Greens will take Jackie Trad’s seat unless base vote nears 40pc

Former Queensland deputy premier Jackie Trad needs to lift her base vote to nearly 40 per cent if she is to fend off a Greens challenge.

Ex-treasurer Jackie Trad. Picture: AAP

Former Queensland deputy premier Jackie Trad needs to lift her base vote to nearly 40 per cent if she is to fend off a challenge by the Greens in her tight Brisbane seat, an analysis of likely preference flows shows.

The Weekend Australian has crunched the numbers in South Brisbane, where the Liberal Nation­al Party will controversially preference the Greens over Labor to take down Ms Trad at the October 31 state election.

Ms Trad insists she will recontest, even though she is under investigation by the Queensland Crime and Corruption Commission over allegations that she interfered in the recruitment of a principal for the new $110m Inner City South State Secondary College. She denies any wrongdoing.

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The CCC probe forced her to quit as deputy premier, treasurer and minister for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander partnerships this week, throwing Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Labor government into turmoil less than six months from polling day.

LNP preferences saved Ms Trad in 2017 when Greens candid­ate Amy MacMahon secured 34.35 per cent of the primary vote, neck and neck with her 36 per cent. Ms Trad received 62 per cent of the LNP’s preferences. But her margin was slashed by 10 points to 53.6 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis, and the tactical switch by the LNP on preferencing puts the Greens in the box seat.

Had the LNP preferenced the Greens over Labor three years ago, Ms MacMahon would have won if she had received a 51.5 per cent share of those secondary votes.

If the LNP preferences split 60-40 to the Greens at the October election, Ms Trad will lose unless­ she can lift her primary vote to more than 38.2 per cent, six points clear of the Greens, our analysis shows. This assumes that the LNP and minor parties do no worse nor better than they did in 2017. If the LNP preferences split 55-45 to the Greens over Labor, Ms Trad needs to finish at least 3.5 percentage points ahead on a minimum primary vote of 36.9 per cent or more to win. The wildcard is whether LNP voters will follow the party’s lead and send their preferences first to the Greens under Queensland’s compulsory preferential voting system. The ­record of how Liberal/LNP preferences have been applied in Labor-Greens contest at elections over the past decade shows they rarely flow at more than 50 per cent.

Ms MacMahon said the Greens were not relying on preferences to win the seat.

In 2017, Michael Berkman became Queensland’s first Greens state MP in the neighbouring seat of Maiwar. And the Greens’ Jonathon Sri was re-elected to the Brisbane City Council in March with 53 per cent of the primary vote in his ward, part of which is in Ms Trad’s electorate.

Ms MacMahon said she believed supporters of Ms Trad were already turning away from her before the integrity scandal.

“The people of South Brisbane were already fed up with an MP and a government who gave massive favours to Adani and allowed property developers to run rampant,’’ she said. “People in South Brisbane and across Queensland are sick of this sort of stuff — we’re in the middle of a health and economic crisis, but rather than creat­ing jobs and protecting people’s livelihoods, we’ve got an unending series of integrity scandals.”

Additional reporting: Michael McKenna