The state of Queensland goes to the polls tomorrow to pass judgement on the government of Labor premier Steven Miles. Miles took office only last December, following the retirement of his predecessor, Annastacia Palaszczuk, but Labor has been in power since January 2015. All the signs are that voters think that is long enough, and when Queensland swings it often swings dramatically.
The contrast with New South Wales is interesting. Both had long-term Labor governments in the early part of this century – 1995-2011 in New South Wales, 1998-2012 in Queensland – and both, having overstayed their welcome, suffered landslide defeats. In New South Wales, the incoming Coalition government pursued a generally moderate course and was re-elected twice before finally being defeated last year by a Labor Party that had outflanked it on the right.
But the Liberal National Party in Queensland, under premier Campbell Newman, pursued a much more radical course, and Palaszczuk’s Labor won a huge swing back at the following election, in 2015; enough to form government with the support of an independent. It was then comfortably re-elected in 2017 and 2020, helped in the latter case by the electorate’s approval of tough measures against Covid-19.
Labor in 2020 won 39.6% of the vote (53.2% two-party-preferred) and 52 of the 93 seats. The LNP with 35.9% won 34, leaving three for Katter’s Australian Party (moderate far right), two Greens, one One Nation (orthodox far right) and one independent. Since then, the One Nation MP has defected to Katter and the LNP has won a seat from Labor at a by-election.
So to win a majority, the LNP needs to pick up another 12 seats, which requires a uniform swing of 5.6%. A further six of the government’s seats have margins of under 7%, so there’s no doubt that a majority LNP government is within reach. Conversely, Labor only needs to lose five seats to lose its majority: a 3.1% swing to the LNP would be enough to do that, but another two seats (Cooper and McConnell) are also vulnerable to the Greens.
Brisbane is more socially homogeneous than Melbourne or Sydney, so there are fewer safe seats there for either party; big swings can happen, as 2012 and 2015 demonstrated, and when they do they bring a lot of seats with them. And for most of this year polls have consistently shown a large swing to the LNP, often of the order of 8-10%.
In the last fortnight, however, the momentum seems to have shifted; recent polls are showing swings of more like about 6%, which could easily produce a hung parliament. Publicity given to the anti-choice views of LNP MPs is a possible explanation, as well as a general (if far from inevitable) tendency for incumbents to pick up ground during a campaign. Some media (or “media”) outlets are valiantly talking up the closeness of the election, whether to combat overconfidence on the LNP side or just to sell more papers.
If neither side has a majority, the LNP would appear to be better placed to attract the necessary support. The Katters are most unlikely to back Labor, and Labor, as we saw earlier this year in Tasmania, is reluctant to deal with the Greens. But the more likely outcome is that enough seats will fall to give LNP leader David Crisafulli the majority he needs, if less sweepingly than seemed to be on the cards a month or two ago.
The usual stable of psephologists all have very good previews: here’s Antony Green, here’s William Bowe, here’s Ben Raue and here’s Kevin Bonham. The Queensland electoral commission will have live results tomorrow night (remember Queensland does not observe daylight saving, so times are still GMT+10), but you’ll probably find the ABC’s version more user-friendly.
The World is Not Enough 