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True believers dare to dream as Anna Bligh steps up the onslaught on Campbell Newman

Campbell Newman picked a fight with the wrong woman in the wrong place, Anna Bligh has declared.

Anna Bligh
Anna Bligh
TheAustralian

FOR 32 energising minutes, the True Believers of Queensland dared to hope: here was Anna Bligh telling them that a seemingly unstoppable Campbell Newman had picked a fight with the wrong woman in the wrong place.

The Premier opened her arms, smiled and brought them all to their feet after declaring the election "battlelines" had been redrawn after a second opinion poll put Labor's Kate Jones ahead of Mr Newman in the make-or-break seat of Ashgrove.

While her government is trailing the Liberal National Party by up to 20 points in the published polls, Labor is piling on the pressure to halt Mr Newman at the first hurdle, deny him a seat in parliament and decapitate the conservatives if they win the general election on Saturday week.

As Ms Bligh exuded confidence at her campaign launch yesterday - attended by Julia Gillard, Wayne Swan and backbencher Kevin Rudd, with a beaming Ms Jones also looking on - the LNP leader confirmed he would, if elected, put his controversial family business dealings at arm's length in a blind trust.

"I'm doing this because it's the right thing to do and I want to make it absolutely clear to Queenslanders that I have never done anything wrong," Mr Newman said.

"I want to put the matter beyond all doubt."

Ms Bligh ridiculed the move, saying Mr Newman should have dealt with the conflict of interest allegations over the property dealings of companies associated with his wife, Lisa, and her family when he was lord mayor of Brisbane.

"It is not about what he might do with his family company interests in the future," she said, to thunderous applause from the 500-strong gathering of the Labor faithful at the Brisbane convention centre.

"It's about what he has already done."

Seizing on a Galaxy poll showing Mr Newman was trailing Ms Jones in Ashgrove, 51.5-48.5 per cent after preferences, Ms Bligh said he still had the "awkward" question to answer about who would become premier if he lost in Ashgrove and the LNP still won the election. An automated ReachTel poll last week also put Ms Jones narrowly ahead.

"Without an answer to this question, Queenslanders simply do not know who they will be voting for, and that is not good enough," Ms Bligh said.

In response, Mr Newman reiterated his belief that the LNP would not win government without winning seats such as Ashgrove, where Ms Jones has a 7.1 per cent margin.

But it was unmistakably Ms Bligh's day, belying her government's overall weakness in the polls, as the ALP set family squabbles aside to get behind their fighting women. The Prime Minister was up from Canberra to introduce Ms Bligh at the launch and cheerlead for Ms Jones, Queensland Labor's new hope.

Mr Rudd kept out of the spotlight three rows back, wedged between state MPs Steve Kilburn, whose seat of Chatsworth is Labor's most marginal, on a knife edge of just 0.14 per cent, and Di Farmer, more comfortably placed yet potentially vulnerable in her seat of Bulimba. Both electorates are covered by Mr Rudd's federal seat of Griffith, as is Ms Bligh's seat of South Brisbane. On cue, he joined in the standing ovation for Ms Gillard, who made a point of acknowledging his presence, along with that of Mr Swan and party luminaries including former premiers Peter Beattie and Wayne Goss.

Ms Gillard said, straight-faced, that if anyone knew how to have a brawl it was the Queensland ALP. "The choice is clear and the fight is on," she said, ushering Ms Bligh on to the stage. Speaking off the cuff and from the heart, the Premier said Labor knew it was in "the fight of our lives" against Mr Newman and an ascendant LNP.

But, after the poll reversal in Ashgrove, "the battlelines got redrawn", and it was Mr Newman who was under pressure.

Turning the screws, Ms Bligh said of her opponent: "He says he wants to change Queensland and he's right. He wants to change Queensland back, back to the days when the good old boys ran the show. And make no mistake, the good old boys are still in town and they want to put the old band back together again.

"They want to go back to a time when politicians' personal finances were kept secret. A time when public duty and personal interests were the same thing. A time when people didn't have to declare what they owned. This is a time we don't want to see return."

The ALP campaign launch wasn't just about Mr Newman, however. Ms Bligh announced a re-elected Labor government would mandate that all political donations of more than $1000 be reported to the electoral commission within 48 hours, and that the proposed education trust funded by royalties from the state's emergent LNG-export sector would cover a full semester of study for 1000 Queensland students overseas in the Asia-Pacific over the next three years.

There was $12 million to buy back commercial fishing licences covering the Great Barrier Reef, and to encourage net fishers to voluntarily surrender theirs.

Ms Bligh stole a march on Mr Newman by declaring all vehicle registration fees would be frozen if she got another term - which would be Labor's sixth successive in Queensland - instead of leaving utility and motorbike owners out, as the LNP proposed.

And the 25 per cent payroll tax rebate introduced after the global financial crisis for apprentices and trainees would be made permanent.

Jamie Walker
Jamie WalkerAssociate Editor

Jamie Walker is a senior staff writer, based in Brisbane, who covers national affairs, politics, technology and special interest issues. He is a former Europe correspondent (1999-2001) and Middle East correspondent (2015-16) for The Australian, and earlier in his career wrote for The South China Morning Post, Hong Kong. He has held a range of other senior positions on the paper including Victoria Editor and ran domestic bureaux in Brisbane, Perth and Adelaide; he is also a former assistant editor of The Courier-Mail. He has won numerous journalism awards in Australia and overseas, and is the author of a biography of the late former Queensland premier, Wayne Goss. In addition to contributing regularly for the news and Inquirer sections, he is a staff writer for The Weekend Australian Magazine.

Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/nation/politics/true-believers-dare-to-dream-as-anna-bligh-steps-up-the-onslaught-on-campbell-newman/news-story/5871be572b6c378a2c2034822eef6798