Note: From today’s Crikey email, this piece is also cross posted at Currumbin2Cook.
Any Queensland election is a tale of two campaigns – not as Dickens would have it, of two cities, but of the city and the bush.
The Nats’ weak position explains the leadership brawl. Not just because Springborg doesn’t play well in Brisbane. Outside the south-east and the hubs of Cairns and Townsville, where they must win seats, is unfavourable country for the Nats, unless there’s a big swing against Team Beattie.
Leaving aside the Gold Coast seat of Gaven, which the Nats wouldn’t have won without the coalition agreement, and the Sunshine Coast seat of Maroochydore, where Fiona Simpson is a long term incumbent, Team Borg holds 14 of 32 regional seats.
The Nats face hurdles in increasing their numbers.
Update [by Kim]: Pollbludger blogs on the first newspoll, which has Labor on 54 2PP and the full list of candidates nominated.
Further update: A bit of interstate commentary from Gary at Public Opinion and some more Queensland commentary from Nick Caldwell on energy policy.
Another update: There are wheels within wheels in the Byzantine sage of the Qld hustings. As Graham Young puts it at Currumbin2Cook, the blonde are now leading the blind.
Four of five Independents in regional seats are dug in, having built up very large margins. For instance, despite the supposed magic of his name, John Bjelke-Petersen will have a hard task taking Nanango off Dolly Pratt. In other regional seats, the Independents have soaked up the traditionally conservative vote. Just two Labor seats in the regions have margins below 7.3%. In Hervey Bay, ministerial hopeful Andrew MacNamara is an excellent local member.
The Nats’ chances in Keppel, against a 3.8% margin, reveal one of the little told stories of this campaign. Keppel was the only seat Labor won off the Nats last time, and is a “sea changeâ€? seat. Bernard Galt recently highlighted sea changers and tree changers migrating to Queensland, and predicted they might bring Green politics with them. That’s speculative, but what’s certain is that they won’t bring to the Sunshine State a pattern of National voting.
In regional Queensland, many seats are facing fast growing populations where necessary infrastructure doesn’t exist. Queensland’s growth is at the heart of all Beattie’s service delivery woes. But ironically, rapidly changing coastal seats are unlikely to be tempted by the Nats’ politics of the past.
The other wild card is Family First. Because the election was called early, they’re running in just 40 (largely regional) seats. Many host large evangelical Christian churches. But FF are outraged at Springborg’s soft stance on legal prostitution. In an optional preferential system where Beattie has created a “Just vote oneâ€? culture, Family First votes will largely exhaust.
Underlying the Nats’ problems is the ghost of Pauline Hanson. Most seats the Nats don’t hold but must win are electorates One Nation captured in 1998 or did well in.
The Nats are caught between the Scylla of modernisation, which benefits the ALP, and the Charybdis of traditional regional culture, which benefits independents. The post-election leadership stoush arose because the Nats are yet to either recover from the defection of much of their base to Pauline, or to present a more modern face to a rapidly growing Queensland.
She aint DEAD yet Mark.
Her metaphorical ghost, Birdy. Her political career is dead. Don’t be so picky!
Update [by Kim]: Pollbludger blogs on the first newspoll, which has Labor on 54 2PP and the full list of candidates nominated.
One can only be optimistic, Bird.
wg, but she’s rebuilding her life selling property in her son’s real estate business in Annerley. Living the great Australian dream!
Seriously, though, the post is not about Hanson. Let’s not let Bird’s irrelevant comment distract us from its topic at this early stage.
It is true that the Nats have never come to terms with losing a lot of their base to ONP. What I think the post argues well is that in seeking to do so by beefing up the hardline moralism and law and order stuff, they’re fighting an election that was held in 1998, and ignoring the great changes in demographics and attitudes in the seats they need to win in a very different Queensland in 2006.
The Nats have lost their pragmatic touch.
Thanks for the links, Kim. I must add Pollbludger to my RSS feeds.
Speaking of which, in response to a comment by Rebecca over there, I’ve filled out the stuff I have here on the role of Family First, so I’ll cross post it:
http://www.pollbludger.com/369#comment-2422
The value of that point, and of the piece, is that it highlights a range of things that will impact on the result which are not being talked about even in the Qld MSM, let alone the national media.
Further update: A bit of interstate commentary from Gary at Public Opinion and some more Queensland commentary from Nick Caldwell on energy policy.
Another update: There are wheels within wheels in the Byzantine sage of the Qld hustings. As Graham Young puts it at Currumbin2Cook, the blonde are now leading the blind.
Are the Nats using John B P in a capacity larger than running for Nanango, in a let’s trade off his name kind of way?
By the way, my grandparents on my mum’s side, now deceased, were the only people known to have voted Labor in that seat. No, I am being silly, I believe my uncle and aunt voted ALP as well.
Not as far as I know, Darlene, but they might be in rural media which tends to go under the radar in Brissie. But he’s got a big ask to win the seat, so he’d be best off concentrating on it.
There was some suggestion Pratt might be retiring, as she has MS, and no doubt his chances would have been better if it had been an open seat. But most of the Independents are virtually impossible to dislodge once they’ve been there for longer than a term.
I can’t see why. At the last Senate election she picked up more than $180 000 while her expenses were vitually zero. I predict she will run again.
How many goes has she had now without winning, wpd? In NSW as well? Even if she were just financially motivated, I don’t think she’d get much of a vote these days. And you’d imagine given her prison experience, she might be a bit wary of electoral expense claims these days…
Mark, I don’t they check your expenses any more.
You only need to get above 4% and the dollars flow.
With respect to SOSE, I think Beattie has given himself some wriggle room. I wish Education Ministers, Prime Ministers and Premiers would study the history as to why these decisions were made. If history is to have that special place, what about geography, civics etc..
Specialist teachers have own Subject Associations and they will not simply lie down
Yes, the geographers were furious when SOSE came in.
wpd: Pauline Hanson was an aberration in Australian politics. Times have moved on, the Keating/Whitlamist rot is no longer suppressing public discourse in the nation.
Were she (or a clone) to stand now, it is unlikely that they would attract 20% of the statewide vote (or even 10% of the nationwide vote).
Herself, she has had a gutful of politics. It would be amazing if she stood again. She isn’t as tough as the career politicians John Howard, Kim Beazley & co, who tough it out election after election, wearing all sorts of humiliation, abuse, slander, remaining focused on their future
However the financial reasons you note are likely to cause the ALP, Liberal, National, Calithumpian etc to run again, they are political parties focused on votes & election payments far more than they are on helping the country.
One Nation was a spontaneous movement, not an organised political entity. It rose in a flash, and dissapated immediately.
Interesting points from Steve at the Pub.
Although I think the whole “stopping public discourse” thing about Whitlam/Keating is overstated (I wrote something on my blog about the dire Helen Darville and her attempts to make excuses for her behaviour based on the Keating era’s political correctness).
There’s also nothing quite as amusing as hearing people like Laws, Alan Jones blah blah going on about their freedom of speech being inhibited (I believe Loewenstein is quite good at this).
Hansonism emerged I think more from the particular economic circumstances of the time (eg decline in manufacturing sector). The reason it lasted so long was due to the fuel that was added to it by its opponents. Populism is essentially negative, so it needs something to oppose it to thrive.
steve at the pub
Maybe so. But she did run at the last Senate election after she came out of jail, and she was in Sydney the other night to listen to Mark Steyn. She also asked him a question.
It seems a long way to go to listen to and interact with Steyn, particularly if she has had a ‘gutful’ of politics. It’s easy money and she always had an eye for an easy quid.
But you could be right.
I think Darlene is spot on about the economic basis of Hansonism. This tended to be ignored at the time because many of the same people who vehemently opposed her views on social issues vehemently supported liberal economics, or at least liberalisation and globalisation of the economy. But there’s also no doubt that in a way, her movement was a cri de coueur from “the old Australia”. That’s where the Nats are going wrong in this election, I’m arguing. The hardline moralism and law and order stuff is designed to get support from people who are a rapidly declining demographic in the seats they must win back. They have very little to offer Southerners moving up to Qld. Beattie has struggled with infrastructure, but the Nats’ idea of infrastructure is antiquated as well – build more stuff – ie roads, dams, bridges – not address the issues on a state wide basis which is what is needed. Indicative of all this was Burnett MP Rob Messenger’s nutty idea to build a new hospital in Bundaberg. The old hospital is not that old, and that’s not the problem – it’s a shortage of medical staff. For instance, the Prince Charles hospital in Chermside (in the marginal ALP seat of Aspley) is shiny and new but the accident and emergency wards can’t open til at least 2008 because doing so would further diminish staff levels at the Caboolture and Redcliffe hospitals. The Nats really don’t have a clue anymore.
I just searched the candidates and Family First only have 26. For those playing at home the seats are:
Albert, Burdekin, Cunningham, Darling Downs, Everton, Ferny Grove, Glass House, Gregory, Gympie, Hervey Bay, Ipswich West, Keppel, Lockyer, Logan, Mansfield, Mount Gravatt, Mount Isa, Mudgeeraba, Nanango, Noosa, Sandgate, Tablelands, Toowoomba North, Toowoomba South, Warrego & Woodridge
Darryl, this is a function of the Crikey deadline. I write the story the night before it goes out in the email, and then I delay posting it here for a bit to preserve the temporary exclusivity of the Crikey content.
So this was written before nominations closed, and FF had said in their public statements they would have 40 candidates.
Obviously they didn’t do so well.
As I said at Pollbludger, one other advantage that the early election brings Beattie is catching the minor parties unprepared.
How did the Greens do?
oh, no attempt at pedantic bitching this time Mark. :^) I knew you were writing before the ECQ released the names and that FF had pre-announced 40.
The Greens are running 75 candidates, three more than 2004. Yay us. I should probably say I’m the candidate for Greenslopes again. So watch out Gary Fenlon.
BTW I think I owe you a small apology for that previous bitch. My snark (and curiosity) is directed at “fact-checking” within Crikey and elsewhere in the media. I got no idea how it works, but it seems to work quite badly in the bits Crikey publishes that I know something about. I don’t have much snark directed against the writers. Except, of course, for Christian Kerr. Buy you a beer at the club sometime?
d
The biggest hurdle the Nationals have however is still the ideological difference with the Liberal Party. For instance the Hansard from 28 September 2005 p 2867 shows vast areas of difference between the two coalition parties.
Up until that date they have voted against each other on “the Vegetation Management and Other Legislation Amendment Bill second reading debate,the Sugar Industry Reform Bill, the Marine Parks Bill, the Education Legislation Amendment Bill, the Tobacco and Other Smoking Products Amendment Bill, the Racing Amendment Bill and the Marine parks Great Barrier Reef coast zoning plan.”
Since then we have seen breakouts with the Queensland Liberals supporting the Howard Governments Industrial Relations plan while the Nationals were trying to get Senator Barnaby Joyce to cross the floor to oppose Howard’s Workchoices Legislation.
In the end the Liberals won the day against the Nats as Federally they invariably do and the same as they did when the Nationals were huffing and puffing about how they were never going to stop the full sale of Telstra.
It seems that at present ‘the coalition of the unwilling’ is at variance with each other and the voting public still sees disunity as death as far as I can see.
Imagine the Liberals trying to tell the people of South East Queensland how good their environmental credentals are when the Shadow portfolio is held by a National who up until now has made decisions based on pastoral and Agribusiness interests.
Or,Imagine the National Party trying to explain their plan for looking after Seniors when the Liberal Member for Caloundra has been given the job of being their Shadow spokesman during the last term of Parliament. Seniors on the Sunshine Coast were shocked when he was promoted to Deputy Leader of the Liberal Party recently.
Hi Darryl
Sure, and no worries. I’m not out at Nathan all that often though, these days, because I’m dividing my time between Griffith, ACU, and consultancy and business projects. But when I’m next around, a beer at the club sounds great!
Good luck for Greenslopes, but matching good luck for Gary too, as he’s a mate of mine also – we used to share an office together when he was out of Parliament for a term and working as a politics/public policy academic.
steve, the rich vein of coalition disunity has only just begun to be mined!