You won’t get a better photo than this during the election campaign!
Dr Kevin Bonham looks at the recent polls and gives the Queensland election to the LNP 47 to 37, with 5 others.
He has the LNP on 41.4, the ALP 37.9, the Greens 7, PUP on 4.6, and Others 9. In two-party-preferred terms he has the LNP on 51.8.
The puff seems to have gone out of PUP, but The Greens are also not doing well.
There’s no single seat polling, but on this basis Newman would lose Ashgrove.
Mark will be writing a few articles during the election. He wrote this one for The Monthly. It’s an excellent read. He says it doesn’t really matter precisely why Queenslanders are facing a snap election.
We may be as ignorant as the several senior ministers who were relaxing on holidays when the premier’s office leaked the news of the impending campaign to the Courier-Mail. What we can infer is that far from the orderly progress towards a triumphant second term, the Queensland conservatives fear defeat.
In part, it’s a tribute to ALP leader Annastacia Palaszczuk and her (now) eight parliamentary Labor colleagues, who have refocused the shattered ALP, and held the government to account despite the very limited opportunities available to an Opposition in both a unicameral parliament and a state with a one-paper town as its capital.
But, even more so, it’s a commentary on how hard it is for right-wing parties to govern in Australia – or anywhere – in the mid 2010s. It’s hard for left-wing parties to govern, too, but that’s another story.
The LNP won in 2012 largely because it wasn’t Labor and promised an “adult”, “no surprises” approach. In policy terms it was a small target strategy.
Holding an electoral coalition together in government, and governing cohesively and in the public interest, rather than throwing raw steak to the dogs of the “base” and the conservatariat, though: that’s a different, and more difficult game.
Campbell Newman won, not by projecting an ideological face, but the exact opposite. Yet he leads a government that seems obsessed with humiliating its enemies, with starting fights, with indulging in flights of fancy, such as removing the requirement for water fluoridation and dressing imprisoned bikies in pink jumpsuits. The government disdained both evidence and consultation as it careered from crisis to crisis, and from absurdity to absurdity. Unemployment has surged, jobs have disappeared, and the economy tastes increasingly sour.
This week it looks as though we are going to get some policies. Labor is going to reduce the ministry from 19 to 14 to save $27 million.
The LNP has announced plans to support apprenticeship training to the tune of $91 million.