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)

“In the 1986 ALP plebiscite for the State electorate of South Brisbane [between Jim Fouras and Anne Warner], false enrolment forms had been submitted n the names of Mike Kaiser and Paul Lucas, who both became Members of State Parliament”

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.

Frankly “Crikey”, for all the value you get – its a bit Canberra/ Sydney /Melb triangle; for the most part.

It wont shock me if Crikey pundits are wrong here, and Bligh goes close as possible to term.

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.

Key: ‘they’ = QLD labor party and ‘other mob’ = LNP (or Nationals if you are ‘they’)

While Barnaby is a goose, he is popular with the punters and therefore I don’t think he will feature in the ALP campaign.