Qld opposition celebrates LNP’s Fadden win, government dismisses it

The Queensland opposition talked it up, while the state government talked it down.

Queensland’s state politicians had wildly different interpretations of the LNP’s win in the Fadden byelection, as the conservative party celebrated making its safe Gold Coast seat even safer.

The LNP’s Cameron Caldwell is Canberra-bound.Credit: Paul Harris

Gold Coast councillor Cameron Caldwell won the federal seat, vacated by former minister Stuart Robert in May, with an expected swing towards the LNP of more than 2 per cent in Saturday’s byelection.

Speaking in Brisbane on Sunday, Queensland Opposition Leader David Crisafulli said it was a good sign for his party going into next year’s state poll, in which he aimed to take Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s job.

“They sent a message loud and clear, and the message was against brand Labor in Canberra and in Brisbane,” Crisafulli said.

“Queenslanders are increasingly feeling a disconnect between what’s happening in their daily lives and what they’ve seen come out of their parliaments.

“The message that Queenslanders sent overwhelmingly was that governments, both here and in Canberra, can do a hell of a lot better than what they’re doing.”

Crisafulli said cost-of-living pressures and crises in crime and health demonstrated a “disconnect” between the issues that mattered to voters and what mattered to the Labor governments at state and federal level.

But state Transport Minister Mark Bailey said it was all much ado about nothing.

“[Fadden] is a very safe Liberal seat that’s been that way for a very, very long time, and what we saw was, in fact, pretty much the status quo,” he said.

“Usually, there’s a big swing in byelections against any incumbent government, and we saw a very, very small and tiny swing to the Liberal [National] Party in a context where the Palmer party didn’t run a candidate – they had 6 per cent of the vote last time.”

Still, Bailey said the byelection produced one big loser.

“There’s nothing surprising particularly about this byelection, other than the fact that the Greens party vote dropped by more than 40 per cent,” he said.

“That’s the only party that suffered a big blow in this byelection, and I think it shows that people really don’t like the Greens party snuggling up with the LNP in the Senate and blocking funding flowing to housing.

“It’s been made very clear in this election – the Greens need to get out of the way and endorse that funding so we can spend more on getting more affordable housing and social housing up as soon as we can.”

As of early Sunday afternoon counting, Caldwell had 48.78 per cent of the primary vote, well ahead of the 22.16 per cent for Labor’s Letitia Del Fabbro.

Greens candidate Scott Turner had 6.21 per cent of first preferences, down from Sally Spain’s 10.73 per cent in last year’s general election and behind Legalise Cannabis Australia (7.4 per cent) and One Nation (9 per cent).