Bligh shifts local polls past Easter

QUEENSLAND Premier Anna Bligh is set to announce today that local government elections scheduled for March 31 will be pushed back past Easter.

QUEENSLAND Premier Anna Bligh is set to announce today that local government elections scheduled for March 31 will be pushed back past Easter, threatening a backlash from councils around the state.

The Australian understands that holding the local polls in April was the substance of urgent legal advice Ms Bligh received after her own election plans were up-ended by the snap recall of the state's flood inquiry.

After days of supercharged exchanges between Ms Bligh and rival Campbell Newman over the timing of the looming state election, floods commissioner Cate Holmes yesterday reconvened public hearings and sought an extension to the deadline on her final report, originally due by February 24.

Ms Bligh was due to go to the polls before her three-year term expired on March 31 and on Tuesday flagged she would wait until after the report was handed down.

But in a statement, issued after a meeting with Justice Holmes, Ms Bligh said her request to push back the inquiry's reporting date "could have implications for the timing of elections and this would require me to seek urgent legal advice on a number of options".

Earlier, Liberal National Party leader Mr Newman had insisted the inquiry should take "as much time as it needs".

"I think the matters raised in The Australian are of significant gravity that they must be examined in more detail," he said.

"There now appears to be real doubt as to when release strategy W3 was actually adopted and this is a critical issue that must be resolved."

Last night, LNP parliamentary leader Jeff Seeney said the recall of the inquiry and extension of the reporting date should not be used to delay the election.

"The government should not be mixing politics with the independent flood inquiry," Mr Seeney said.

The potentially explosive hearings significantly complicate the timing of the election and flavour of the campaign for Ms Bligh, who, according to successive polls, is facing a landslide defeat after Labor has won five consecutive victories.

Unless Ms Bligh pushes the election out beyond March, the Premier is locked into holding the poll on one of the five Saturdays that fall between February 25 and March 24.

Ms Bligh has already undertaken not to hold the state poll on the same day as local government elections.

The dramatic events yesterday followed a day of mud-slinging between the rival camps with Mr Newman forced to defend a property investment by the family of his wife, Lisa, amid allegations he had passed on inside information while lord mayor of Brisbane that had helped them with the deal.

Mr Newman -- who dismissed the allegations as ludicrous, claiming he was unaware of the investment -- also called on Labor to abandon a leaflet drop in the electorate of Ashgrove, which he is contesting, that drew attention to his support of a candidate under fire over his 2008 comments that argued that women who drink excessively were to blame if they were later assaulted.