Federal Election 2016: Opinion - Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten can’t get enough of Queensland

DENNIS ATKINS: As both prime ministerial candidates kick-start the campaign by wooing the Sunshine State, the question emerges of how many seats Labor can reasonably expect to win.

POLITICIANS can’t get enough of Queensland at election time, literally falling over each other to get noticed and heard.

Malcolm Turnbull was in Brisbane on the first full day, playing defence in Petrie and offence in Moreton, selling his “jobs and growth” message.

His Labor opponent, Bill Shorten, jetted over the Turnbull battlebus and showed up in Cairns, trying to dislodge the veteran Liberal (technically LNP) member Warren Entsch.

These seats are not very likely to be the first to fall for either side because of history, demographics and the vibe.

However, these are the kind of seats Labor needs to hold or win and the Coalition at least needs to hang on to electorates like Petrie and Leichhardt is the respective campaigns are to be judged to be successful.

There might be seats elsewhere Labor might be able to take more easily and there are certainly Coalition seats that are easier to defend than the ones figure on the schedules today.

However, a fundamental truth is that if Labor doesn’t win a significant number of seats in Queensland, the Member for Maribyrnong will remain just that come July 2.

You wouldn’t think Labor could sink much lower but they were reduced to just one seat following Malcolm Fraser’s 1975 landslide and didn’t do much better in 1996, when the party held on to two electorates.

This time they have just six seats to defend and, despite the narrow margin in the inner-south Brisbane seat of Moreton, they should manage to keep what they’ve got.

The question is how many seats can Labor reasonably expect to win. The answer is not going to be good listening to some of crazily optimistic Labor types who are talking up big, historic gains.

The highest number being put around is that Labor can somehow win between seven and nine seats which would make this a “sea change” election, which no one is claiming it to be.

There is one seat the Coalition should be very nervous about and that’s Rockhampton-based Capricornia which is held by the LNP’s Michelle Landry by an eye-watering 1 per cent.

After that the inner metropolitan seat of Brisbane should be on the radar, especially after Liberal Teresa Gambaro made a surprise exit early this year, leaving an open contest.

Things get hard beyond that with Petrie - on paper even more marginal than Capricornia - not so easy to budge because of the second term sophomore effect.

Further up the pendulum it continues to get harder. This won’t stop the visits but might test the patience of voters.

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Originally published as Federal Election 2016: Opinion - Malcolm Turnbull and Bill Shorten can’t get enough of Queensland