Queensland Votes: day three

Today's campaign has remained focused on Pauline Hanson's announcement last night that she will be running. It now appears she will be running in Beaudesert, a seat to the south of Brisbane in South-East Queensland. The ALP, LNP and Greens have all committed to...

Queensland Votes: day two

A few pieces of election news today: Pauline Hanson has announced that she will stand for election in the Queensland state election on March 21. No word yet on which seat she will contest. Crikey has launched another blog, this time it's Pineapple Party Time, a...

Is this what you mean, Miranda?

From Crikey's First Dog on the Moon:

Bligh v. The Borg

It's a delightful irony that, like "Honest John" before him, Lawrence Springborg's LNP have taken to calling their leader "The Borg" with no apparent sense of irony or awareness of the meaning of the nickname. Springborg is heading into his third election as leader...

Anna Bligh calling March 21 election

Sky News is now reporting that Anna Bligh will go to Government House in Brisbane today to call an early election, presumably on March 28. More to come. Update: So I was wrong, it was March 21. Unfortunately the news broke about five minutes after...

The new Andrew Fisher biography

I just finished David Day's third book in what is rapidly becoming a series of biographies of Australia's Labor Prime Ministers: Andrew Fisher: Prime Minister of Australia. This follows on the back of his John Curtin: A Life and Chifley. Andrew Fisher's story is one...

Queensland election preparations

With the possible imminent calling of a state election in Queensland, I've moved ahead with plans for election night coverage, using my Google Earth map of the new Queensland boundaries, which you can check out here. There's still some kinks to be worked out....

By-elections in WA?

Via Pollbludger, reports out of Western Australia suggest that by-elections may be imminent in the seats of two of the former Labor government's biggest figures: former Premier Alan Carpenter in Willagee and former Attorney-General Jim McGinty in the neighbouring seat of Fremantle. Pollbludger quotes...

Antony Green’s Queensland election guide

With the continuing speculation of an impending Queensland election, Antony Green has launched the ABC elections guide to the coming election. All the usual features, profiles of electorates, indexes by candidate, electorate name and margin, and my famous Election Calculator.

Margins in strong Greens seats

There are a handful of seats in the House of Representatives where the Greens are within spitting distance of winning the seat. In nearly all of them, however, the true margin is hidden by the AEC's methods of measuring marginality. Margins are calculated by...