Labor trounced in another Queensland election

The City of Brisbane has not yet finished punishing Labor delivering a handsome victory to the LNP in the Council elections. Suffering a swing of 5% since 2008, Labor is likely to lose three seats barely a month after being trounced in the State election. The city is Australia’s largest municipality and incumbent Mayor Graham Quirk is heading towards an easy victory with 60% of the vote with almost 65% counted.  Labor’s Ray Smith is polling a disappointing 24.69% while the Greens candidate the high profile and former Democrat senator candidate Andrew Bartlett is also not doing as well as some expected with 10.36% of the vote.

The Greens are doing much better in the councillor vote, in some inner western seats overturning Labor as the main opposition.  The LNP will comfortably retain their big majority in council and are likely to take three seats from Labor with another two Labor seats in the balance. In Central, Heather Beattie (wife of former premier Peter Beattie) is heading for defeat as she trails Vicki Howard by 51-31 percent with over half the vote counted. This was the seat vacated by Labor powerbroker and former deputy mayor David Hinchliffe ending a 24 year run by Labor in the seat.

There are 26 one-member constituency wards in Brisbane and at the time of writing, the result looks like being LNP 19, Labor 7 (20-7 including the Mayor). Two of those seven Labor seats are still in the balance: Wynnum-Manly (43-41) and Northgate (51-49).  Two more are definitely lost. In Karawatha (Woodridge) sitting ALP councillor Gail MacPherson stood down but her replacement Adrienne Cremin is losing easily to a candidate with a very un-LNP like name: Kim Marx. 

Labor's John Campbell is the only sitting councillor likely to be unseated as he trails Ryan Murphy in Doboy (Tingalpa) by 54-46. In the Indooroopilly-based Walter Taylor ward, the Green’s candidate Tim Dangerfield (19.77 per cent) outpolled Labor’s Adam Atkins (14.33 per cent) to finish second to LNP’s Julian Simmonds (65.91 per cent), with nearly two-thirds of the vote counted. 

Meanwhile Labor looks set to retain The Gabba which is in Anna Bligh’s old seat of South Brisbane. Bligh’s former election agent Jackie Trad has narrowly won the South Brisbane by-election which also took place yesterday though the LNP is not yet conceding just 800 votes behind with over half the votes counted. 

Delighted with his own win and the win in Central, returned Brisbane Mayor Graham Quirk said it was the first time the LNP had held inner-city Brisbane at all three levels of government.  "Tonight, ladies and gentlemen, is an opportunity - a very unique opportunity - for a high level of co-operation between the Premier of this state and the lord mayor of this city, to work in a cohesive and co-operative way," Cr Quirk said. "I think it is a very good thing for Brisbane and for Queensland."

correction: Tennyson was won by an independent not by the LNP making the result LNP 18, Lab 7 Ind 1 - thanks to Bird of Paradox for the pick-up.

Brisbane council elections: Tristan Peach, Greens candidate Hamilton Ward

Brisbane is getting ready to vote again just four months after the federal election. This time it is the Brisbane city council elections which are scheduled for Saturday 15 March. Brisbane currently has a Labor dominated council in its 26 wards but has a Liberal mayor. I live in the eastern ward of Hamilton which has 27,000 registered voters. With the ward containing blue-rinse suburbs of Ascot, Clayfield and the eponymous Hamilton, it has long been considered a safe Liberal seat.

Although the last election was held in March 2004, there was a by-election for the Hamilton ward in October 2006 when Tim Nicholls moved to state parliament. David McLachlan retained the seat for the Libs in the by-election with 58 per cent of the vote ahead of Labor’s Anna Herzog (who is contesting again this year) and the Green’s Sam Clifford. Today, I caught up with the 2008 Greens candidate for Hamilton, Tristan Peach.

Born in 1980, Tristan Peach is a native of north Brisbane. He holds a bachelors and master’s degree in town planning. Peach is a committed activist and has been involved in many local projects including the Samford Transport Group, Cedar Creek Bushcare Group and the Nundah Positive Housing Project which looked at the affects of gentrification on the homeless in that suburb. He spent 4 years part time tutoring and lecturing at Queensland University of Technology (QUT) amd a year working as a development assessor for planning submissions. He is now devoted full time to sustainable transport submissions.

Peach was also the media spokesperson for the Communities against the Tunnel forum which fights against the controversial multi-billion dollar Transapex network of five tunnels across Brisbane. Peach is now treasurer of a new group called Community Action for Sustainable Transport which works in collaboration with the likes of Stop the Hale Street Bridge Campaign and the Queensland Conservation Council. Peach is also a guest lecturer in urban planning at QUT.

He has been a member of the Queensland Greens for one year but has been a supporter since 2003. He says they are the most progressive party in Australia and are community based rather than corporate funded. He said he was keen to work on local issues which matched his interests in urban planning. I ask him what was the mood of the people he had met while out canvassing and whether there was any sign of election fatigue just four months after the federal election. He said he didn’t see any signs of fatigue. The sense he got was that most people were relieved that John Howard was no longer in power. However he did acknowledge that most people were unaware that the election was happening.

The most popular local issue in the New Farm / Teneriffe area was the need for a local Citycat stop. Currently users need to take a cross-river ferry to Bulimba ferry stop which Peach says is a deterrent to use. He has set up a petition for Citycat services to stop at Teneriffe. He said there were many other local issues that people were concerned about. These included the removal of a river structure that was the roosting ground of white-faced herons and the growing problems of midges and mosquitoes faced by residents who live near the Enoggera Creek in the Windsor area of the ward. Some people believed that this problem has been worsened by the earthworks at the nearby North-South tunnel digging site. Peach said he enjoyed the challenge posed by local issues such as tree-trimming and keeping streets tidy. These he said “were issues you wouldn’t know about unless you talked to local people”.

Peach said his aim in this election was to build up the Green support base. This means building on the 3 percent swing which garnered a 15 per cent result in 2006. I asked him how the Greens could overcome the problem where the Brisbane council was entirely made up of Labor and Liberal members. He also saw a role for local decision-making groups and neighbourhood reps who would have a meaningful say and voting rights on ward issues. Peach said the people in Hamilton are intelligent and influential. He said putting a Green in council would mark a new era for the ward and would also be an exciting new era for the council. Otherwise, he said, all we could expect is more of the same from Liberal and Labour. “Electing a Green would be an exciting development,” he said. Even if you are not passionate about the environment, it would bring more accountability.”