Queensland election countdown: Premier Steven Miles to hit 36 seats in 36-hour blitz
The Queensland premier’s planned blitz, which started on the Sunshine Coast at 7am, will beat Anna Bligh’s 2009 record of 30 seats in 30 hours.
Steven Miles will hit 36 electorates in the 36 hours leading up to Queenslanders’ vote on Saturday in a last-ditch effort to get ahead in the polls.
The Queensland premier’s planned blitz, which started on the Sunshine Coast at 7am on Thursday, would beat Anna Bligh’s 2009 record of 30 seats in 30 hours ahead of securing the premiership in what was dubbed an unwinnable election.
By 10am, he had already hit four electorates ahead of his deadline of 7pm on Friday night.
Mr Miles said it was going to be a busy few days.
“What you’ve all seen of me over the last 10 months is I’m competitive and that I like to stay busy,” he said.
“(My aim is to) win fifty per cent plus one … win as many votes as I can, talk to as many Queenslanders as I can and expose David Crisafulli as much as I can.”
The LNP leader Mr Crisafulli is also on a whirlwind seat-tour of south-east Queensland, describing it as his “fresh start blitz,” and began the day with a visit to Rocklea’s Brisbane Markets in the Labor-held seat of Miller (13.9 per cent), followed by a short stop at a Souvlaki restaurant in Mount Ommaney (Labor, 12.6 per cent).
Mr Crisafulli held a press conference in one of the LNP’s top target seats of Redlands (ALP, 3.9 per cent) in Brisbane’s bayside, pleading with Queensland to “vote for change”.
“This election is going to be close, and what we have seen in the last week, the horse trading, the deals, the opening of the door from the Greens and the Katter’s to doing a deal with Labor, shows you how close it’s going to be,” he said.
“I want Queenslanders to imagine what Sunday morning looks like, waking up to a re-elected fourth term minority Labor government.”
Asked how his 12-seat tour compared with Mr Miles’s monster blitz of 36 seats in 36 hours, Mr Crisafulli said: “Well, I think you’ve seen my energy levels”.
“And I think, you know, I get out of bed earlier than everyone else in the Parliament, and I work a little harder as well,” he said.
Mr Miles started the day with a beach walk with his wife Kim in the Liberal National Party-held electorate of Maroochydore, where the margin is 9.1 per cent, followed by a coffee in the opposition’s neighbouring seat of Ninderry (4.1 per cent).
The premier was joined by the member for Nicklin, Robert Skelton – who holds the Sunshine Coast hinterland electorate on a margin of 0.14 per cent – at Nambour Hospital. He then ducked back to Maroochydore to visit the Cotton Tree caravan park where his family goes on holidays.
Vladislav Musaliamov, a retired university lecturer who immigrated to Australia from Russia in the mid 1990s, is one of more than 1 million Queenslanders who have already voted.
Speaking to The Australian outside a pre-polling booth in the Labor held seat of Capalaba, the 84-year-old said he was concerned about youth crime but had been won over by Labor’s big spend on cost of living relief.
“Maybe it is a habit from Soviet Union,” he laughed. “But Labor is connected to the workers.”
Mr Musaliamov said while he had given his vote to Labor’s Don Brown, he wanted more to address causes of youth crime.
Juvenile justice has been a major issue in the bayside electorate with Mr Brown last year describing youth crime as a “media beat up”.
The LNP’s candidate is high-profile victim advocate Russel Field. Mr Field’s son Matthew was killed alongside his pregnant fiancee in 2021 by a teenager in a stolen car.
The two major parties have employed opposite campaign strategies over the past four weeks. Poll favourites the LNP have largely been attacking Labor-held seats it hopes to pick up.
Meanwhile, the incumbent government has spent around three-quarters of its time sandbagging electorates it already holds.
Currently in the 93-seat single-house parliament, Labor holds 51 seats, the LNP has 35, the Greens have two, Katter’s Australian Party has four and Independent Sandy Bolton has the final electorate.
The LNP needs 47 seats - a net gain of 12 - to win majority government, and requires a two-party preferred swing of just under six per cent.
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