Anna Bligh ramps up early Queensland election speculation

Anna Bligh ramped up early-election speculation yesterday, warning "dysfunctional" relations with Brisbane could affect flood recovery

Anna Bligh ramped up early-election speculation yesterday, warning "dysfunctional" relations with Brisbane City Hall could affect flood recovery and push her to the polls.

Ms Bligh's comments, slamming Lord Mayor Campbell Newman for using his position as an "election platform", are the strongest sign to date she is giving serious consideration to junking commitments that she would not bring forward the election from its due date early next year.

The Premier is weighing the damage this would do to the credibility she regained during Queensland's disastrous summer -- reflected in the record bounce in her personal numbers and those of Labor in Newspoll this week -- against capitalising on the confusion in conservative ranks created by Mr Newman's elevation to the Liberal National Party's leadership before he has a seat in state parliament.

Labor and the LNP will be testing the impact of Mr Newman's switch with their own polling, as well as weighing carefully the opening round of published polls. Yesterday, the Morgan group reported that the LNP had gained 4 points to head Labor by 54.5-45.5 per cent.

Ms Bligh said she would not allow the unorthodox leadership arrangement in the LNP, in which Mr Newman is "campaign leader" while interim leader Jeff Seeney warms the seat the mayor has targeted in parliament, get in the way of rebuilding from disastrous flooding that hit Brisbane in January and devastated much of the state, before Cyclone Yasi compounded the misery in north Queensland.

"Most people understand that you need co-operation to get things done and if City Hall is going to be used as an election platform by a candidate who is electioneering instead of working . . . it could become dysfunctional," she told ABC radio's Madonna King.

"Queenslanders, like in every other state of Australia, deserve and need a functioning parliament. They need a functioning opposition and right now they don't have one of those."

Ms Bligh, however, must contend with further ructions on her own side after the Left-aligned Australian Federated Union of Locomotive Employees moved to sever formal ties with the ALP.

This is part of the fallout from the expulsion last week from the party of Electrical Trades Union state secretary Peter Simpson and a Cairns-based organiser over their campaigning against Ms Bligh's asset-sales program. It follows a move by the nurses union to disaffiliate.

"We've been getting calls from the membership to disaffiliate from the ALP over the asset sales, particularly the sale of Queensland Rail," AFULE secretary Greg Smith said.