QLD Election gaffe: Premier Steven Miles forgets name of Labor candidate

WATCH | Queensland Premier Steven Miles has been unable to name his own candidate in a regional electorate, despite visiting the seat twice in two days.

Queensland Premier Steven Miles visiting the Stanwell Power station just outside Rockhampton on Thursday, meeting workers. Picture: Adam Head

Queensland Premier Steven Miles has been unable to name his own candidate in a regional electorate, despite visiting the seat twice in two days, in one of the first gaffes of the state election campaign.

Mr Miles went to the Katter’s Australian Party-held seat of Mirani on Wednesday and again on Thursday, without Labor’s candidate.

The Labor leader – visited the state-owned Stanwell coal-fired power station outside Rockhampton in central Queensland, said he was unsure where she was.

“I’ll find out where they are and let you know,” he told the media pack.

Asked what the candidate’s name was, Mr Miles said: “I don’t have that detail in front of me”.

After Deputy Premier Cameron Dick chipped in from the back of the press conference with “Susan Teder,” Mr Miles said: “Yeah, of course it is Susan. Yup, I was with her the other night (at the Mackay campaign launch on Tuesday night).”

The Australian has been told Ms Teder was absent on Thursday because of a recent death in the family.

Despite repeatedly insisting Labor was a “strong united team” in the lead up to the campaign, Mr Miles was also unable to say how many of the 93 sears Labor was yet to preselect a candidate for.

“I think there is still a few to go and I haven’t memorised them,” he said. “The party will provide that to you. We will have candidates in every seat, you don’t have to worry.”

A spokeswoman for Queensland Labor later confirmed the party had just finished endorsing candidates in every seat.

At Stanwell, Mr Miles announced an energy price guarantee which he said would ensure Queenslanders’ power bills remained lower than in other mainland states.

Both leaders stayed in Rockhampton on Wednesday night. The ALP is at risk of losing the central Queensland stronghold electorate for the first time since the 1920s.

It comes after a senior Labor source last week told The Australian that regional ALP MPs were “sitting around waiting to lose”.

In an extraordinary leak, The Australian revealed not a single regional MP has made it on to Labor’s internal leaderboard – which tracks the total number of “doorknocks” and phone calls made to voters in each electorate – in the past week.

All 10 electorates at the top of the leaderboard were in the state’s southeast corner, exposing how candidates and MPs in regional parts of the state are struggling to attract volunteers and union resources.

The senior Labor source said party members have been “very unmotivated across the board”, with successive polls predicting Labor is on track to lose the October 26 election.

Ros Bates Shadow Minister for Health and Ambulance Services medically assisting journalist Andrew Messenger who split his head open on his way to a media conference, The Family Practice Emu Park. Picture: Liam Kidston.

The first blood of the campaign was drawn on the LNP’s campaign - but not in the way David Crisafulli or his team would have intended.

The casualty was Guardian reporter Andrew Messenger, who accidentally cut his head on his way into the Rockhampton GP clinic where Mr Crisafulli was making a campaign appearance.

LNP health spokeswoman Ros Bates, a registered nurse, showed she still knew her way around a treatment room when she took charge, after medicinal glue was applied to the minor wound. The journalist was cleared to stay on the campaign.

It came as Mr Crisafulli said he would turn next year’s federal election into a referendum on the “goat track” of Queensland’s Bruce Highway if he gets to campaign for federal Opposition leader Peter Dutton as Queensland premier.

The state Liberal National Party leader said Mr Dutton had already signed on to restore the 80-20 funding split formerly shouldered by Canberra on the 1600km link between Brisbane and Cairns.

If elected at the October 26 state election, Mr Crisafulli said he would also reboot state Labor’s advisory committee on the highway because it was a “genuinely good opportunity” to strip the politics out of what needed to be done to fix the problems.

The vulnerability of the flood-prone and in places ramshackle road has been underscored by a succession of recent heavy vehicle accident that caused days-long closures.

Mr Crisafulli said the state Labor government had let Canberra off the hook by accepting a reduced share of federal funding.

Leader of the Opposition David Crisafulli and Ros Bates on the campaign bus near Yeppoon. Picture: Liam Kidston.

“We’ll be using the federal election campaign as a referendum on the Bruce and I reckon you’ve seen my track record in holding both sides accountable, in contrast to this government … and it will be a particularly uncomfortable for those who don’t want to come on that journey,” he said.

“But I do believe we can work with Canberra to get back to that (50-50) funding model, and if we again show them value for money rather than cost escalations and tie blowouts.”

Campaigning in the marginal Labor-held seat of Keppel in Rockhampton, Mr Crisafulli touted health policy for the second-day running, announcing a $50m program to establish two “step-up, step-down” mental health clinics focused on young people.