Anthony Albanese has plenty to fear in Queensland as Labor control of the states crumbles
The PM’s hopes of dramatically increasing federal Labor’s paltry five out of 30 seats in Queensland remains a pipe dream and Greens leader Adam Bandt has been put on notice by this election outcome.
Anthony Albanese’s hopes of dramatically increasing federal Labor’s paltry five out of 30 seats in Queensland remains a pipe dream.
Federal and Queensland Labor figures will spin the positives hard, despite the ALP suffering swings across the board in losing only its second Queensland election in more than three decades.
Queenslanders have traditionally and overwhelmingly backed the Liberal National Party at federal elections, while shunning the LNP at state polls. It is fraught to link state results with federal election prospects.
Federal Labor’s best recent result in the Sunshine State was the 15 seats won by Queenslander Kevin Rudd when he turfed John Howard from office in 2007.
Albanese, up against a deeply unpopular Scott Morrison in 2022, won a dismal five seats in Queensland and lost Rudd’s former electorate of Griffith to the Greens. The Prime Minister had to wait until Western Australia results swung Labor’s way before claiming a slim majority victory.
A bright spark for Albanese is the poor performance of the Greens, which will spur ALP hopes of winning Griffith and Brisbane from Greens MPs Max Chandler-Mather and Stephen Bates. Adam Bandt has been put on notice after the Greens went backwards in both Queensland and their left-wing haven of ACT. Federal Greens MPs, who have abandoned any pretence they are environmentalists, have swung so hard to the Left that their own state and territory counterparts are blaming them for recent results.
The ALP machine will also pour resources into the Cairns-based seat of Leichhardt, where long-term LNP MP Warren Entsch is retiring. On Saturday night, Labor lost seats and copped swings in electorates based around Cairns. Another concerning factor for Albanese is the almost 70 per cent of Queenslanders who rejected his Indigenous voice referendum.
Labor strategists will be wary of Bill Shorten’s 2019 election disaster in Queensland, which delivered the ALP a sole Senate position in its worst Upper House result since 1949. At the same election, Labor’s Shayne Neumann held his Ipswich-based seat of Blair by only 2321 votes and Anika Wells clung-on in Lilley by 1229 votes.
Incoming Premier David Crisafulli ran a shockingly bad campaign but is still expected to claim majority government. Miles ran the better campaign by a country mile, albeit underpinned by scare campaigns and brazen cash splashes. At 46, Miles is expected to continue as Labor leader after saving the furniture and coming close to pulling off an unlikely win.
Crisafulli’s victory fell well short of the baseball bat swings that delivered Campbell Newman’s historic landslide 2012 election. But a win is a win, and he becomes only the second conservative leader alongside Newman to have won a Queensland election since Labor’s Wayne Goss claimed power in 1989. After three election wins and the end of the Annastacia Palaszczuk era, Queensland Labor will be confident of replicating its one-term turnaround in ousting Newman at the 2015 election.
Albanese and Peter Dutton will talk down federal implications from the Queensland election but their strategists will pore over every swing in regional, outer-suburban and inner-city electorates.
Dutton would be encouraged that Labor’s red wave of mainland governments, clinched after Chris Minns’ victory in March last year, is slowly reversing after the Northern Territory and Queensland elections.
At a federal level, it’s all about the economy, cost-of-living, housing, energy, migration and national security. Albanese will no doubt be coveting his own version of Miles’ 50c public transport fares and $1000 energy bill sweeteners.
The problem for Albanese with cash splashes is Jim Chalmers’ “inflation dragon”. If Labor is blamed for higher inflation and higher interest rates, they will bleed votes across the country.
While welcoming a rare LNP win in his home state, Dutton will need much bigger swings and more support in the cities to have any chance of ousting Albanese at next year’s election. And with the Greens on the ropes, it is surely time for Albanese and Dutton to join forces and put the radical Left-wing party last.
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