Storms roll over Queensland, but most voters had already cast ballots

Most Queensland voters steered clear of polling booths in the state election on Saturday, with a record number of early votes cast in a campaign dominated by COVID-19 and closed borders.

But that did not stop a last-minute blitz of marginal electorates from both leaders, with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk sticking to Brisbane seats and Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington making a 1000-kilometre-plus dash from the north to the south of Queensland.

The voters who did show up on Saturday kept their distance.Credit: Jono Searle/Getty

Ms Palaszczuk copped flak from her opponents on the hustings over her controversial decision to keep the state's border shut to greater Sydney and Victoria. In a fiery exchange outside Inala State School voting booth, an LNP volunteer screamed at Ms Palaszczuk to "open the borders".

"Consider the people who are unemployed - it is about time you open the border," he said.

The volunteer then pushed into a Labor campaigner, while the Premier laughed him off: "There you go, they will open the border," she said.

When asked if she thought Ms Frecklington would open the borders, LNP's Inala candidate Miljenka Perovic said: "Absolutely ... we need to open the borders because we need to get Queensland working again."

An LNP volunteer heckling Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk at Inala.Credit: Jono Searle/Getty

Ms Frecklington spent the start of the day in much sunnier climes, making a last-minute blitz of regional seats in Townsville. The Opposition Leader cast her absentee ballot in the marginal seat of Mundingburra, some 960 kilometres from her home.

The LNP hoped to pick up Mundingburra and Townsville on the back of its controversial plan to institute a curfew on young people, while Labor was eyeing some LNP seats in the south-east.

Former Labor deputy premier Jackie Trad was also fighting to retain her South Brisbane seat, facing a strong challenge from Greens candidate Amy MacMahon.

Ms Palaszczuk's Labor Party went into polling day as the slight favourite to win the election, with a Newspoll released on Friday showing Labor ahead 51.5 to 48.5 per cent on a two-party preferred basis.

Ms Palaszczuk responds to the heckler.Credit: Jono Searle/Getty

Tourism industry leaders including Qantas chief Alan Joyce, as well as the NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian, slammed Ms Palaszczuk's ongoing border closures to Sydney, with Mr Joyce calling it "ridiculous".

But Labor has pinned its hopes on Ms Palaszczuk's tough stance on the pandemic steering the government to success. The state recorded no new COVID-19 cases on Saturday.

It was a good thing so many Queenslanders voted early with wild weather lashing polling booths across the south-east corner of the state.

Electoral Commission of Queensland commissioner Pat Vidgen had issued a weather warning on Friday for voters to get out early. That warning rang true on Saturday, when a series of powerful storms, described as "life-threatening" by the weather bureau, barrelled through south-east Queensland in the early afternoon.

But the storms' impact on voter turnout may have been negligible. By the time polling booths opened on Saturday morning, 1,288,696 Queenslanders had already voted in person at pre-poll locations across the state, and 905,806 postal votes had been issued, 571,095 of which had already been returned.

Given there were 3,360,078 registered voters on the Queensland electoral roll, that meant anywhere between 55 per cent and 65 per cent of votes had been cast by the time the first democracy sausage hit the grill. The previous record, set in 2017, was 36 per cent.

Deb Frecklington at Mount Gravatt East, in the marginal Brisbane seat of Mansfield.Credit: Tertius Pickard

Shortly after casting her vote, Ms Frecklington swung by voting centres in the electorates of Thuringowa and Hinchinbrook. She was then on a plane back to Brisbane, where she visited polling booths in the marginal Labor seat of Mansfield.

- with Lydia Lynch and Toby Crockford