Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon ambushes election opponent’s campaign launch

Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon has ambushed her celebrity election opponent’s campaign launch, sparking LNP accusations of “desperation”.

A truck promoting Gaven MP Meghan Scanlon parked near the scene of her LNP rival Bianca Stone's election campaign launch. Picture: Greg Stolz

Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon has ambushed her celebrity election opponent’s campaign launch, sparking LNP accusations of “desperation”.

Former Sunrise reporter Bianca Stone, who will take on Ms Scanlon for the Gold Coast seat of Gaven, officially launched her campaign at the Pacific Pines Tavern on Saturday.

But Ms Scanlon’s team cheekily parked a truck emblazoned with her own election signage right outside the venue.

“I think that shows desperation but also that this really this tired government has nothing to offer - they’re out of ideas,” Ms Stone said.

Opposition leader David Crisafulli, who helped launch the campaign, said Gaven was one of the 14 seats the LNP needed to win at the October 25 election to take government.

Bianca Stone will take on Meaghan Scanlon in the Gold Coast seat of Gaven. Picture: Glenn Campbell

He and Ms Stone attacked Labor over youth crime after comments by Premier Steven Miles that TV networks were “addicted to CCTV footage of crime”, making it harder for the government to “tell the story” about its early intervention programs.

Ms Stone said she had been a journalist for 20 years and the media’s reporting on youth crime was “absolutely … fair and accurate”.

She said just about every home she doorknocked had security cameras “because youth crime is a real problem”.

“People lock themselves inside their homes because they’re afraid to go out at night,” she said.

Mr Crisafulli also continued to deflect attacks on his living arrangements by Treasurer Cameron Dick who accused him of abandoning his Gold Coast electorate to live in Brisbane.

Speaking on Friday, Mr Dick said Mr Crisafulli was a “fraud” for saying he was representing the Coast after selling his multimillion-dollar waterfront home at Paradise Point three years ago and “secretly” taking residence at Bulimba.

“The more personal the Labor Party gets, the more I promise Queenslanders I will be focused on them,” Mr Crisafulli said.

“I’m not going to play the Labor Party’s games.”

The battle for Gaven - Labor’s only Gold Coast seat - is expected to be one of the hottest state election contests.

Ms Scanlon wrested the seat from the LNP in 2017 to become Queensland’s youngest-ever female MP and holds it with a 7.8 per cent margin.

It’s being seen as a bellwether seat in the LNP’s bid to regain power after almost a decade in opposition.

Queensland Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon. Picture: NewsWire / John Gass

Ms Stone won LNP preselection for the northern Gold Coast seat in June, beating Gaven LNP branch secretary Lisa Smith and fellow long-time conservative party member Kirsten

The former reporter, who is married to the Gold Coast’s top police detective and has nominated law and order as a major election issue, is one of two high-profile candidates chosen by the LNP to try to topple the Miles government.

The party last week endorsed victim of crime advocate Russell Field to run for the Redland seat of Capalaba.

Mr Field is the father of Matthew Field, who was struck and killed alongside his pregnant fiancee Kate Leadbetter by a teenager in a stolen car at Alexandra Hills on Australia Day in 2021.

After being preselected for Gaven in June, Ms Stone said the tragedy was the “trigger” for her to leave TV for a tilt at politics.