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This was published 5 months ago
Four things to know about the weekend elections most won’t vote in
By Matt Dennien
The electronic billboard that greets travellers to the Ipswich CBD switches from an ad for office space to election candidate Darren Zanow.
“Let’s get serious about crime” the text states (emphasis his) on top of LNP branding. So, too, do the flyers slotted in mailboxes around a city long seen as a Labor stronghold.
Labor’s Inala candidate Margie Nightingale (second from right) has been joined on the campaign trail by the former premier and MP whose resignation triggered the poll: Annastacia Palaszczuk. But most eyes are on Saturday’s other byelection.Credit: Instagram
Labor’s own leaflets tout “more police” alongside its candidate, Wendy Bourne. Her billboard at another major entrance to the historical former mining hub lays out its record on cost-of-living relief.
As polls close for the next bunch of councillors and mayors statewide on Saturday, voters in two state electorates will have also cast ballots for the empty seats in state parliament.
Despite the high-profile position to be filled in Inala, the seat of Ipswich West is being watched most closely ahead of the state election set for October.
Why we’re having them
Inala has been without an MP since December 31, when former premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s resignation took effect in the seat she, and her father before her, held for Labor since it was formed in 1992.
In Ipswich West, Labor’s Jim Madden announced last April he would not run in the October 2024 general election amid a bullying and Labor gender quota cloud.
First elected in 2015, his eventual decision to throw his hat in the ring for as a candidate for Ipswich City Council drove his resignation as MP in January. The Electoral Commission of Queensland, as it did in 2020, suggested the byelections be held on the statewide council poll date to save costs.
The state of play
Ipswich has been a hive of political activity, hosting one of the LNP’s “health crisis town hall” events, a $10 million commitment from Premier Steven Miles towards a 12,000 capacity stadium at the home of the Ipswich Jets leagues club, and a meeting of the Labor cabinet on Monday.
Crime has been a focus of both major party campaigns since the killing of grandmother Vyleen White at the nearby Redbank shopping centre.
The seat is a mix of urban and rural areas, with below-median weekly incomes, higher rates of long-term health conditions, and a higher proportion of technicians and tradies than the rest of the state.
Bourne and Zanow, along with One Nation’s Mark Bone and Legalise Cannabis Queensland’s Melody Lindsay are the only candidates vying for the spot in parliament. Zanow’s how-to-vote cards suggest Bone get voters’ second preference, while Bourne’s say Lindsay should get theirs – with Bone last.
Inala has been one of the safest Labor seats since it was formed in 1992, fuelling LNP attacks it had been “taken for granted” by the party. At the 2021 Census, the seat was home to almost one-third of the 33,000 Queenslanders who reported having Vietnamese ancestry.
This has proven to be a major factor in the election, with the LNP standing public servant and Vietnamese Football Association of Queensland president Trang Yen as its candidate in a field of eight (yes, eight).
Labor’s preselection of former nurse and teacher-turned-political staffer, Margie Nightingale, over a candidate reflecting the cultural diversity of the area has frustrated some in the party. A former staffer for an overlapping Labor-held council ward, Nayda Hernandez, is running as an independent.
Linh Nguyen, who has worked across non-profits including the Ethnic Communities Council of Queensland, is also running as an independent and “proud Vietnamese-Australian woman”.
In recent days, Palaszczuk made her first political reappearance to campaign with Nightingale.
What could the results be?
Palaszczuk was re-elected in 2020 with 67.4 per cent of the primary votes, ending up with 78.2 per cent after preferences were distributed for a margin of 28.2 per cent. Even the Newman landslide of 2012 left Palaszczuk with a 6.9 per cent two-party margin.
In Ipswich West, Madden saw a modest swing in 2020 as the One Nation vote collapsed for one of Labor’s highest primary vote finishes this century, ending up with a 14.3 per cent margin.
It’s fallen from Labor’s grip at only three elections since its formation in 1960: to the Nationals in 1974, One Nation during the party’s 1998 breakthrough, and the LNP in 2012’s Newman landslide.
Pandanus Petter, a research fellow at Griffith University’s school of governance and public policy, recently crunched the numbers of the 20 state byelections since electoral changes in 1996.
He found the average swing was 4.6 per cent against the government, with a high-water mark of 19.1 per cent back to Labor in the Newman-era 2014 Stafford byelection. The biggest swing to a government was 15.4 per cent to Labor when it took Mulgrave back from One Nation in 1998.
How will these be interpreted (or spun)
Byelections, particularly in the lead-up to a general election, are often seen or sold as insights into what lies ahead. With souring poll results for the third-term Labor government last year, a change of premier in December and state election set for October, these will be no exception.
After a swing of 3.8 per cent against the federal Albanese government to the Liberals in this month’s vote in the Victorian seat of Dunkley, some opposition figures described the mood on the ground as one of “white-hot anger” and “fury” at Labor.
What wasn’t expressed so clearly was the average swing at a federal byelection across the past four decades against the government of the day: about 3.5 per cent.
Back in Queensland, Opposition Leader David Crisafulli has acknowledged the unlikelihood of his LNP taking a seat from Labor’s majority in parliament.
“Voters won’t change the government, but they can change the way the government listens. And it can send a very, very powerful message,” he said from the Ipswich CBD with Zanow to mark the start of early voting last Monday.
But Labor folks aren’t ruling out any such message being powerful enough to flip that seat.
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correction
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated Annastacia Palaszczuk’s last day as the Member for Inala was December 30. It was December 31.