The Poll Bludger has all the figures on a disastrous Galaxy poll for Queensland Labor. The 59-41 two party preferred in favour of the LNP isn’t so significant in the context of optional preferential voting, where many voters don’t preference past their first choice, but a 48-31-13 split in favour of the LNP, Labor and The Greens respectively should really have the ALP very worried indeed.
While the election is a long time away, Labor’s polling has been appalling since very shortly after Anna Bligh’s government was returned, with the vastly unpopular privatisations being accurately seen as a symbol of a fundamental loss of public trust in state Labor. To return to a position where they’re even competitive would probably require both a new leader and a reversal of the asset sales decision.
The Greens’ primary vote should be very encouraging for them – it’s very high in the Queensland context, and a lot of it would be concentrated in marginal Brisbane and coastal Labor seats. I would imagine that a lot of Labor’s primary has moved straight over to the LNP, and that The Greens’ increase in support is probably coming from the more ideologically committed segment of the ALP vote. With the primary vote all important in Queensland, the rational move for the ALP if it were to pursue a save the furniture strategy would be to go to the left to rebuild its primary and maximise preference flow. Don’t hold your breath, though. We’re more likely to see more hard hat bluster.
From today’s Crikey email:
Anna Bligh certainly wasn’t exaggerating when she observed that Queensland Labor had a bad week. Nor has this week started off well for her, with a Galaxy Poll showing her approval rating plunging to 33%, just barely ahead of a disastrous Labor primary of 30%. Nor, seemingly, are many disillusioned ALP voters parking their votes with The Greens. The Liberal National Party scored a 48% primary, and all this washes through to a 59-41 two party preferred lead for the LNP.
As William Bowe notes at The Poll Bludger (where he also has more detail on the poll), the numbers may be inflated precisely because of the beating Bligh took over recent days. But there’s enough evidence around (including a poll commissioned by the ETU on the privatisation of public assets) that the Queensland regime’s support has collapsed very quickly.
Galaxy asked a range of questions stemming from Tony Fitzgerald’s accusations last week about corruption and cronyism, and found a large majority of Queenslanders disillusioned with both their government and the Queensland Police Service. Bligh would have taken cold comfort only from Wayne Goss’ favourable comparison of her with her predecessor Peter Beattie in remarks he made recently, given that Goss also pointedly referred to the dangers of long term incumbency in creating a climate where ethical lapses flourished.
It’s unsurprising that comparisons have been made with the last days of the National government, which Goss himself swept out of power almost two decades ago. But a better analogy for Anna Bligh’s current plight might be the re-election of the Keating government in 1993.
Continue reading ‘Anna Bligh’s very bad week’
Various newspapers described Queensland Treasurer Andrew Fraser’s budget outlook review on Friday as providing a “trigger” for an impending poll. That’s something of a misleading formulation. But the budget position does give state Labor – perhaps paradoxically – a political theme to develop and run on.
The Labor Party won’t want issues such as health, which remind voters that it’s had eleven years in office, to be central to the campaign.
Rather, the ALP will want to differentiate its economic approach from the LNP’s. Anna Bligh will be arguing that the state government is doing all it can to kickstart the slowing economy – an argument previewed by Fraser when he pointedly observed that the government had chosen to continue to borrow for infrastructure spending rather than cut its borrowing cloth to the demands of Standard and Poor’s. Jobs above all else was the message.
Graham Young’s polling for the National Forum shows infrastructure still in first place among voter concerns, but the economy rocking up the charts. There’s an obvious connection to be made between the two issues, and the Borg’s constant mantra about debt and the evils thereof boxes the LNP in and prevents them from making big ticket announcements. If they do, they’re destroying their own claims about public debt, and suggesting there’s tons of interest at the moment in public-private partnerships is hardly going to be credible in this economic climate. Labor ends up with a twin focus on the economy and leadership, and it’s hard to see this favouring the opposition. From the point of view of where governments’ political support goes when put to the test in an economic downturn, this will be an interesting campaign.
Continue reading ‘The impending Queensland election and the state of the debt’
Even if you’re not a local, you might have noticed that it’s been raining in Brisbane a lot recently. Anna Bligh’s taken advantage of fuller dams to execute a backflip on recycled water and to delay the Traveston Dam. These were two issues that the LNP had been making some running on lately, in the first instance aided and abetted by a quite disgraceful campaign about the supposed dangers of water recycling in the pages of, you guessed it, The Australian.
I think the first is bad policy – and it doesn’t give us much hope that Bligh is capable of either holding her nerve in the face of political shenanigans or of practising what she preaches about infrastructure and long term planning. It’s certainly not difficult to envisage the dam levels dropping back down in a few years time, and the whole point of this plan was to ensure continuity of water supply in such an eventuality. The work that has already been done has effectively been wasted.
Traveston is a different kettle of fish. In my view, it was always ill thought out and I’ve long thought it was mainly there to serve as a wedge between Brisbane voters and the Nationals before the 2006 election. I was surprised that Beattie ever went ahead with it after it had played its political purpose. In theory, the change to the scheduling of environmental mitigation measures is a good thing, but environmental concerns as well as its dubious contribution to water supply should actually have seen it canned rather than delayed.
Writing in Crikey today, Richard Farmer appears to think Bligh has executed a cunning political maneouvre. I can’t see it. Continue reading ‘Bligh’s big water backdown’
Whatever the merits of shale oil it seems that the Queensland Government has come to its senses by banning shale oil developments in the Whitsundays, and everywhere else for that matter, and specifically a plan to dig up 400,000 tonnes of the muck to see whether anything useful could be done with it.
The locals should be immensely relieved, in spite of foregoing 3000 jobs. Imagine that! A Queensland premier foregoing a resource development with 3000 jobs attached!
If you read the linked articles the shale oil monster has not quite been killed dead and I don’t think this means that Anna Bligh has finally “got it” in terms of the urgency of dealing with climate change mitigation. The notion that we can deal with the rapidly emerging problem in a leisurely way runs deep. In an interesting post last week Barry Brook tried to identify some of the deep irrationalities that prevent the necessary action from being taken.
Continue reading ‘Coming to terms with climate change’
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