Queensland election 2017: Unions give Annastacia Palaszczuk a campaign boost

UNIONS are targeting 17 marginal seats across Queensland as the movement steps up its campaign to both oust LNP MPs and save Labor members in the lead-up to the November 25 poll.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: AAP Image / Darren England

UNIONS are targeting 17 marginal seats across Queensland as the movement steps up its campaign to both oust LNP MPs and save Labor members in the lead-up to the November 25 poll.

The Courier-Mail can reveal the Queensland Council of Unions is targeting six Labor-held seats, two formerly held by Labor and nine LNP seats in a “field campaign” with volunteers dispatched to doorknock, phone and leaflet voters in a bid to shore up Annastacia Palaszczuk’s electoral chances.

TODAY’S POLL QUESTION

It can also be revealed the QCU will be urging voters to put One Nation last, behind the LNP, on third party how-to-vote cards its volunteers will start handing out in those seats from tomorrow to coincide with the start of pre-polling.

QCU general secretary Ros McLennan told The Courier-Mail voters would be asked to put One Nation last in 13 of the 17 seats unions are targeting.

In the remaining four, where there are no One Nation candidates, voters will be urged to put the LNP last.

The QCU’s target seats include Cook and Cairns – seats Labor lost to the crossbench this term – as well as other Labor-held seats under threat from One Nation and the LNP such as Bundaberg, Mundingburra, Springwood, Keppel, Maryborough and Pumicestone.

QCU volunteers will also target marginal LNP-held electorates that Labor is trying to poach in its bid to reach the 47 seats the party needs to retain power and to govern in its own right.

Those include Burdekin, Whitsunday, Glass House, Mansfield, Mount Ommaney, Everton, Toowoomba North and Gaven along with the new seat of Bonney.

A Courier-Mail-Galaxy poll last week revealed Labor and the LNP were locked at 50 per cent each, two-party preferred, in the seats of Glass House and Bonney while Cabinet Minister Coralee O’Rourke had slipped behind the LNP in Mundingburra and looked set to lose her seat.

The LNP’s Matt Derlargen is currently at 52 per cent, two-party preferred, to Ms O’Rourke’s 48 per cent.

Ms McLennan said the target seats were chosen using research data that identified where the QCU believed it could swing enough voters to defeat sitting LNP members.

“Queensland unions are using digital organising strategies to mobilise local activists in addition to more traditional ways of having conversations with voters, such as doorknocking, phone calls, community meetings, information stalls at local events and distribution of printed materials,” she said.

Originally published as Queensland election 2017: Unions give Annastacia Palaszczuk a campaign boost