per cent swing to the LNP and would leave them just short of government if this swing is applied uniformly across the state on Saturday. The closeness of the race forced Labor to swallow its pride last week and agree to a preference deal with party defector Ronan Lee in Indooroopilly in exchange for Greens preferences in 14 key seats.

The major parties are now pulling out all the stops as the campaign enters its last week. Bligh and Springborg fought out a leaders’ debate on Friday. In the debate Bligh attacked Springborg's decision to impose a 3 per cent efficiency dividend by not filling public sector job vacancies so that the government would "live within its means". Labor used research from academic John Wanna to show the dividend would impact on front-line services. Springborg, meanwhile, attacked Labor on its health record. “[A]fter 11 years of Labor in Queensland there are 35,000 people in this State that continue to languish on our hospital waiting lists,” he said.

The two major parties formally launched their campaigns yesterday (how do parties, state and federal, get away with this sham of having “launches” at the end of the campaign?). The launches became pork auctions with the LNP promising 10,000 new jobs only for Labor to gazump them with a promise of 100,000. The banal similarities persisted as Kevin Rudd introduced Bligh while Malcolm Turnbull did the honours for Springborg. Just as in the polls, there appeared little difference in the launches.

However, the polls are showing some contradictions. While Bligh still has a commanding lead over Springborg as preferred premier (50 to 36), some analysts are saying she is Labor’s weak link. Writing in the Brisbane Times on Saturday, Cosima Marriner says Bligh has become a liability. Marriner says she has struggled to control the agenda and has been constantly on the backfoot. Similarly in The Australian, Sean Parnell criticised her negativity on matters such as the Moreton Bay oil spill and government cutbacks. “Everything Bligh is saying might be correct,” says Parnell, “but she looks like someone trying to defend the indefensible.”

Pollster Graham Young thinks the problem lies with Bligh’s presentation. He says she comes across as “too harsh, too shallow and too reactive” and Labor’s attack ads are not helping. And there are other smaller signs that Bligh is not a great natural campaigner. Yesterday Ben Grubb at TechWired caught out the Premier's office deleting Twitter updates. When Grubb queried whether Kevin Rudd’s Twitter depiction of the Queensland Opposition as “the other bloke” also included the Greens, the person behind @anna4queensland responded with “they’re certainly not an alternative government” before deleting the offending Tweet.

But regardless of whether Anna or “the other bloke” wins on Saturday, there is a definite sense of gloom in the electorate. Jason Wilson tapped into that mood today as he used the environmental disaster from the MV Pacific Adventurer oil slick as a metaphor for Queensland’s current woes. Wilson says that because its economy that relies on mining and tourism, the state is particularly susceptible to recessions. “Under the circumstances, Queenslanders' apparent lack of interest in this strange, irrelevant, funereal state election campaign is understandable,” he writes. On both sides, as Mark Bahnisch says, the vision is barren.

Luckily there is always the curious adventures of Pauline Hanson to cheer us up. She launched another one of her trademark anti-media attacks today after News Ltd Sunday papers published nude photos yesterday. The Brisbane Sunday Mail claimed the photos were of Hanson when she was 19 years old and they paid $10,000 to obtain them from her boyfriend of that era, a man called Jack Johnston. Today, the would-be Beaudesert MP denied she had ever posed nude and said she had never heard of Johnston. Hanson said she was fighting the charge because the media didn’t check the story with her. "They just got these photos, presumed it was me, made it public, and have embarrassed me greatly and I've had enough,” she said. “I'm just not going to take this anymore.”

Other than noting the irony of Pauline Hanson channelling Peter Finch, I agree she has been treated poorly in this episode. Perhaps worryingly, I find myself agreeing with Andrew Bolt for the second time in three days. While the photos were a clear breach of privacy, the whole brouhaha won’t do Hanson a jot of harm. The more the media harass her, the more she becomes a symbol of resistance for the political underclass.

I’m not sure what it is about the redoubtable Hanson but today she also united Tim Blair and Pure Poison in condemnation of the publication of the photos. The Herald Sun dubiously claimed the 30 year old photos had news value because public people are public property. “[E]very bloody time you stand, Ms Hanson,” shrieked the Herald Sun in unconvincing defence, “we will ask the tough questions.” Who exactly, is kidding who, here?

Queensland election watch: Here for a long time not a good time

Led by feverish prognostications from the Opposition and News Limited journalists, Queensland has been on early election watch since the start of the year. As the only state in Australia to mirror the federal three year term, ALP Premier Anna Bligh must call an election by September. Though Bligh’s formal position is that she will not call an early election, most parties (Labor included) are already campaigning as if an election was imminent.

Despite the volatility of three year terms, Queensland has had remarkably stable government for almost a century. If Bligh wins, as the quantitative and qualitative opinion polls still predict, it will be Labor’s fifth successive victory in eleven years. And aside from Borbridge's two year hiccup 1996-1998, Labor have ruled Queensland for 18 of the last 20 years. Before that was the 31 year rule of the Nationals whose length in power was dragged out by the larger than life Sir Joh and his clever media adviser Allen Callaghan. Looking back even further, Labor ruled the state for 40 years from 1917 to 1957.

These results show that Queenslanders are conservative because they dislike change not because they dislike Labor. In 2007 the state played a two-hander with NSW in getting Labor (and their own Prime Minister and Treasurer) over the victory line. At a state level, most of their decade in power was under Premier Peter Beattie. Beattie was a consummate media performer who glided his way effortlessly through crisis after crisis to claim victory after victory. But by September 2007 his crash or crash through philosophy was taking its toll. Premier Pete could be tarted up no longer and he stepped aside to let Anna Bligh take over.

Bligh had two years to create a new image for Queensland Labor before she would have to face the voters. As she told the audience at last year’s ALP state conference, “I knew when I took on this job that the next election would be tough”. Surprisingly, this was the only reference to her date with destiny in the speech. But if she wins, she will create history as Australia’s first elected female Premier (both Lawrence in WA and Kirner in Victoria were defeated at the first time of asking). She remains favourite to do exactly that.

At the very beginning of 2009, psephologist Malcolm McKerras was one of the first to openly predict this outcome when he wrote in The Australian that “Labor will hang on in Queensland” He predicted that result even though he thinks the two-party preferred vote is likely to be tied 50:50 which represents a five percent swing to the opposition. The problem is that they need a swing of 7.6 per cent to get an equal number of seats.

McKerras says that thanks to a major exercise in seat abolitions and re-distributions last August, Labor should fall over the line to win the election. The conservative parties have lost out more in the Electoral Commissions rejigging of boundaries (pdf). One interesting re-distribution example that may not work for the government is Clayfield. McKerras noted that a redistribution of notionally Labor voters in Clayfield has made LNP’s sitting MP Tim Nicholls vulnerable. While I was directly affected by this re-distribution – and resent being typecast as a Labor voter – I agree with McKerras and expect Nicholls to hold just about hold on, mostly due to his high public profile after an unsuccessful run at Liberal leader in 2007.

But the LNP could do even better still if Bligh does not adhere to McKerras’s prediction caveat. “She will call an early election at her peril,” he warned, pointing at Labor’s shock loss last year in WA and near defeat in the NT. In both elections, large Labor majorities were lost when over-confident state leaders went to the polls early. But most observers now think that a late wet season election is exactly what Bligh intends to have (though Mark Bahnisch believes the window of opportunity for an early election is just two more weeks). If Bligh is gambling that Queenslanders won’t judge their government harshly by going early, it can only be because she thinks things are going to be a whole lot worse if she waits till September.

Whatever the date, the phoney war has started. Bligh dipped her toes into the digital election with the launch of Anna4Qld.com.au last week. Neither Andrew Bartlett nor Graham Young were impressed by the site. Says Young, “the site pretends to be Web 2.0 when it is so slick and spin-heavy that it shouts 'phony'". In my own view, the crucial point about the site was the re-branding of “Anna”. You had to look deep onto the homepage to find the word “Labor” in small font.

Meanwhile Lawrence Springborg is playing with his own shiny new brand. The Liberal National Party sprung into being last year and this election is its first electoral test. How will the new party perform? Behind the rusted-on marriage of Nationals and Liberals is the old Nationals party machine backed up by the cash of Clive Palmer. BRW says Palmer is worth $1.5 billion but the man himself thinks he has $6.5 billion which would make him the richest man in Australia. Whatever it is, it makes him wealthy enough to support vanity projects such as his son Michael’s tilt at a safe Labor seat and his fondness for defamation suits. However, it is also extremely likely he will also provide a strong war chest for LNP’s upcoming media campaign.

The problem is, as The Poll Bludger quotes Paul Williams: “Brisbane’s progressive Liberals will not vote for a party headed by a National.” Queensland’s own psephologist Scott Steel at Pollytics also succinctly defined Springborg’s problem as “Brisbane”. He says Springborg will face a third defeat as leader because he is unable to jump over the “rather large chasm that separates the Liberal and National party constituencies.” Steel believes Springborg’s anti-green attitudes will scare off urban Liberal voters who also have environmental sympathies.


Antony Green also calls Springborg’s task “Herculean”. Majority government for the LNP requires 22 seats and a swing of 8.3 per cent. The last time Queensland saw uniform swings of that scale was in 1989 when the disgraced Nationals were turfed out of power. But Green also notes that 2006 was an overwhelming election victory at an election that should have been much closer. And also, perhaps more pertinently, he points out that the LNP has so far avoided serious internal dispute.

While Labor has no scandal on its conscience the size of the Fitzgerald Inquiry, it is looking tattered away from the shiny Anna brand. There are several members retiring and possibly more to follow. Tonight, the MP for the marginal seat of Chatsworth, Chris Bombolas gave his former employees at Brisbane Channel Nine news an exclusive to announce he was not seeking re-election due to health reasons. That same Channel Nine news used the story of the long-running flood in North Queensland to point fingers at the “inaction” of the government and show grumbling locals unhappy with the speed of a rescue operation. Last night the same station quoted Opposition frontbencher Ray Hopper who compared it to Bush’s Katrina moment.

While Bligh was quick to denounce Hopper’s statement as bad taste, the jibe may have served its purpose. The LNP might well capitalise on ennui and electoral distaste for an early election. Bligh aside, Labor are beginning to look like a tired government that are simply out of answers. They may also be victims of a reverse zeitgeist that sees Labor entrenched federally, and on the way out in the states. In some respects it doesn’t matter; Queensland is unlikely to be served well by a new government of either persuasion. The ALP and the LNP are both too consumed by a love of the state’s copious coal reserves. Either government will need to be dragged kicking and screaming into the new 21st century greenhouse realities.

Queensland launches Liberal National Party

A new political party was launched in Queensland yesterday as the long-touted state merger of the Liberals and the Nationals finally came to pass. The executive of the new Liberal National Party (LNP) met in Brisbane and anointed former Nationals boss Bruce McIver as State President and former Liberal powerbroker Gary Spence as his deputy. The launch also introduced the new leadership team of Leader Lawrence Springborg, and Deputy Leader Mark McArdle. Like the presidential roles, the leadership and deputy roles were filled by former Nationals and Liberal leaders respectively, showing that Nationals remain the more powerful force in the combined entity.

Speaking in front of a thousand cheering fans, McIver said the launch marks the birth of a new era in Queensland politics. “The LNP is determined to offer the people of Queensland…a credible alternative to the current Government,” he said. “And a team with vision, built around the leadership of Lawrence Springborg and Mark McArdle.” New party leader Springborg said the creation of the LNP had ended conservative disunity which he described as the Labor government's “greatest asset”.

In his acceptance speech Springborg outlined four major areas the new party will focus on in the lead-up to the next election due in 2009. The four areas were: roads, hospitals, education and water. Springborg had the key backing of pro-merger Liberal MPs Tim Nicholls and Steve Dickson. He also received the endorsement of Liberal Brisbane mayor Campbell Newman who urged Liberal delegates to ignore calls by the party's federal president Alan Stockdale to delay the merger vote. Springborg attacked Stockdale and said the vote “can never be stopped and stymied by a few faceless men and women who seek to stand in the way.”

Embattled Federal Liberal leader Brendan Nelson came out in favour of the merger yesterday saying it would significantly strengthen the prospects of the conservatives defeating the Bligh Labor Government at the next state election. "We will all now work to see the best interests of the non-Labor side of politics are best served, both in Queensland and nationally," he said. Nelson’s statement came despite the last-minute Liberal moves to defer the vote over dispute over who would become president of the new party.

Crikey’s Bernard Keane says the LNP is merely the National Party with a Liberal rump. Apart from getting to go first in the name of the new party, Keane says the party is the “same clutch of dribbling hicks and divided incompetents [Queensland has] rejected for a decade.” He says that many Liberal members are now considering bailing out rather than joining a party that shares none of its basic beliefs. “The Nationals exist to promote the systematic abuse of government revenue and regulatory arrangements for the benefit of selected, primarily regional, industries and businesses,” he said. “Their record in government is one of corruption, rorting, rank incompetence and intolerance.”

But surprising or not, others accept the new arrangements, albeit with raised eyebrows. Andrew Bartlett called the merger a fait accompli and believes the merger will take the combined party further to the right. He said the new party fits comfortably with the “fundamentalist conservative right-wing mindset” of the Bjelke-Petersen era. But perceptively, Bartlett also points out that that the merger is less about ideology than it is about marketing. “Like any major party, it will try to focus on a few key messages and themes that it hopes will appeal to a majority of the electorate,” he said, “a large part of which will seek to focus on tapping into and building upon dissatisfaction with their opponent.”

Of course to do so, they will need to overcome dissatisfaction with their own side. As Poll Bludger points out, the new party structure over-represented rural and regional areas “in time-honoured Queensland style”. The newly elected Liberal state president Mal Brough has declared he will not join the new party. Brough maintains he is still officially the president of the Queensland Liberals until the federal party ratifies the merger. After that, he says he is undecided. "There's absolutely a career in politics if I want it, because that has been made very clear to me [by] my colleagues down south,” he said. “But whether I intend to do that or not is another thing altogether, that's not a decision I've taken.”