Labor and LNP on edge in fight to the line in Queensland

Queensland LNP leader Deb Frecklington with Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: Adam Head

Annastacia Palaszczuk is the popular leader of a Labor government that is unloved by voters.

The LNP’s Deb Frecklington is the unpopular leader of an opposition that is narrowly ahead on points, but no guarantee to win the prize when Queensland voters go to the polls in October.

This state election is really going to be something. Not only is it the first time in Australian political history that two women have gone head to head — assuming the nervous Nellies in the LNP keep it together and Frecklington keeps her job — the shake-out will be momentous, for both sides of politics.

Queensland is Scott Morrison’s rock, delivering the federal government 23 MPs from 30 seats at last year’s federal poll where he walked that perilously narrow path to victory.

Newspoll shows the way is open to Frecklington, too, but it will be just as nerve-jangling tight.

The LNP needs to keep its existing 38 seats and win another nine to beat the hoodoo that has kept them out of power in the Sunshine State for all but five of the past 30 years. A formidable ask.

Still, it’s Frecklington’s election to lose, and Palaszczuk, a fierce and underrated campaigner, will relish Labor’s underdog status in the polls.

She has fewer opportunities than the LNP to pick up seats, but the benefit of small though useful buffer that will make the task of stitching together a minority government easier if it comes to that. The unknown quantity is COVID-19. The talk is that Queensland may be especially vulnerable to a spike because the locals are a bit too comfortable and relaxed about the virus.

Visit the pumping restaurants and bars in inner Brisbane and you won’t see much social distancing happening.

A surge in infections would probably sink Palaszczuk, which is the political imperative to keep the Queensland-NSW border closed to the 10 million-odd denizens of Melbourne and Greater Sydney.

The Premier’s so far strong performance in managing the pandemic remains the biggest obstacle to Frecklington getting the traction she needs to seize voters’ attention and train it on the integrity and financial woes of a state government that looked to be on its last legs until the coronavirus intervened.