Queensland fail: no Labor candidates in a dozen seats

As Anthony Albanese prepares to call the federal election, Labor’s Queensland branch has so far failed to announce candidates in 12 of the crucial state’s 30 electorates.

Anthony Albanese near the Bruce Highway in Gympie in January, announcing $7.2bn in highway funding for Queensland’s major road. Picture: John Gass

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As Anthony Albanese prepares to call the federal election, Labor’s Queensland branch has so far failed to announce candidates in 12 of the crucial state’s 30 electorates, including a Liberal National Party seat the Prime Minister’s party classes as “winnable”.

The Australian can reveal the Queensland ALP is still struggling to find people willing to run at the looming election, which is widely predicted to be called on Sunday March 9 for voters to go to the polls on April 12.

Labor holds just five House of Representatives seats in Queensland, but is heavily targeting the LNP’s far north Queensland seat of Leichhardt (3.44 per cent) – where Warren Entsch is retiring – and is trying to win back Griffith from high-profile first-term Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather.

Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s electorate of Dickson (1.7 per cent) and veteran LNP MP Ross Vasta’s electorate of Bonner (3.41 per cent) are hoped-for but less likely gains for Labor.

But the ALP has not announced contenders in 12 seats, including the LNP’s Petrie, an electorate on Brisbane’s bayside held by Luke Howarth on a margin of 4.44 per cent and classed by Labor as “winnable,” and Flynn, based on the central Queensland city of Gladstone and held by the Nationals’ Colin Boyce on a margin of just 3.82 per cent.

Labor has yet to publicly endorse candidates in the LNP-held Gold Coast and Sunshine Coast seats of Moncrieff, McPherson and Fisher, all of which already have Climate 200-backed Independents in the running.

ALP state secretary Kate Flanders told The Australian that “the Queensland branch of the Australian Labor Party will be announcing candidates all across Queensland in the coming days. We’re very excited”.

Mr Dutton’s LNP has just three more candidates to publicly endorse in Queensland: in Griffith, and the safe Labor seats of Rankin (held by federal Treasurer Jim Chalmers by a margin of 9.09 per cent) and Oxley (held by the federal Speaker Milton Dick on 11.59 per cent).

LNP insiders are increasingly confident of winning back the seats of Brisbane and Ryan from the first-term Greens MPs in those electorates, and are intensifying efforts in Sport Minister Anika Wells’ suburban Brisbane seat of Lilley (10.54 per cent). Though Ms Wells is considered very popular locally, Mr Albanese is not – according to some LNP sources who have seen the party’s internal research.

At the weekend, LNP members preselected former state MP for Bundaberg David Batt to contest the election in the Bundaberg-based seat of Hinkler, where Nationals MP Keith Pitt is resigning to take up a post as the Albanese government’s Ambassador to the Holy See in Rome.

Labor has already found a candidate for Hinkler, Trish Mears, a marriage celebrant who had been named Bundaberg’s Citizen of the Year in 2023.