Note: This post is part of the series of Crikey Queensland election commentary and is cross-posted at Currumbin2Cook.
Update: The Poll Bludger comments on the Newspoll.
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The Australian highlighted a Newspoll on its front page yesterday which showed Team Beattie potentially winning with a larger majority than in 2004. That’s unlikely, as the swing back to Labor is not going to be uniform, and the optional preferential voting system makes 2PP projections unreliable. But there is no doubt in my mind that Labor will take seats off the Libs (and just possibly a couple off the Nats), though its poor position on the Sunshine Coast makes Liberal deputy Mark McCardle safer than he looks on paper and may also see some Labor seats fall to the Libs.
As I’ve previously argued in Crikey, Flegg’s blonde campaign is not the Libs’ only problem. Their baseline vote going into the election is already about as low as it can go – particularly in Brisbane, where Labor won 34 of 35 seats last time around (Redcliffe and Chatsworth were lost at by-elections in 2005). So in the second of our focus groups for The National Forum, Graham Young and I polled a sample of strong Liberal voters. We were interested to see how they’d perceived the campaign and whether any were shifting to Labor.
All the participants were strongly critical of Beattie, and their policy views strongly anti-Labor. But a number had considered shifting their vote. Joseph, a 35-year-old self-employed former public servant, had the line of the night: “They provide no viable alternative to Team Beattie. I heard the comment today that Flegg has been going around the state ‘drumming up apathy’.”
Other participants were quick to agree. David, in his 60s and living on the Sunshine Coast, observed: “I support the code but the players are a worry at the moment”. While participants felt that Flegg would be a good Health Minister, they were also worried that the Libs appeared to have become a single issue party, hardly campaigning on other issues.
When push came to shove, all were going to stick with the Liberal devil they did know, though their distaste at Bob Quinn’s knifing was evident. But interestingly, the coalition agreement might be a factor inclining some Liberals towards a Labor, FF or Independent vote. There was much hostility to the Nats from our sample, and those who had no Liberal candidate to vote for (in some coastal and outer Brisbane seats) were voting Nat with a peg on their noses. Springborg was damned with faint praise, and the legacy of the Moonlight State corruption had certainly not been forgotten. Sir Joh has left a problematic legacy to Queensland conservatives, and not just through continued coalition disunity.
I’ll always treasure my memory of handing a free copy of the ‘Cane Toad times’ to a Joh supporter in the late seventies near Surfers.
She told me I ought to be hung!
( and I was too though it’s all shrinking a bit these days )
But Qld could also be about the future of politics as well as the past.
With the lunar Gliead right in retreat and dissaray globally the anti-state left (and anti-war right ) are now faced with a giant bureaucratic centrist authoritarian state.
New tactics may be needed to tame this large scaly lumbering beast.
I’m encouraged , not only by the recent sucess of the Nedrenaline surge and the rise of the intelligent machines ( the internet) but also the recent referendum on the new EU superstate.
See while the daily Kossacks now speak of ‘ Libertarian democrats’ storming the gates and the Europeans obviously like Shengen and common currency but they seem to dislike big states …and all their associated big military-entertainment complex’s.
Creeping Beattieism is like a plague of poisonous spreading statist toads but with science, the web and determination we can send this hideous dinosaur off a cliff at a time and place of our choosing.
The real battle for the future is not between Gilead law or Sharia law but between Democratic socialism and Libertarian socialism. Disclosure – I’m an anarchist.
Interesting comment. I’m not sure you’re right, but it would be nice if you were.
Update: The Poll Bludger comments on the Newspoll.
Good to see you you are still alive and well Professor Rat. Have always enjoyed your writings on the internet.
The National Party and Libs will probably have to either totally be restructured or the whole generation who have suffered under their weird governments will probably have to die out before they will be trusted to any great extent.
This actually happened when people got burnt buying shares in the South Sea Bubble in the 1700s and it took about seventy years before shares were bought by the General Public again.
The Conservative’s style of government is unsuited to a Democratic system. I was reading their policy this afternoon and was amazed to see that even now they just do not get what the separation of powers is about.
Their policy of Government integrity says,
,
leaves one wondering just what is going to happen to the courts if the Coalition ever gets into power.
But one encouraging thing I did find among their media releases was that the old pork – barrelling of Country electorates is alive and well in Natland.
As a southerner you almost need an interpreter to explain Professor Rat but I do get most of the drift. Creeping Beattieism like a frost resistant cane toad heading south..as they do..will. Our Morris could learn a thing and lets hope he does. Not that we southerners like him. His failure to show on a state-based carbon tax proves the point, that state based opportunism won’t cut it when bigger issues loom. I doubt they’re asking about such things in Brisvegas
Mark, interesting that two-time loser Beazley was bounced by Beattie today!
Thanks, C.L., hadn’t seen that!
An obvious succession gesture, oui?
Ya!
Great insight CL. Among an infinite range of descriptors you might have applied to ‘Beazley’ you chose the ‘non-political’ option.
I think I now understand your political position.