A battlefield face-off before the big guns begin their bombardments

CAMPBELL Newman made a beeline yesterday for the leafy patch of suburbia that will decide his political future

CAMPBELL Newman made a beeline yesterday for the leafy patch of suburbia that will decide his political future and there she was: the woman who stands in his way of entering state parliament and becoming premier.

The battle between Kate Jones, the well-regarded Labor MP for Ashgrove, and Mr Newman will either be the making of the Liberal National Party leader or the folly that sank his audacious bid to leapfrog to power from outside parliament.

On the opening day of the faux campaign for the March 24 poll, hostilities were set aside as the pair crossed paths an Australia Day function at The Gap State High School, in the brick-and-tile heart of the inner-northwest Brisbane electorate. Ms Jones, 32, shook hands with her opponent and made a point of acknowledging him in a speech to new citizens.

Mr Newman, 48, talked up his local connections -- it's an issue because he lives outside the seat -- but admitted Ms Jones would have the streets to herself if she stuck to her plan to spend the rest of the day doorknocking.

"You don't fatten the pig on market day, and I've been out here for the last 10 months," he said.

There is no plan B for Mr Newman and the LNP if he cannot defeat Ms Jones, a local girl who stood down from state cabinet last June to concentrate on saving the seat for Labor. She holds it by what should be a comfortable margin of 7.1 per cent.

Mr Newman has said he will walk away from politics if the 31,000 voters of Ashgrove choose to stick with Ms Jones. "I'll go off and do something else, back in the private sector," he told The Australian recently. "That's it. It will be over . . . I'm gone."

Yesterday, he highlighted the potential benefit of having the premier as your local MP. "There's certainly an advantage for any electorate at any time if you've got the premier as your advocate and . . . I think that is an important point for people to consider."

Ms Jones replied pithily: "I think voters in Ashgrove are starting to think twice about having an absentee member who cares more about George Street than Waterworks Road." (George Street is where parliament and the main state government offices are, while Waterworks Road is the main route into the electorate from town.)

This is an election the LNP desperately wants to win after a series of severe drubbings by Labor and its well-oiled campaign machine.

But if Mr Newman fails to win Ashgrove, an election win for the LNP will be a very compromised victory indeed.

Should the conservatives take office without him as leader -- a very real possibility, as the battle with Ms Jones will be hard-fought -- the new LNP government will be hamstrung from day one.

The man who has held the fort for Mr Newman in parliament as opposition leader for the past 11 months, Jeff Seeney, a one-time leader of the Queensland Nationals, has said his political career would be finished, too, and he would not take over.

That would probably leave Treasury spokesman Tim Nicholls as an unlikely and arguably unelected premier, struggling to bed down a new government with a glaring question-mark over his legitimacy to lead it.

Published opinion polls, however, have the conservatives well in front of Labor in both the statewide contest and Mr Newman's crucial head-to-head with Ms Jones in Ashgrove.

The final Newspoll of last year gave the LNP 56 per cent of the vote after preferences to Labor's 44 per cent.

This closed the gap the conservatives had opened under Mr Newman's leadership, but not by enough to avert a heavy defeat for Anna Bligh's ageing government.

The expectation is that his lead over Ms Jones in Ashgrove will also narrow, after a July Newspoll gave the seat outright to Mr Newman on a primary vote of 50 per cent. Preferences from the 11 per cent share of the vote to the Greens' Sandra Bayley would help Ms Jones, but not affect the outcome. Since that time, a One Nation candidate has nominated.

Labor already has a small army of 300 volunteers in the field in Ashgrove to "Save our Kate", and Ms Jones said she and her people had doorknocked about half of the 15,000-odd homes in the electorate. They planned to get to the rest of them by polling day.

Heavy artillery has also been called in, in the person of Kevin Rudd. The former prime minister will turn out for Ms Jones in about two weeks, and has promised to make as many appearances in the electorate as he can fit in with his day job of Foreign Minister.

Ms Jones said she had not asked for help from Julia Gillard. Asked why, she explained: "The difference is I have known Kevin for 12 years and I have worked on his campaign. It's nice he is returning the favour."

She has strong local support. Fully 70 per cent of her constituents credited her with doing a good job as their local MP in a Newspoll in July.

But that Newspoll, the most definitive survey of Ashgrove voters to date, showed Mr Newman was also well regarded by the electorate. On the question of who would make the better local MP, 45 per cent backed the former Brisbane mayor, just shy of the 47 per cent who backed Ms Jones. Only 8 per cent were undecided.

Ms Jones said the opinion polls told only part of the story, and she was well and truly in the fight.

Mr Newman promised to be "everywhere" in the campaign.