From today’s Crikey email:
Any close observer of Queensland politics – or rather what the press gallery and the pundits write about Queensland politics – could be forgiven for thinking the general approach to election date tipping was to write a story every day linking anything political the Labor party had done to a “possible early election announcement”. The idea might be that eventually such a story will have to be followed by the aforesaid election announcement. But Crikey can now confirm that the “imminent election” may in fact be imminent.
Anna Bligh’s been busy lining up a few ducks in a row. All eyes have been on the plethora of retirement announcements from sitting MPs this week. But keener eyes might have been trained on Police Minister Judy Spence’s statement that she wouldn’t be retiring. Spence is one of the long serving MPs first elected in 1989, and the only Minister to have had her seat affected substantially by the redistribution.
Last year, elements in the Labor Left were very keen to see her replaced. It’s not just that Spence’s perceived closeness to the Police Union and law and order tub thumping hasn’t made her universally loved. It’s more the case that a lot of the Left weren’t happy with concessions that had to be made to the AWU to smooth Bligh’s path to the premiership. Mike Kaiser’s ascension to the chief of staff gig has to be seen in this context. So to keep all the factions sweet, and to achieve the Premier’s desire to demonstrate party renewal and distance her government from Peter Beattie’s, enough retirements had to be engineered to accommodate Spence’s wish to dig her heals in and to enable Left and Right to be satisfied with the results of instant preselections.
Federal politics is also influencing the timing of the poll. The stimulus package was the key. State Labor wanted to be sure that it would pass, and that the Feds weren’t going to be rushing off to an election in 2009. You can now tick those boxes. There’s also the political bonus (however cynical) of voters stimulated by the ALP with hard cash – and the additional bonus of lots of footage of Barnaby Joyce railing against that cash and by implication the new library for the local school. Every Labor candidate in Brisbane will be running against the National Party no matter how “liberal” the local LNP hopeful is – and most aren’t all that liberal. The “economic debate”, federal Coalition style, is supposed to play a starring role in the theatre of the state election. Nor will federal instability help convince voters sceptical that the Borg’s shiny new vehicle might be about to run off its rails.
The ALP is now well and truly on a campaign footing. As I understand it, the final decision to pull the trigger hasn’t definitely been made. There’s still a small chance that an election won’t be announced in the next fortnight, and if so, the government will go close to full term. But from what Labor sources tell Crikey, if you wanted to have a bet, the odds you’d get for an election being called on Monday or Tuesday would be pretty short.
Update: Thread now closed. Comments on the Queensland election can be made here.
Post WA and NT, I wouldnt personally give Borg the ammo of ‘going early’ – since he’s got practically no other shots in the locker. It wont shock me if Crikey pundits are wrong here, and Bligh goes close as possible to term.
The Budget cupboard is bare but the punters will be rolling in cash beginning mid-March courtesy of the stimulus package. While going early certainly has a significant downside, going full-term might be the greater risk by far.
While Barnaby is a goose, he is popular with the punters and therefore I don’t think he will feature in the ALP campaign.
Doesn’t matter when they go they can’t rewind the environmental damage they have caused due to their fast tracking of developments and they can’t rewind the consequences that will come because of it. The moment they were purchased by developers is the day they deserved to be removed from government. And no, I don’t think the ‘other mob’ are any worse or better, they just aren’t they.
Key: ‘they’ = QLD labor party and ‘other mob’ = LNP (or Nationals if you are ‘they’)
Lefty E – I’m not sure if it’s clear to you that I’m the author of this piece and therefore the “Crikey pundit(s)” in question.
Let me just point out that I’m not proceeding on abstract guesswork – I’m reporting what I’ve been told from people in the Labor campaign. And on the ground, for instance – I’d note that Grace Grace had campaigners at the Albion station every morning this week. You wouldn’t have people campaigning so actively in what is a pretty safe Labor seat – Brisbane Central – on the vague possibility of an election, or as some sort of profile building exercise for later in the year. I can tell you as an absolute fact regional and key seat campaigns weren’t just mobilised for imminent action at the beginning of this week, they jumped the gun before the trigger was pulled – deliberately.
As I say, there’s some slight possibility that the election won’t be called next week, but it’s not a matter of reading the omens in the sky. It’s what I’m told by people in the campaign is actually happening, and the reasons why.
Actually, that wasn’t clear to me Mark, and if you’re hearing noises of an informed nature – on Quinceland turf – then I’m substantially more convinced of the case. I know your sources will be sound.
Frankly “Crikey”, for all the value you get – its a bit Canberra/ Sydney /Melb triangle; for the most part.
Yep, Lefty E, which is why I made a case to them that they should have more locally sourced coverage of matters Quinceland!
“Grace Grace had campaigners at the Albion station every morning this week. You wouldn’t have people campaigning so actively in what is a pretty safe Labor seat -” I’m not sure of the technical aspects of the metrics involved in “so” actively and “pretty” safe, but “even” in Anna’s seat campaigner workers have, as noted last weekend, been personning the glossybrochureware card table on the corner of Boundary and Vulture.
Not that that’s remarkable, it’s just housekeeping. What’s more remarkable is that neither of the other candidates are even att
(7 cont) …(att)empting to make a fist of it in response. It used to be quite a piece of theatre with 3 out of the 4 corners of the intersection occupied by different parties.
But if Mark is right about there going to be a general retreat to a brutal “first past the post” election, the non-encumbents may as well save their money here and just turn up on the day, declare candidates for form’s sake. Or just not stand. Queensland, where parliamantary democracy died, gamed to extinction by the partisan impulse, driven by individual areer ambitions.
I see Queensland ” has been stripped of it’s AAA rating” by S&P. It’s been 3 months since that well-known basket case NSW was crowing about managing to keep its S&P AAA rating “to preserve the state’s triple A credit rating and avoid paying up to $100 million in extra interest payments per year”, and a lot can happen in 3 months. It just wouldn’t do for Annaland to be thought a worse bet than NSW by someone that matters. I see both Mirvac and Stockland, very very big presences in South Brisbane, have both been put on negative credit watch. Jeez, if they weren’t able to continue kicking in to Democracy, Peel Street style, there’d be hell to pay, and if you couldn’t pay, go in to debt for.
I note with satisfaction that the laws of pre-selection karma are holding up: Anne Warner, who bequethed South Brisbane to Anna, has had her daughter installed as the Labor’s Indooripilly candidate. Jim Fouras will be amused, Ronan Lee being a bit of a protege of his, according to his maiden speech, and it being Ms Warner, Snr, who did Fouras out of his South Brisbane seat.
South Brisbane, for anyone who doesn’t know the semi-ancient history of Qld Labor Party pre-selection shenanigans, was the site of infamous Shepherdon-enquiry-producing rort where (largish pdf alert)
Well, I see the irony across the ages.
I’ve seen Kaiser’s name mentioned as being lined up for next premier gig: you take a bullet for the party, you get rewarded, makes sense to me. Everything is going to the Peel Street Plan plan, all is right with the world. Damned those rating agencies.