Queensland Labor’s eleventh-hour candidate spree before election

Anthony Albanese is widely tipped to pull the election trigger as soon as Sunday. In Queensland, Labor is scrambling to find candidates for all 30 seats.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announces a major pre-election childcare policy in Brisbane in December. Picture: Glenn Campbell

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Queensland Labor has found candidates for an extra five seats in the past few days, intensifying expectations Anthony Albanese will call an election as early as Sunday.

The Australian revealed on Friday that the ALP in the crucial state – where it currently holds just five seats – had failed to ­announce contenders for 12 of Queensland’s 30 federal electorates.

But since then, Labor has announced clinical psychologist and army veteran Helen Madell in the central Queensland seat of Flynn, held by Nationals MP Colin Boyce on a margin of 3.82 per cent.

Ms Madell had unsuccessfully run for ALP preselection for the neighbouring seat of Capricornia, covering Rockhampton where she is based. Flynn is based on the city of Gladstone, about 100km away.

On the Sunshine Coast, former ALP staffer Morrison Lakey, who worked in the office of state Labor MP for Nicklin Rob Skelton until Mr Skelton was defeated at the October election, will contest Fisher on the ­Sunshine Coast against sitting LNP MP Andrew Wallace (8.67 per cent).

On the Gold Coast, former Morrison government Home Affairs minister and LNP MP Karen Andrews is retiring in the seat of McPherson (9.34 per cent) and Labor has just announced Coolangatta teacher Alice Price as its candidate to take on lawyer Leon Rebello, preselected for the LNP.

In both McPherson and ­Fisher, Climate 200-backed ­independent candidates are also in the running: extreme marathon runner and nutritionist ­Erchana Murray-Bartlett and former Sunshine Coast councillor and solar power business owner Keryn Jones respectively.

Pam McCreadie has again been preselected to run for Labor in Wright, the rural southeast Queensland seat held by LNP MP Scott Buchholz on a margin of 10.89 per cent.

Ms McCreadie is an adviser to Labor Brisbane City councillor Charles Strunk and an instructor for the local cadet squadron. She managed a swing to Labor of 3.69 per cent at the 2022 election, but Mr Buchholz won comfortably by more than 23,000 votes.

Mackay's Neil Wallace has been announced as the Labor candidate to contest the seat of Dawson. Picture: supplied

The regional electorate of Dawson, held by Nationals MP Andrew Willcox since 2022 and taking in parts of Mackay and the coast north to Ayr and towns just south of Townsville, will be contested for Labor by three-time North Mackay Rotary club president Neil Wallace.

Mr Willcox is the former mayor of the Whitsunday Regional Council and holds the seat on a margin of 10.42 per cent.

That leaves Labor with seven more seats to find candidates for, including the Brisbane bayside electorate of Petrie, classified by the ALP as “winnable”, and held by the LNP’s Luke Howarth on a margin of 4.44 per cent.

The LNP has candidates missing in just three electorates: Greens MP Max Chandler-Mather’s Brisbane seat of Griffith, and the safe Labor seats south of the capital held by Treasurer Jim Chalmers (Rankin, 9.09 per cent) and Speaker Milton Dick (Oxley, 11.59 per cent).

Climate 200 is backing six Queensland candidates as well as Ms Murray-Bartlett and Ms Jones, all in LNP-held seats.

Mr Albanese is widely expected to call an election on Sunday for April 12.