Queensland poll’s $114m title fight

THE main course of the Queensland election is the delicious fight between Campbell Newman and Kate Jones for Ashgrove.

THE knives are out, and the pork is on the table for the main course of the Queensland election, the politically delicious fight between Campbell Newman and Kate Jones for the seat of Ashgrove.

A day into the campaign, the Premier and Ms Jones — who lost the leafy inner-Brisbane electorate to him in 2012 — are scrapping over the massive amounts of taxpayer money spent in the seat since it became the frontline between the major parties four years ago.

More than $114 million in extra funding has been poured into local schools, sports clubs, community groups and road upgrades after Mr Newman won Ashgrove, some of it committed in frenzied bidding for votes on the eve of the last election. That’s more than $3000 for every enrolled voter. And with hints of more to come in “delivering for Ashgrove’’, a term both candidates used when asked about the perception of pork barrelling, the seat that mixes working-class suburbs with millionaire “avenues’’ is arguably the most lavished electorate in Australia.

“It means I have delivered on my commitments and I am proud to have delivered for my community,’’ Mr Newman said after being asked about the extent of local funding since winning the seat on a margin of 5.7 per cent.

INTERACTIVE: Queensland election

Everybody seems to be a winner in the contest between Mr Newman and Ms Jones, a bookies’ favourite to unseat the Premier with polls pointing to a swing to Labor of almost 13 per cent across the state.

The politics is for all to see, with Mr Newman last month making his “first election commitment’’ — funding half of a $7.5m “congestion-busting’’ road upgrade — a week after a poll showed Ms Jones was leading him.

A month earlier, Mr Newman gave $100,000 to the Valley District Cricket Club — once the home ground of Matthew Hayden and Allan Border — for a shed and three new practice nets, alongside their first-class set of six nets. The Mayne Tigers AFL club didn’t miss out, with $100,000 handed over for new lighting on its grounds. And the local scouts didn’t need to worry about running raffles for a kitchen upgrade in its hall after it was given $8322. A local Italian festival was allocated $6160 for new equipment.

A decade after the then lord mayor Mr Newman promised to allow canoeing on the Enoggera Reservoir, in the western outreaches of the electorate, he delivered with a launch site as part of a multi-million-dollar upgrade of park facilities in the state.

Ms Jones would not be drawn into attacking Mr Newman over the funding to the electorate she held for six years. “I think it is a job for all local members to get the best they can for their local community and I have a strong record of delivering for Ashgrove and if elected I will continue to do that,’’ she said.

IN DEPTH: Queensland election

A stark show of the willingness to buy votes came in the days leading-up to the March 24, 2012 election when both Labor and the LNP matched each other in committing to building a $5.2m sports hall for The Gap State High School. It is part of more than $25m in extra funding for the local schools that Mr Newman argues has dwarfed the $5.6m Ms Jones brought in new funding during her six years as MP. Mr Newman’s office even took the step of furnishing The Australian with two written testimonials from principals of state schools. “Without Campbell’s support we wouldn’t have got the hall at all,’’ Gap State High School principal Russell Pollock said.

The biggest spend in the electorate has been the $65m upgrade to a busy local intersection — of Samford Road and Wardell Street — with both Mr Newman and Ms Jones laying claim to the initiative. Ms Jones, who yesterday completed a meals-on-wheels run to the wife of a late Liberal MP, said the first stage had been completed in 2011 and that $90m for the rest of the project was already allocated in the forward estimates of the last Bligh government budget. Mr Newman, who says he found efficiencies and cut the price tag back to $65m, said Ms Jones and Labor had approved the project only after he announced he was running for state parliament.

Records show the Queensland government had bought properties around the intersection as far back as 2009. What is clear is that from late 2011 to 2012 — under Labor and then the LNP — prices paid by the government for houses doubled to about $1m from what was being handed over just two years earlier for the houses on the busy main road. Mr Newman, who yesterday campaigned on the Gold Coast, and Ms Jones said they had no personal involvement in the negotiations.