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Federal election 2016: big guns to help target Queensland seats

Two leading Labor strategists have been parachuted into Bill Shorten’s office in an attempt to win more Queensland seats.

Labor strategists Cameron Milner and David Nelson have been parachuted into Bill Shorten’s office in an attempt to wrest regional Queensland seats from the government.

Mr Milner is Mr Shorten’s chief of staff and a former Queensland Labor state secretary, while Mr Nelson helped Labor’s Annastacia Palaszczuk win the “unwinnable” 2015 state election. Both will be crucial to ensure Labor headquarters understands the peculiarities of the battleground state.

The ALP holds just six of Queensland’s 30 seats and has a long list of 11 electorates it believes are winnable. The marginal central Queensland seat of Capricornia, held by first-term Nationals MP Michelle Landry by just 0.8 per cent and based on Labor town Rockhampton, is viewed as the most likely gain.

Regionally, Labor will try to tap into voter anger and uncertainty over the economic downturn and high unemployment, pushing the line that Malcolm Turnbull doesn’t understand regional Queenslanders’ pain.

The Opposition Leader has spent most of the campaign’s first week making his way down the Queensland coast in a bus, and latched on to this message yesterday in Mackay, where former prime minister Tony Abbott is ­expected to campaign today.

“I think the truth of the matter is that Tony Abbott thinks that Malcolm Turnbull’s not campaigning very effectively. I think everyone north of Brisbane was surprised when Malcolm Turnbull got as far as Brisbane yesterday and turned around and is back in Sydney,” Mr Shorten said.

Labor’s list of targeted LNP seats also includes Leichhardt, Dawson, Herbert and Flynn in the regions, and Brisbane, Forde, Longman, Bonner and Petrie in southeast Queensland.

Mr Shorten has visited Herbert — based on Townsville and held by the LNP’s Ewen Jones by 6.2 per cent — several times this year, capitalising on the collapse of Clive Palmer’s Queensland Nickel refinery and his promise to help fund the city’s second football ­stadium. But the city is home to thousands of Defence personnel, who traditionally vote conservative and are seen as a major hurdle for Labor.

If Mr Shorten does not pick up six seats in Queensland, winning government will be almost impossible, and Labor strategists ­acknowledge that will be an uphill battle if Mr Turnbull runs a disciplined campaign.

The LNP holds 22 seats (Bob Katter and Mr Palmer hold the ­remaining seats, Kennedy and Fairfax respectively) and will use its $7.6 million war chest to ­defend them all.

The Coalition’s Queensland campaign is being centrally ­directed from national headquarters by the troika of Liberal ­director Tony Nutt, deputy director John Burston and Nationals ­director Scott Mitchell.

Barring a disaster, Fairfax will return to the LNP fold. Mr Palmer won’t recontest the Sunshine Coast seat he won by just 53 votes in 2013. Labor’s Moreton is seen as the next most likely win (held by popular local MP Graham Perrett by 1.6 per cent) with Kennedy an outside chance.

The Coalition has reservations about holding on to Capricornia — a conservative MP has never held it for more than one term at a time — and Brisbane, where LNP sitting MP Teresa Gambaro announced she was retiring just months ago, leaving newly pre­selected candidate Trevor Evans only weeks to build his profile.

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Original URL: https://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/federal-election-2016-big-guns-to-help-target-queensland-seats/news-story/6bc52d3e67eff83c994f57b9d6d2cc0f