Queensland Election 2017: Labor, LNP leaders focus on One Nation hot seats to halt regional surge
THE threat of One Nation is acting as a lightning rod for the major parties, with more than half of the seats blitzed in the first four days of the campaign hotbeds for the surging protest party.
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THE threat of One Nation is acting as a lightning rod for the major parties, with more than half of the seats blitzed in the first four days of the campaign hotbeds for the surging protest party.
Both Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and LNP leader Tim Nicholls will kick off today in regional seats under siege.
A Townsville-bound Mr Nicholls will make a direct play to rightwing supporters with a $26 million north Queensland crime plan that introduces a 10pm curfew for children and stops welfare payments when children are in youth detention.
Ms Palaszczuk will wake up in Rockhampton to campaign in the marginal seat of Keppel after announcing health and jobs policies that internal polling suggests are the best way to win voters flirting with Senator Pauline Hanson’s party.
Capitalising on Senator Hanson’s absence during week one due to her parliamentary trip to India, Ms Palaszczuk has hit 11 marginal electorates to sell 3500 extra nurses, a $155 million Back to Work Program to create 100,000 jobs for the long-term unemployed, and a $134 million tourism package.
Eight of the 11 seats are at serious risk from three-cornered contests with the LNP and One Nation, including Townsville’s Thuringowa where she visited a TAFE for her jobs pitch.
Meanwhile, four of the nine electorates Mr Nicholls has visited will post a high One Nation vote.
Kicking off his Sunday launch with a direct appeal to minor party voters that he was listening to them, Mr Nicholls visited the One Nation heartland of Lockyer to stress that he was “no big fan of the nanny state or political correctness”.
Yesterday, he campaigned across the Sunshine Coast where some areas delivered up to 10 per cent of the vote to One Nation at last year’s federal election.
The day started with a $600 million announcement for stage one of the long-delayed Nambour rail line duplication, running 17km between Landsborough and Beerburrum and set to create 1800 construction jobs.
It ended with his deputy Deb Frecklington launching an attack on One Nation MP and LNP defector Steve Dickson, who called Mr Nicholls “deluded” for believing locals would fall for the rail promise.
Mr Nicholls said an LNP government would fund half the project and seek the remaining $300 million from the Federal Government’s Rail Infrastructure Fund.
The line will run through the seat of Caloundra as well as Glass House, held by the LNP’s Andrew Powell with a notional 0.9 per cent margin after the redistribution and considered at risk from One Nation.
It also affects Buderim, held by Mr Dickson who defected from the LNP, and Nicklin which the conservatives hope they can win back from retiring independent Speaker Peter Wellington.
Mr Nicholls stopped by Buderim to gift $600,000 a local Men’s Shed group and the Nambour Showgrounds in Nicklin to announce a $4.5 million hall to help shore up candidate Marty Hunt.
He lunched in marginal Caloundra, which is also vulnerable depending on how One Nation preferences fall.
Further north, Ms Palaszczuk dangled a carrot to the seat of Keppel while announcing her $135 million tourism policy in Cairns, revealing $25 million would be spent upgrading facilities on Great Keppel Island.
The island and the stalled resort redevelopment have become an election issue, with One Nation backing a boutique casino licence.
Earlier, Ms Palaszczuk visited a school in the marginal Barron River electorate – also at threat of falling to One Nation.
She will campaign in marginal Keppel today.
But she is optimistic about keeping Rockhampton despite Labor’s public factional brawl over who it would run in place of retiring MP Bill Byrne, and polling is understood to show One Nation with about 28 per cent support.
Originally published as Queensland Election 2017: Labor, LNP leaders focus on One Nation hot seats to halt regional surge
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