Queensland election: Buckle up, it’s going to be a wild ride

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, left, and Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington.

This election in Queensland is the first to guarantee the winner four years in power and the first to be contested by two female leaders in Annastacia Palaszczuk and Deb Frecklington.

History beckons, but not only for these reasons.

The voters in 26 days will decide whether the pandemic is now the determinant factor in Australian politics, burnishing the power of incumbency.

On paper, Palaszczuk’s Labor team is the favourite to be returned for a third term.

The government holds 48 of 93 state seats under a popular Premier who put has daylight between her personal numbers and those of Frecklington.

The opening opinion poll of the campaign, YouGov in The Courier-Mail published this week, shows Labor has lifted its primary vote off the floor to 37 per cent, level-pegging with the LNP. When preferences are factored in the ALP is ahead 42-38 per cent two-party preferred.

The seesawing polls this year — Labor up in one survey, the LNP edging ahead in the next — underline why the contest remains close and Frecklington cannot be counted out even though her side enters it 10 seas adrift of Labor. YouGov confirmed that the LNP is well ahead in the regions, the battleground where the government has most to lose.

Kudos to Palaszczuk. Her connection with the electorate has kept Labor in the hunt when the government’s problematic record should really have sunk it. Still, the departure of four ministers in five months, including powerful deputy premier Jackie Trad over integrity questions, state debt on track to hit $100bn and perceptions that Labor has swung too far left will weigh heavy in the saddlebags.

The Premier’s task is to persuade voters to judge Labor on what it has done during the pandemic and what it will do on the road to recovery, not on its modest achievements over the past five years.

Equally, Frecklington’s inability to make use of the abundant ammunition she has been handed will worry the LNP, which toyed with the idea of dumping her in June until she stared down the rebels from party headquarters.

The opposition needs a net gain of nine seats to snatch majority government — a tall order, but not impossible if it can dominate outside of Brisbane and regain heartland suburban seats such as Mansfield and Aspley, which went to the ALP in 2017.

A likely outcome is a hung parliament, whereby neither Labor nor the LNP will reach the required 47 seats to govern in their own right.

If so, Labor will look to the Greens, who are a strong chance of unseating Trad in inner-city South Brisbane now that the LNP is preferencing Labor last there and in other key seats, and possibly also to independent Sandy Bolton in Noosa.

But the LNP has more potential partners on the conservative crossbench, with Katter’s Australian Party and One Nation holding four seats between them going into the election, and eyeing more in the restive regions.

Hold on to your hats because this will be some ride to, and possibly beyond, October 31.