Qld election 2020: Newspoll tips Labor to win third term
The final Newspoll of the Queensland election campaign reveals Labor holds a small two-party-preferred lead over the LNP.
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Annastacia Palaszczuk appears destined to win Saturday’s Queensland election, but could be forced to do deals with the Greens and Independents to form the state’s next government.
The final Newspoll of the campaign, published in The Weekend Australian newspaper, reveals Labor holds a small two-party-preferred lead over the LNP, 51.5 per cent to 48.5 per cent.
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Labor’s primary vote of 37 per cent was identical to polling conducted at the start of the campaign, and an improvement on the 35.4 per cent achieved at the 2017 election.
The LNP primary vote was 36 per cent, up from 33.7 per cent three years ago.
The improvement by the major parties comes at the expense of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, which has fallen out of favour with many regional Queensland voters.
The two-party-preferred result represents a swing against the second-term Labor Government of just 0.3 points, after the administration appeared headed for defeat at the start of the year.
However the LNP is confident of finishing second in more seats at this election, and stronger preference flows from One Nation and Katter’s Australian Party, which will deliver more than the 39 seats the party won in 2017.
Labor’s Cairns and Townsville seats remain vulnerable, with Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington making a dash to Townsville last night in an unusual move to spend the final hours of the campaign away from the southeast.
Several of Labor’s inner-city seats, particularly Jackie Trad’s electorate of South Brisbane, are under threat from the Greens.
But the LNP is at risk of losing Pumicestone, Currumbin and Caloundra.
With 93 state electorates up for grabs, 47 are needed to form majority government.
KAP, the Greens and Noosa Independent Sandy Bolton are expected to make up the crossbench.
The result follows Friday’s Queensland Media Club debate – the second and last time the leaders came face-to-face to convince voters in their race for power.
But both continued to deny they would do any deals to form minority government, asking for majority government and refusing to commit to working with the parliament voters deliver them.
Ms Palaszczuk asked voters to stick with “stability” over the “chaos and reckless behaviour” of Ms Frecklington as she continued her assault on the LNP for previously calling for borders to open.
“Queenslanders can trust me because every day I am keeping them safe and doing everything I possibly can to ensure that we do not see what has happened in other parts of the world and what happened in Victoria,” she said.
“That’s what drives me and people know me.”
But Ms Frecklington launched her own attack over the integrity issues that have plagued the Labor administration, and accused the Premier of using $6 million of public money to advertise herself ahead of the election campaign – which she said was “against the Fitzgerald principles”.
“Again, how can we trust a Premier that breaches those principles when it is so blatant?” she said.
In one of two questions the leaders were able to ask each other, Ms Frecklington referred to Transport Minister Mark Bailey’s private email scandal, former treasurer Jackie Trad’s failure to declare a house purchase and her role in an improper principal selection process and the fact the Premier had been found in contempt of parliament herself.
But the Premier rejected the premise of the question and said no corruption findings had ever been made.
Ms Palaszczuk used her questions to probe how the LNP would pay for their election commitments, suggesting she would sack health workers like former premier Campbell Newman had done and earlier claiming the Bradfield Scheme was a “pure hoax”.
But Ms Frecklington said she knew how hard medical staff worked, with her own daughter a nursing student, and said she would not be forcing a 2 per cent savings target on Queensland Health like Labor had announced.
But the LNP leader received jeers from union members in the audience when she used her second question to accuse Ms Palaszczuk of being a union puppet who did not have the power to choose her own Cabinet.
Ms Palaszczuk responded with her own quip around the attendance of party fundraisers by property developers: “How are those property developers going? They’re banned.”
The Premier spoke of her family throughout, and of the families in her Inala electorate and said she would create more jobs.
But Ms Frecklington said Labor would see “four more years of failure … (and) the highest unemployment rate in the nation”.