Labor and Greens still hopeful in knife-edge Brisbane count

Labor is still confident of inching past Greens hopeful Stephen Bates to retake Brisbane for the first time since 2010, as counting in the tightly contested seat continues.

Though any victory may prove short-lived amid a long-running ground game from the minor party which has in just six years emerged as a serious third force in politics across the broader Queensland capital.

The Greens’ primary vote in Brisbane has been steadily rising for decades, a similar trend seen across the city at all levels of government, and is on for by far its best result yet in 2022 — taking the lion’s share of a double-digit swing against moderate LNP incumbent Trevor Evans, who has already conceded defeat.

Should this growth continue into 2024, the party would be well-poised to make Deloitte director and former Goss state government policy advisor Madonna Jarrett a one-term Labor MP.

The seat, which has existed since Federation, has generally been Labor-held. A redistribution that pushed its north-eastern boundary beyond the traditionally Liberal suburbs of Ascot and Hamilton has handed it to the LNP since 2010.

Senior Queensland Labor figures remains confident that postal votes, which make up more than 22 per cent of ballots for the seat and have so far been favouring Jarrett, will stretch her into second place and elect her over Evans on Greens voter’s preferences.

Greens Senator Larissa Waters with Brisbane candidate Stephen Bates during pre-poll voting at Brisbane City Hall last week.Credit: Tony Moore

Psephologist Dr Kevin Bonham said on Monday he had seen scrutineering data which suggested Bates could gain as much as 1.3 per cent from micro party preferences.

The Greens went into the election targeting three lower house seats with strong previous showings or overlapping seats held by the party in Brisbane City Council and state parliament: Brisbane, Griffith and Ryan.

What they have since described as a “green-slide” has since seen senior federal Labor figure Terri Butler, who hoped to become environment minister in a new government from the seat of former prime minister Kevin Rudd, concede defeat to Max Chandler-Mather on Sunday night.

LNP incumbent Julian Simmonds is yet to publicly do the same in Ryan, where the Greens’ Elizabeth Watson-Brown has claimed victory after managing a 9.2 per cent two-candidate preferred swing against him in the previously blue-ribbon Liberal seat.

Bates was leading Jarrett by only 158 first preference votes as of Monday afternoon, with counting to continue into the week. “We still have our nose in front,” he said in an update to followers on social media.

Strong doorknocking campaigns and booth staffing from thousands of party volunteers over successive elections has led breakthrough wins by Jonathan Sri in Brisbane’s Gabba council ward in 2016, Michael Berkman’s leafy inner-west state seat of Maiwar the following year, and Amy MacMahon’s toppling of former Labor deputy premier Jackie Trad in 2020.

The efforts have primed conditions for similar upsets in state and local government electorates likely to now form the Queensland Greens’ focus over the next two years, as 2024 Brisbane City Council and state elections approach.

In 2020, Greens candidates polled more than 20 per cent — and even 30 per cent — of the primary vote across seven of the 26 wards making up the country’s largest local government, largely behind LNP administration councillors.

At a state level, the party came within points of passing the LNP in Cooper — which overlaps parts of Ryan — at the 2020 election on a primary vote of almost 30 per cent.

McConnel, which encompasses the innermost portion of Brisbane federally and is held by Education Minister Grace Grace, featured a similar contest.

After the Greens’ weekend success across Brisbane and a wave of teal independents swept Sydney and Melbourne, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk brushed off concerns about the party’s further threat to her majority come 2024 and said there was a “lesson for everybody” in politics given both Labor and the LNP lost seats to them.

“People thought that was going to happen at the last state election, and it didn’t happen,” she said of the Green surge, pointing to the sole success of MacMahon. “But I think … there is a mood out there for governments to listen.”

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