Queensland Election 2017: Race too close to call in final week of campaign, expert says
THE state election began as boring affair but after a few twists and turns, will end up this weekend a nailbiter, writes Paul Williams.
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FANS of the classic 1970 western film Little Big Man might remember the Native American character Younger Bear, a “contrary” who behaves diametrically opposite to tribal norms.
“Contraries” say goodbye when they mean hello, walk through bushes instead of trails, and wash with dirt and dry with water.
This election, so full of contradictions, would have done Younger Bear proud. It began as a boring affair and will end up this weekend a nailbiter.
The LNP – long the favourite to form government even if only with One Nation support – has run a smooth campaign, but it enters the last week behind a Labor Party that, despite being well resourced, remains the underdog.
Then there’s the Greens: a party without a leader that has steered high-profile issues through a low-profile campaign.
Even One Nations is a conundrum: promising to embarrass the major parties, Hansonites – humiliated by sex shop candidates and resigning senators – have spent more time cleaning egg off their own faces.
And, despite this being the most critical Queensland election in decades – this Saturday will determine whether we have stability or chaos for four long years – Vince and Vera Voter are anything but excited.
And at a time when constituents are fed up with personalities and presidential politics, this election offered too little economic policy. Was state debt even mentioned?
As commentators have said for months, all that makes this poll too close to call. And that’s so un-Queensland.
Since the birth of the state’s two-party system around 1915, election results in the tropics have almost always been as colourful and obvious as overripe mangoes.
Results became even more certain after Labor introduced a malapportioned zonal voting system in 1949 – one refined and exploited by the Country (National) Party till the 1980s.
Of the 36 Queensland state elections between 1915 and 2015, the results of only a few were so uncertain so close to polling day.
The 1983 and 1986 campaigns were probably the hardest to call after Joh and the Nationals dumped the Liberals, who were so violently decimated in Brisbane they didn’t recover till 2012. The next trickiest was 1998 when no one knew just how piquant One Nation’s protest vote would be. Even the 1929 (Great Depression), 1957 (Labor split) and 1989 (Fitzgerald Inquiry) campaigns produced more obvious results.
That was until the 2015 campaign that also shook up conventional logic. First term governments, especially ones with whopping majorities, aren’t supposed to be beaten.
If it’s Annastacia Palaszczuk’s turn to be defeated this Saturday, it will be the first time in more than a century Queensland has seen two back-to-back single-term governments.
It might also be the first time since before 1915 that we’ve suffered – or enjoyed – two consecutive hung Parliaments.
And so it’s the paradoxes of this poll that will make the history of the 2017 Queensland election so interesting.
Labor, for example, is poised to lose traditional strongholds up and down the provincial coast because One Nation is preferencing all sitting MPs last (after the Greens).
But that’s no surprise because Labor is also preferencing One Nation last.
The real irony is found in the LNP’s likely defeat in as many (or more) seats in regional Queensland because One Nation – the party the LNP has tried so hard not to offend – has not returned the favour and will instead preference LNP MPs below Labor in 40 seats.
That decision alone could see One Nation re-elect a Labor Party Pauline Hanson hates more than the LNP.
If Palaszczuk does lose it will be for two key reasons: first, for not having sold some fairly decent economic positives (three consecutive Budget surpluses, a surge in coal royalties and Moody’s removal of the “negative watch” from the Aa1 credit rating) over the past three years. Second, Palaszczuk’s veto of the loan to Adani may also prove a point of no return.
Two causes will also be behind any LNP loss: the failure of the urban Tim Nicholls to engage voters north of Nambour and a tacky preference “arrangement” with One Nation at a time voters are sick of dodgy political deals.
If One Nation also falls short this Saturday, look no further than Hanson and Steve Dickson’s own hot tempers, their indiscipline in shooting from the lip and the party’s habit of recruiting loose cannon candidates.
In the finale to Little Big Man, protagonist Jack Crabb seeks vengeance on the murderous General George Custer. “This time, what I held in my hand wasn’t a knife but the truth,” Crabb says.
In the privacy of the polling booth this Saturday, that’s something we all have in our hands.
Dr Paul Williams is a senior lecturer at Griffith University School of Humanities
Originally published as Queensland Election 2017: Race too close to call in final week of campaign, expert says
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