Anna Bligh hangs on to seat in bloodbath

ANNA Bligh tonight looked set to survive a political scare in her own Brisbane seat as Labor was annihilated in the Queensland state election.

Bligh concedes

ANNA Bligh tonight looked set to survive a political scare in her own Brisbane seat as Labor was annihilated in the Queensland state election.

With about half the vote counted in South Brisbane, the Premier had 52.1 per cent of the two-party preferred vote, against 47.9 for LNP candidate Clem Grehan.

Ms Bligh, who won the seat in 1995, earlier appeared to be in deep trouble, but was set to survive courtesy of Green preferences.

The question was whether Ms Bligh would be prevailed upon to stay on in the Labor leadership to help the party rebuild.

With her deputy and heir apparent Andrew Fraser among the Labor casualties, all will depend on whether Education Minister Cameron Dick retains his seat of Greenslopes. His prospects improved slightly tonight, but he remained under the gun.

Earlier, parliamentary speaker John Mickel said Ms Bligh should step down as leader if Labor lost badly.

“The Labor Party needs to move forward and the only way to move forward is to put Anna Bligh behind them,” the retiring Labor MP said today.

He said if Ms Bligh retained her South Brisbane seat, she should continue on as the member but resign as the party's leader.

“She is the one who chose the ministers and if the Labor party goes down to a historic defeat tonight it'll be because the electorate at large has found Anna Bligh accountable, because she never kept her ministers accountable,” Mr Mickel said.

“I'm talking about a series of issues that Anna Bligh did not hold ministers to account when she should have.”

Mr Mickel, a former Labor minister, said one of the issues was the Queensland Health payroll debacle, which happened under former health minister Stephen Robertson, who is also retiring.

With AAP