Queensland 2024

@Nimalan I disagree – it would give them another term of government and they could say that all the non conservative things they’re doing are the Greens fault and to give them a majority if they don’t like it. Labor does this all the time to justify conservative policy to Green curious voters, especially in Palaszczuk’s first term in minority with the Katters

Alternatively, they could give the Greens absolutely nothing and govern by default because the LNP has no credible path to form government.

QLD Labor went from 7 seats to governing in one term so I don’t agree with the fear of a big defeat to the point of giving up government even in the worst case scenario.

For the record I think Tas Labor made a huge mistake conceding the Tasmanian election. People don’t mind minority governments if they get shit done and aren’t riven by infighting and leaking (which to be fair is what I expect the Lib/JLN government to do). A Labor-Green-progressive independents government could have worked just fine.

The issue John is that if the Labor is seen as moving too far to the left centrist voters may leave is it the same case that when the L/NP move to far to the right they loose centrist voters as well. A lot of Labor voters are not actually socially progressive and Labor cannot actually win government without doing well in Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton etc unless you are suggesting that Labor can swap Mackay for Moggill? If Labor fell just fell a couple of seats short of a majority like they did in NSW with Chris Minns this is what they should say to the Greens either have the courage to vote with the LNP on a motion of no confidence or sit quietly and not expect any favors. It takes two to tango and Labor is not going to the dance floor. In Tasmania, if they had formed a government with the Greens it may cost Federal Labor Lyons and i think the federal party pressured Rebecca White to walk away. If there is a Greens-Labor Coalition it may cost Labor the seat of Blair and make it impossible to win Leichardt.

Tommo9, that might be true if the investment is in the form of fossil fuel projects, but is any country town really going to turn up their nose at any investment that isn’t related to fossil fuels? If they’re offered a solar project instead, are they really going to tell the government “no thanks, take it elsewhere”? I would have thought many of these towns would be happy with any government investment that could potentially create jobs there. The only real exception to this that I’ve heard of is the Pioneer-Burdekin pumped hydro project, because it’s going to flood a town and swathes of farming land.

If that’s the case, it shouldn’t annoy people in those towns or people in the city. I doubt city dwellers care greatly if more money is spent in the regions, so long as it’s not spent on fossil fuel projects.

I don’t see any scenario in which Labor works with the Greens on youth crime. They nailed their colours to the mast on that issue long ago, by engaging in a race to the bottom with LNP on who can be tougher on crime. And the Greens have already come out swinging, they’ve done their worst already. Labor should at least be consistent at this point and maintain their stance on crime so they can try to hang on to their seats in the regions, rather than switching tactics to fight the Greens in the city.

I agree on the principle but not the actions.

Labor would need to “move left” to sandbag the Greens targets in Brisbane. If they just gave up on the seats (on resourcing) they could attack Greens in the media all day and night, and attack them for being “loony left” etc. Labor has not done in a long time – the attacks are usually either on governance/culture issues, personal attacks, or ideas that voting Greens is not the way to get progressive reform (including preferential voting misinformation by implication).

If the result ends up being a hung parliament, firstly that seems better to me than just outright losing. Labor could even play hard ball and hand over government like they did in Tasmania and then frustrate the LNPs legislative agenda at every turn. But they could also remain in government while giving Greens very little, forcing the Greens to either deal with the LNP (which will kill them) or accept a confidence and supply agreement. All of which looks like sticking it to the Greens rather than embracing them. During the term they could attempt to stick it to the Greens on legislation seeking LNP support, and if they don’t get it then it’s the LNP’s fault (and the Greens). This already happens with progressive legislation, with Greens being attacked for not passing legislation in the Senate. Why can’t the LNP be on the receiving end?

And then they have a convenient outlet when their policies don’t match the expectations of their centre-right voters. Again, I have never understood why its always the left being sold on or forced to accept conservative policies as electoralism and not the other way around. Convince I have my cynical theories but it’s not too much of a stretch to think Miles likes being premier more than he hates the Greens (still a big call, but it’s possible).

Plus federally they dont have that much to lose. Ipswich and Cairns aren’t that anti Green. Herbert, Flynn and Capricornia are gone – Labor’s pretty much lost the coal miners on Identity irrespective of the policies they take to the election.

Yes I have been busy so sort through this and see if your name pops up. 🙂

@Daniel T Having worked on Wyatt’s campaign he was pretty much the real deal, despite not being old enough to vote when he was preselected. He worked very hard and had a great team of people behind him. Sometimes you have candidates that are just good to work with. It balances out the ones that aren’t…

@A A The big problem with Oodgeroo is the drop on Brisbane’s southside (rightly pointed out by Ben) that’s probably going to require cutting a seat at the next redistribution.

@John I don’t think Grace Grace will make it through this election. But it will be interesting to see how Labor addresses the fact that The Greens are just as likely to cut into their seats as well as the ALP. People have forgotten that The Green’s win in Maiwar actually had casualties on both the ALP and LNP sides. It was formed from the seats of Mount Coot-tha (ALP) and Indooroopilly (LNP) and if Stephen Miles hadn’t jumped across to Murrumba he would have lost as well. The problem with going into minority government with The Greens is that the ALP would only be setting themselves up for a massive wipeout at the following election. And also, while the Greens picked up Ryan, Griffith and Brisbane federally, it was mostly due to lucky preference bounces and favourable boundaries. Their margins are paper thin – if Terri Butler had put a bit more work into Griffith instead of making deals on Ministries she would probably still be there.

@Nimalan Queensland is far less decentralised than it used to be and the overwhelming majority of the population is concentrated in the South-East corner.

@Votante Of those three seats I would regard only McConnel as gone. But the problem for Labor isn’t the sandbagged marginal seats, it’s the second-level seats like Stafford and Capalaba that are going to take a hit.

@Wilson So happy to take your money if you want to put some money on Mansfield. There’s another factor as well in the mix – the seat has radically changed since the LNP picked it up in 1995. It used to be the buckle of the bible belt, now it’s only fractionally above the state average. And while there is a higher proportion of Chinese residents over Indian residents, there are two major differences. The Indian residents are on the roll as citizens, the Chinese aren’t. And the Chinese that are on the roll are generally from Taiwan or Hong Kong. When Mount Gravatt East houses go into the million dollar club you know the demographics are changing.

@Tommo9 Crime is a vote shifter, mostly because it happens in the personal and not the abstract. Every time I see news reports about an Audi being stolen I wonder whether it came from Hawthorne, Bulimba or Paddington. But that doesn’t just affect the victims, it also affect their neighbours, their families and their workmates. Which is why Bulimba is worth watching on election night, especially since Di Farmer is also the Youth Justice Minister.

In terms of sandbagging Greens targets in Brisbane
I think areas that are Blue/Green like McConnell, Cooper (state) and even Bulimba it is probably only a matter of time before these seats become Lib/Greens especially where it includes some of the highest property prices in the state. It is the same on current boundaries for Macnamara, Higgins and Richmond where the Labor party is just getting hollowed out. In such seats you cannot have a very progressive MP like Ged Kearney as these areas often have more centrist and often economically right wing voters as well. At a QLD level they need find away to contain the Greens to the riverside and not extend into seats like Stafford, Ferny Grove and Greenslopes. They need to do that and hold seats such as Maryborough, Mackay, Keppel etc. While Flynn. Capricornia may not look promising for Labor in the foreseeable future. Labor cannot afford to loose Hunter or Shortland at a federal level.

Nimalan, that’s all well and good, but as you’ll no doubt have observed, there’s a broader trend in Australian politics away from both major parties and towards third parties and independents. I don’t see that trend reversing on a large scale anytime soon. It might take longer for it to have an impact on the Queensland parliament than elsewhere due to the single chamber of parliament, but there will come a point where the it’s hung, and Labor will have to cobble together a minority government. They can of course sulk and sit out like Tasmanian Labor have just done, but how long will they choose to remain locked out of power if voters consistently refuse to give either major party a majority?

Whatever happens, the animosity between Queensland Labor and the Queensland Greens is so great that I can’t see them ever forming a coalition government with ministries allocated across both parties. If Labor can’t get enough independent support to form government without the Greens, they could simply dare the Greens to vote against them in a confidence vote. But even if the Greens don’t call their bluff, that won’t make for a stable government and Labor won’t be able to get large parts of their agenda passed. So I think Labor will eventually have to secure an agreement for outside support from the Greens, or remain out of power for years on end. Are there risks to Labor in the regions by doing that? Of course. So they’ll look for any alternative available to them. But one day I think there won’t be any. And then Labor will have to pick their poison.

In the longer term, the rise of renewable energy and increasing climate change effects will probably cause the decline of the Central Queensland coal industry. At that point, the regions might have less animosity towards both Labor and the Greens. But even despite this, I think there will always be (broadly) two politically different Queenslands as Tommo9 pointed out, Brisbane and the rest of the state. (In reality there are several culturally different Queenslands, but politically they can be simplified into Brisbane v the rest). And they will always have different values. So I wonder if the smart long-term play for Queensland Labor is giving the KAP what they really want, a separate North Queensland state. A South Queensland dominated by Brisbane would give Labor a much greater likelihood of majority government in future, while the KAP would most likely become the LNPs headache to deal with in the North. I don’t know if the other state Labor branches would like Queensland retaining its constitutionally mandated 12 senators while North Queensland gets a few of its own, though.

@John “Herbert, Flynn and Capricornia are gone – Labor’s pretty much lost the coal miners on Identity irrespective of the policies they take to the election.”

Voters in some of those seats (add Dawson to the list) are openly hostile to Green volunteers on election day. Funnily enough that’s also the case much closer to home – Longman comes to mind. The other shift is the increase in self-employed tradies. Once you move from being an employee to being an employer your priorities shift. The same thing happens in the FIFO areas, once you realise you need a financial planner your view of politics changes as well.

@Wilson “I doubt city dwellers care greatly if more money is spent in the regions, so long as it’s not spent on fossil fuel projects.” They also don’t care what the effect is on rural communities, as long as nobody is putting up wind farms in West End. I’ve argued that people should be able to opt into Green Power providing that it’s Green Power only. So once the solar and wind power are no longer contributing to the grid, the power goes off. A bit like the separate tariff for off-peak hot water. It gives people a chance to live their beliefs…

Blue avatar John, I mostly agree with your analysis, but there are risks for Labor in remaining in government and just daring the Greens to vote against them. If they can’t pass most of their declared agenda, voters might get sick of both parties and hand the LNP a majority government in the pursuit of stability. At the same time, I don’t see the Queensland Greens being ready to sign up to a shotgun wedding confidence and supply deal if they don’t get serious concessions to their agenda. MacMahon and Berkman are both very different to more centrist Greens like Richard Di Natale who’d be more willing to concede on policy matters. So I think it’ll be a delicate balancing act for Labor, and they won’t always be able to come out smelling of roses.

I also disagree with the notion that the right are never forced to accept progressive policies for electoralist purposes. A hardcore conservative might suggest that the same-sex marriage plebiscite, continuing to sustain the NDIS and signing up to net zero emissions targets were all examples of the federal Coalition government being forced into conceding to progressive policies instead of sticking to their values, in order to not suffer at election time.

@ Wilson
I agree there is a long term decline in the major party vote and this is a structural challenge for Labor. I will come back to partition of the state later so lets leave it aside for a moment. However, if Labor loses blue collar heartlands such as Mackay what can they pick up to compensate (Everton, Chatsworth etc that’s all i can think off) assuming no further losses to LNP in SEQ.
In terms of partition of the state. i think it really is a pipe dream and pretty much in the too hard basket. Where exactly would the border go? If you draw it on the Tropic of Capricorn it may go through the middle of peoples homes, Churches, Farms etc.

@Wilson Had to reply. Sorry, but you raised a few of my favourite topics. 🙂

One of the reasons Queensland is where it is now is due to the untrammelled power of a unicameral House. My suggestion for a fix is to reinstate the Upper House and appoint the Mayors as representatives. So it serves as a House of Review, it’s not geographically biased to Brisbane AND it has an positive bias towards indigenous members because of the way Local Governments are drawn up. No need for extra elections, just the cost of plane fare and accommodation (or if we’re really smart we’d have the option of taking it online).

The Constitution has some fairly clear guidance on the process for splitting states so it’s not as if it was totally unexpected. North Queensland has enough of a population to justify a full Senate quota and if you really wanted a work-around just form the new state in SEQ, call it Brisvegas and the bit of Queensland left over gets the full 12 Senators as an original State.

Having to go cap-in-hand to The Greens on every issue will kill the ALP and make the years spent in the wilderness under Joh seem like the blink of an eye.

Here’s a question for you – what’s the midpoint electorate for Queensland’s 93 electorates i.e. the one that has 46 seats north of it and 46 seats south of it? I think it might surprise you…

Upper houses usually are an obstruction or a rubber stamp. The nature of the demographics of qld mean the electorate can toss out a government they are unhappy with.

Mark, I like your suggestion although it could be tiresome if Mayors serve a joint role as representatives of a reformed upper house. Perhaps Mayors still play a part in appointing one individual as representative for their council (maybe one councillor or some other official) as a member of the upper house.

I think Hunter and Shortland would actually be long gone from a pure “coal vote” perspective but are doing just fine from a Newcastle suburbs perspective and will strengthen for Labor.

There’s enough of a cultural idea that non conservative politicians hate them and want their towns to die. It doesn’t matter how much Greens talk about a just transition or even how much Labor fence sits or even supports coal. Coal isn’t even necessarily that important to the employment base in those areas (in terms of pure job numbers). It’s a culture and ideology issue that’s been misunderstood as a policy issue.

Labor could get back in the good books if they pull off a just transition and the workers see their livelihoods linked to renewable energy or other industries tourism and service industries – from a loss aversion perspective. But the promise of that future will not cut it in the mean time.

I think there’s a rea$on electoralism arguments in the ALP always end with moving right, as if there’s no way to sell progressive policies to voters considering LNP or PHON without watering them down, as as if policies like Adani and Stage 3 tax cuts were a campaign centerpiece.

@Wilson – I think QLD Greens would be even less likely to do any deal that results in a Liberal government than moderates. And none of the posts have convinced me a hung parliament is worse for Labor than outright losing an election, giving the LNP a majority and losing a lot of NQ seats but maybe saving a few Brisbane targets from the Greens. To be clear I think Labor should publicly gear their campaign around appealing in marginals vs LNP and criticise the Greens heavily, to the point where it will galvanise Green curious Labor voters into the Greens column, but divert resources away from Miller and into Mansfield and Mundingburra. I do not think that necessarily means watering down policies.

On the issue of the plebiscite, that was a last ditch effort to stop SSM. Referendums are hard to pass (look at the Voice) and there were genuine fears that an OPV postal only vote would further depress the Yes vote. You can see the cynical conservative politics behind the other policies you mention. I’m mainly talking about Labor shifting from fence sitting/triangulation under Shorten, to small target under Albo. Negative Gearing reform was collateral damage over an election Labor lost for a whole bunch of reasons, with lobbyist Craig Emerson leading the review.

By the way, a lot of the fear of minority governments comes from a very specific political era and the issues bringing down the Giddings and Gillard governments weren’t limited to the Greens involvement in them. Right now federal Labor needs Greens support to pass a lot of legislation and it isn’t doomsday for them. Right now NSW Labor are governing in minority and it almost never comes up (I’ve even seen recent comments suggesting Minns won big).

@ John
Ideally Labor wants to act on climate change without using the megaphone to Coal communities. That is what Chris Minns is trying to do so they dont use words such as “phase out Coal” rather “expand clean energy”. It is why Labor says they will continue to export Coal with no end date as long as there is a market even if they have set Clean Energy Targets. The Stop Adani Convey did not help Labor if the Greens wanted to they should have run it through Macnamara, Wills instead.
Longer term i dont see Labor holding on to seats such as Higgins so it just provides a temporary benefit to win Doctors Wives seat. Higgins helped them to win government in 2022 but it never be a heartland and even if they ban coal etc they probably will still loose by 2028 unless there is a redistribution that adds more middle class areas.

Mark Yore,

You seem to have misunderstood me on Mansfield. I’m not saying the LNP won’t win there, I’m saying that Pinky Singh being Indian Australian isn’t the reason whether they’ll win or not. As a group, Indian Australians have not yet shown that ethnicity matters more to their vote than their own values. Do you have any proof that most ethnic Chinese residents of Mansfield are not Australian citizens? I’m afraid I won’t be convinced on your say-so alone.

Your views on energy make it sound like you want people to suffer if they don’t hold the same values as you. People are allowed to want things to change in the belief if it will help make life better in future. It doesn’t mean they deserve less than others as a result. Unless you’re under 50, you probably won’t have to deal with the future negative impact of climate change for very long, so there’s no need to sneer at those who will have to, if they want to do something to help reduce that negative impact. And if you are under 50, well, I hope climate change doesn’t negatively affect you personally in future, though it will certainly affect others.

I think your suggestion for an upper house of mayors is fundamentally undemocratic because it removes the idea of one vote, one value. That is, unless you’re suggesting each mayor has voting power equivalent to the population within their council area (with perhaps an allowance for large geographic areas similar to the current state electorate rules). But even then it would still be a bad idea because mayors already have their hands full running their councils, and I doubt they have the time to take on a second job in reading through long and complex state legislation to serve as a house of review. That’s better done by full time professionals, and letting the people have a direct say on who those professionals are, on the principle of one vote, one value, is what we’ve found to be the best and most fair outcome. No need to reinvent the wheel, just do what works best in other states.

North Queensland is not an original state and a separate North Queensland won’t get the same number of senators as the rest, come hell or high water. You’ll find the push for a split is coming from the north, not the south, most notably advocated by the KAP. I’m simply saying it might be Labor’s best interests long-term to give in to such a demand if forming a majority government is so important to them. There’s no great desire in southern Queensland to split and risk its number of senators, so it’s not even worth contemplating.

Also, I don’t really care where Queensland’s electoral midpoint is.

The electoral midpoint would run somewhere in the northern suburbs of Brisbane, just north of the river. Possibly Stafford.

Between Central QLD, North QLD, Sunshine Coast, plus Nanango and Gregory, that’s 34 seats.

Then you can go as far south as Ferny Grove and either Clayfield or Stafford, depending on whether you draw the line based on their southernmost point or their midpoint. That adds up to 46 seats.

I’m not including Condamine or Warrego which overlap the line but have more of it to the south than the north.

Not sure what point you wanted to make in this regard Mark except that SEQ and Brisbane in particular is actually quite central when you look at it from a population perspective.

The Stop Adani Convoy, which went across the country (it was a convoy) was a convenient political punching bag but it the CFMEU led the counter protest and yet the CFMEU aligned coal mining Labor candidate lost a lot of vote while the Greens vote actually went up in Capricornia. Again, the “why Labor lost in 2019” narrative was very convenient for certain interests and it’s telling their path back to government still didn’t go through QLD or any Abbott-Shorten-Morrison seats.

By the way, there was recent reporting that Adani isn’t actually hiring anyone from Clermont. Another case of reality not matching the ideological battle.

I think Labor is irrevocably on the arse end of the coal culture war. People who are emotionally attached to coal are consuming social media (and in Australia, traditional media) diets driving them to the right. Labor’s careful framing in media releases that nobody reads isn’t going to keep them viable in Hunter, young people moving to Newcastle after being priced out of Sydney is. I think Labor can win win or keep winning the QLD regional centres the way they have entrenched themselves in similarly sized Vic and NSW centres especially if they stopped taking fossil fuel money and letting fossil fuel lobbyists run their campaigns and write their election post mortems.

@John

The Greens vote in Capricornia 2019 went up by 0.1%. The Labor vote went down by 14.3%, but most of this went to One Nation who had a 17% swing towards them.

Nimalan, regarding where any hypothetical partition line would go, I would imagine that the lines least likely to go through the middle of anyone’s house would be council boundaries, because it makes logical sense for the rates on a property to go to one council only. Although I imagine some agricultural and pastoral properties are vast enough to cross multiple councils. Perhaps others can provide more insight on that.

The Queensland Department of State Development groups councils into regions for service provision. I’d probably draw the partition boundary using the edges of some of these regions. A map is given at https://www.statedevelopment.qld.gov.au/regions/queenslands-regions

I would imagine that any hypothetical North Queensland state would at minimum include the North, Far North and North West regions. As far as I understand, most people in Mackay Isaac Whitsunday region identify as North Queenslanders too. I’d let the people of the Central region decide whether they’d prefer to be part of a northern or southern state.

The population of the three northern-most regions combined is about 565 000 from the last census. Add in Mackay Isaac Whitsunday and this figure rises to 750 000 (about 14% of the total Queensland population). Add in Central too and it rises to about 1 million (19% of total Queensland population).

It’s still not clear why Labor paid the political price for a protest led by a former leader of the Greens, especially when they condemned the protest and the local Labor candidate was a delegate of the organisation leading the counter protests. Says to me the association of Labor and anti-coal is a sunk cost and QLD Labor winning a 4th term but losing majority can’t do any damage on that front that hasn’t already been done.

@john
What is sunk cost?

Mick Q re sunk cost –

A sunk cost is when you’ve spent money on something and you aren’t getting that money back.

What John’s saying is that anyone who’d swing away from Labor because of coal issues has already done so.

On the topic of Labor-Greens minority governments, Queensland is the last place Labor should form a coalition with the Greens. I won’t mention WA/SA/NT as the Greens don’t hold lower house seats. The state has electorates that are blue-collar, working class and quite socially conservative. The Greens policies aren’t looked favourably upon and Labor will pay a price.

Labor is perhaps scarred from experiences of going too green. In 2004, Mark Latham stood alongside Bob Brown in Tasmania with his forests policy, whilst John Howard got cheers from unionised forestry workers. Labor subsequently lost two Tasmanian seats. In 2013, Labor lost in a landslide following a minority government with the Greens.

Labor aims to distinguish itself from the Greens even if it risks alienating inner-city progressives. It is because of events like these and the Stop Adani convoy. Also, conservative commentators e.g. on Sky News, and right wing parties tend to lump the Greens with Labor and sometimes the Liberals, especially ones they dislike e.g. Matt Kean, Malcolm Turnbull.

Further to Votante’s point I was also add unlike in Outer Melbourne these are white working class voters who can move to the Alt-Right. Ethnic working class voters are less likely to move to Libs but could swing to Dai Le/Socialists. My point is that Labor may not suffer a backlash in ethnic working class areas like Inala or Woodridge but this is much more scarce in Queensland than NSW or Victoria.

Maybe I’m biased too but I also don’t really buy the idea that implementing Greens policies is what does Labor in given Albo’s pious and well publicized defiance of them at every turn, and Qld Labor’s complete dismissal of absolutely every possible demand the Greens have made of them since winning seats in parliament. All the past decade, or past quarter century even, of Qld Labor ostensibly dominating politics by sacrificing almost all progressive policy, often very popular policies, on the altar of electoralism, trying to buy an implacably right-wing media off by gifting them 90%+ of their ideological agenda probably won’t save them in October anyway. And for what? For every step forward the state government’s taken 10 steps back.

The rumour column in The Australian reports that the LNP is planning to preference Labor ahead of the Greens in every seat at this election.

This means that for the Greens to win seats, they either need Labor to fall into third place in the 3CP count, or to get a high enough primary that they can win Labor-Greens contests without high preference flows. I think they’ll retain Maiwar through the first method and South Brisbane through the second. However, the lack of LNP preferences might make it harder for them to wrest further seats away from Labor, unless there is a mass primary vote shift from Labor to the Greens.

This won’t make a difference because the only Greens target seat the Libs are going to realistically fall to 3rd place in is South Brisbane. Which they will easily be able to win with incumbency now.

@Ben Exactly right. Most people I speak to say Noosa, or Gladstone, or somewhere on the Sunshine Coast. The fact that elections are decided in the Greater Brisbane area tends to concentrate the power, and the spending. The Queensland Minister for Agriculture and Fisheries is the Member for Ferny Grove, an indication of the problems the ALP has representing interests outside Brisbane.

@Wilson The boundary line would most probably fall somewhere between Gladstone and Rockhampton, based on the fact that there’s a bit of rivalry there already and the residents of both cities would be happy to see each other in a different state. There would be a need to tidy up the council boundaries to align with the state ones. Also the Australian is pretty much on the money.

The ALP in other States objecting to the additional Senate spots won’t really have a say in what happens and the Queensland ALP might see the virtue in increasing their relative stranglehold on Parliament in the South-East corner. Removing a third of the State seats that mostly vote LNP makes their job a bit easier. Although it would be a pretty big hit to the budget, so there’d be a push to transfer a lot of the debt to the new state.

Also @Wilson, I can give you a local example of a development – the Proserpine Wind Farm – that will probably be knocked back by the Council due to community concerns, but the State Government will use their call-in powers to override the local planning scheme and any council objections. It won’t do any more damage to the ALP vote in Mackay than the Eungella Pumped Water proposal is doing already.

@Votante The difficulty with Labor is that they still see elections as an ALP/LNP fight, mostly because The Greens will always preference them above the LNP (although the preferences normally split 80/20). Until The Greens start cutting significantly into their seats that’s unlikely to change. But The Greens represent an existential threat to Labor.

@John In Dawson as well. Even the local Greens had enough sense to keep their heads down when the Stop Adani convoy came through. Collinsville had a very well attended anti-Convoy protest.

@Yoh An Queensland had a history of Councillors also simultaneously serving as State Members before the practice was outlawed. John Goleby in Redlands and Clive Berghofer in Toowoomba come to mind.

@Wilson I wasn’t saying that Pinky Singh would win because of the higher percentage of Indian-Australian voters, I was pointing out that the numbers of Chinese-Australian voters are more or less identical to those of Indian-Australian background because the percentage of those eligible to vote as citizens are higher. And yes, I do have the numbers for that based on surnames on the electoral roll. While that is not 100 percent accurate, a surname like Singh or Chen is more likely to indicate cultural background. Give it a couple of generations and it will become less reliable… When it comes to candidate probabilities, I look at fundraising, on-the-ground activities and polling as being fairly reliable indicators. And on that basis I’m comfortable enough calling Mansfield.

Upper Houses, by their very nature, are undemocratic. New South Wales has 12 Senators, as does Tasmania. For a very simple reason, it ensures that a simple majority of the two most populated states can’t ride roughshod over the other, smaller states. Otherwise Tasmania would have two Senators and New South Wales would have 24. Without the promise of an Upper House the other states would not have joined at Federation. As Edmund Barton stated “Not only by its express powers, but by the equality of its representation of the states, the Senate was intended to be able to protect the states from aggression.” In a similar way an Upper House in Queensland would protect the rest of Queensland from an otherwise all-powerful Greater Brisbane.

In terms of energy it’s also about sharing the burden. Why are the wind and solar plants in regional areas? Why is there only energy competition in the South-East corner? What scientific basis is there for nuclear power being an option for everywhere except for Australia? If people were serious about energy consumption then allowing them to demonstrate their commitment to it would seem to be a good way to avoid the hypocrisy. I spoke to a Greens person recently and the topic got on to mobile phones. I still have my iPhone 6 because it does the job. She had an iPhone 15, and I asked her how many she’d had in the past 10 years. She wasn’t pleased when I pointed out the resources needed to build a new phone for her every 18 months had probably outweighed any environmental benefit her job had achieved.

The number of Senators is set by Parliament under s121 and s124 of the Constitution. Although the new State would not be an original state it would be hard arguing that something three times the population of Tasmania deserves less representation. That’s basically in line with the argument the ACT is using for greater Senate representation. Whatever happens in the north won’t affect the number of Senators in the south because they’re guaranteed equality with the other original states. That’s why I think that the Queensland-specific bit of s7 wouldn’t apply in the event of a split (and to be honest, I’m not even sure if it’s relevant anymore).

This might be the LNP’s first major blunder, former Premier Campbell
Newman slams his own party on the Gold Coast Bulletin https://www.goldcoastbulletin.com.au/news/politics/queensland-state-election-2024-former-premier-campbell-newman-says-lnp-doesnt-deserve-to-win-october-poll/news-story/e99a40b9e5a5be3fdf869a118ac32c84?amp&nk=adeeafeeaa4424c1c1e3bf98c4a07594-1713759694

Yes it looks like the LNP is copping a lot of heat over its support of Labor’s 75% emissions reductions strategy. Especially in the regions. If One Nation or the KAP capitalise on this and run a strong campaign, there could be swings towards them.

@Caleb correction:

Steve Price interviews Campbell Newman on Sky News and they slam David Crisafulli, Sam O’Connor, John Pesutto, Zak Kirkup, Steven Miles, Peter Garrett, the entire Labor Party, the entire LNP, governments and oppositions simultaneously in less than eight minutes.

Sky news is attacking Crisfaulli. Rowan Dean has encouraged people to vote One Nation Party instead

One Nation should really capitalise on this if they want to stand a chance. Currently there’s very limited campaigning at a state level.

The tantrum from Sky News is quite amusing. But I think Campbell Newman had the better analysis. Any rise in primary vote for One Nation is unlikely to fetch them further seats, and preferences should send any votes they gain from the LNP straight back anyway. The bigger issue, as Newman pointed out, is whether past LNP volunteers will get annoyed with the party over this stance and refuse to volunteer this time.

@ Wilson
The issue is that One Nation preferences are not disciplined so maybe 35% will leak back to Labor. That is a point Peta Credlin keep repeating. If Labor loses votes to Greens/Socialists on the hand back they do get a disciplined flow of preferences back.

It also depends on how many candidates ON can put up and what resources they have – both people and financial. ON are a rabble at the best of times.

Nimalan, you’re basing that figure on historic One Nation voters, not from those that they might win from the LNP due to anger over the LNPs support for emissions reduction. Do you think these climate skeptics are going to preference Labor over the LNP at a 35% rate? That would be quite the reversal.

@ Wilson
Firstly, as i pointed out in the Moggill thread, i actually welcome the LNP, Greens and Labor all voting for the emissions so that is my personal point of view. I support the legislation.
Now yes i am basing it on historical rates see below from the 2022 Federal election, which is the latest i can find. I dont know why ONP votes are less disciplined TBH

https://results.aec.gov.au/27966/Website/HouseStateTppFlow-27966-NAT.htm

Okay, you’re basing it on historical preferencing patterns. What I’m saying that this may not be a good guide to how voters that they win from the LNP due to climate skepticism will preference. What reason do these voters have to preference Labor over the LNP? They probably don’t have the same economic reasons to preference Labor that 35% of usual One Nation voters do.

I found the views of sky news especially after dark coincide very much with ONP and cannot be shifted.
ONP tends to have a tendency to lose members and even candidates this is reinforced by lack of campaign finance provided centrally by ONP head office.

The NSW ONP split in nsw shows their lack of internal democracy and this tendency to self distruct

@Nimalan an offical endorsement from a news organisation already? That was early.

@Mick Quinlivan funnily enough One Nation had a split in Queensland too. The City Country Alliance was formed by five ex-One Nation Queensland state MPs (who were later joined by a sixth state MP and by former Senator Heather Hill), but the Queensland One Nation split of the 1990s was mostly in protest over the perceived centralisation of the party’s affairs in Sydney. The party only existed between 1999 and 2003. One Nation itself was founded in 1997 by Pauline Hanson and won 11 seats at the 1998 state election (George Christensen, now a One Nation member and the former LNP member for Dawson, admittedly voted for One Nation at that election) only to then fall in the next few elections only for their last MP (Rosa Lee Long in Tablelands) lost her seat in 2009.

May I note that Rowan Dean called the party the Liberal Party instead of the Liberal National Party.

He said Liberal Party or Libs six times and only LNP once. Plus Rita said Libs.

Shit like this is why I’d argue Sky News damages the LNP more than it does to Labor. It constantly pushes the LNP (and its base) further and further to the right.

Sure, One Nation -> LNP preference flows aren’t as strong nor predictable as Greens -> ALP’s.

My belief is that One Nation attracts protest voters and anti-establishment voters who might be either ex-Labor or ex-LNP voters as well as apathetic voters. Their average voter doesn’t have a preferred major party. The Greens and other left-wing parties e.g. Socialists, AJP, tend to be popular in traditionally Labor heartland, attract ex-Labor voters or attract voters who want to ‘send a message’ but see Labor as the lesser of the two evils (Labor vs LNP).

@Caleb Campbell hasn’t been a part of the LNP for a number of years and he narrowly escaped suspension and expulsion quite a few times.

The wider problem for One Nation is that they just can’t get their act together. It’s less of a political party and more a sort of mobile squabble with an ongoing battle of splits, disagreements and upsetting Dear Leader Pauline. Calling it a series of personality clashes implies that some of the participants have personalities in the first place. One Nation can’t even deliver reliable preferences.

I wrote the following in 2019 but it’s even more relevant now because One Nation has lost the ability to get HTVs into the hands of declared institution, postal and pre-poll voters.

Preference flow over the course of a normal electoral cycle can swing back and forth with changes in leadership, the economy and local factors. Fortunately Longman in 2016 and 2018 offers a perfect opportunity to compare the results. In 2016 ON preferenced Labor and reversed that decision at the 2018 byelection.

In a perfectly strong preference endorsement 100 percent of ON votes would have gone to the ALP in 2016 and 100 percent to the LNP in 2018. We don’t have to include the stops along the way because the only numbers that matter are the percentages that went to the final two candidates.

In 2016 ON got 8,293 formal first preference votes and finished third. This was a primary return of 9.42 percent.

In 2018 ON got 14,061 formal first preference votes and finished third. This time around this was a primary return of 15.91 percent.

The combined turnout less informality (the percentage of votes that had an impact in the elections) was 83.15 percent in 2016 compared to 78.19 percent. That gives it a very close base to work off, although I’d argue that the people who didn’t show up on the day would be far more likely to vote for minor parties.

In 2016 ON directed their preference to Labor ahead of the LNP and the split was 56.49 percent to 43.51 percent. So 56.91 percent followed the ON HTV to the final distribution. In 2018 ON directed their preference to the LNP ahead of Labor and the split was 67.74 percent to 32.26 percent.

If we assume a consistency in voters from one election to the next we can define the core makeup of a ON voter in this demographic – a base of 32.26 percent for Labor and a base of 43.51 percent for the LNP. So 75.76 of the One Nation voters are going to preference whomever they like irrespective of a HTV. In essence they’re ON ALP or ON LNP voters. That leaves 24.24 percent of votes up for grabs – but that’s only 24.24 percent of somewhere between 9.42 percent and 15.91 percent, or 2.28 percent to 3.85 percent.