Liberals faces uphill battle to knock off Labor in 2024

LNP’s next leader faces an even steeper battle to win the 2024 Queensland election, after Annastacia Palaszczuk made inroads on the Gold and Sunshine coasts.

Queensland LNP member for Broadwater David Crisafulli watching on during the Queensland Election. Photo: Scott Powick

The next leader of the Liberal ­National Party faces an even steeper battle to win the 2024 Queensland election after swings to Labor MPs converted knife-edge seats to much safer prospects and Annastacia Palas­zczuk made inroads on the Gold and Sunshine coasts.

Analysis by The Australian shows that before Saturday’s election, Labor held seven seats with a margin of 3 per cent or lower, and 15 under 5 per cent.

While counting continues, it appears as if Ms Palaszczuk’s MPs have pushed all of the seven seats formerly under 3 per cent above that risky margin. Only five of Labor’s pre-election 15 most marginals now remain under 5  er cent, although it lost one — South Brisbane — to the Greens.

On the current count, Labor holds 50 seats to the LNP’s 32, with a seven-member crossbench in the 93-electorate parliament. There are still four LNP-held seats considered too close to call: the Gold Coast’s Burleigh and Currumbin, the regional southeast Queensland seat of Bundaberg and the Sunshine Coast electorate of Nicklin.

The opposition is narrowly ahead in all but Nicklin.

Before the election, the LNP held 14 seats on margins under 5 per cent. It lost two, Pumicestone (based around Bribie Island between Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast) and the Sunshine Coast’s Caloundra to the ALP, and Bundaberg, Burleigh and Currumbin are still too close to call.

The LNP lost ground in all but three of the 14 seats. LNP deputy leadership contender Dale Last made his ultra-marginal cane-and-coal regional electorate of Burdekin safer, increasing his two-party-preferred margin from 0.8 per cent to 7.2 per cent.

Another standout was second-term MP Sam O’Connor in Bonney, on the Gold Coast, converting a 1.69 per cent margin to a 10.4 per cent barrier after the election.

Aside from Mr O’Connor, in the traditional conservative stronghold of the Gold Coast, the only LNP MP to boost her margin was Ros Bates in Mudgeeraba, shifting it from 9.85 per cent to 10 per cent.

Labor has improved its standing. In its sole seat in the region, young MP Meaghan Scanlon was strongly re-elected for a second term, improving her margin from 0.71 per cent to a healthy 8.2 per cent. Incredibly, Ms Scanlon nearly won the seat on primary vote alone, securing 48 per cent of first preferences compared with the LNP candidate’s 33 per cent.

Also on the Gold Coast, Labor has got within striking distance of winning Currumbin (previously on a 3.31 per cent margin) and Burleigh (which had a 4.85 per cent margin), and even some of the coast’s safest LNP MPs had swings against them.

Mermaid Beach MP Ray Stevens’s electorate is in marginal territory (6.26 per cent to 4.4 per cent), as is Rob Molhoek’s Southport (7.2 per cent to 5.4 per cent).

Likely next LNP leader David Crisafulli’s super-safe electorate of Broadwater went from 17.98 per cent to 16.5 per cent.

On the Sunshine Coast, Labor won Caloundra from the conservatives for the first time in 100 years, is leading by 136 votes in Nicklin and reduced the LNP’s margins in Glass House, Ninderry, Kawana and Buderim.

Across the state, the LNP experienced a two-party-preferred swing to it in only 16 of the 93 electorates.