Chance to avoid Brumby's fate

HEARD the one about the Labor premier who scored a nifty bounce in Newspoll off a natural disaster?

HEARD the one about the Labor premier who scored a nifty bounce in Newspoll off a natural disaster?

His name is John Brumby and after the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires, he looked untouchable.

Ted Baillieu and the voters of Victoria put paid to that last November but Anna Bligh, the hope of the Labor side in Queensland, should dust off the Newspoll files to track exactly what happened to Brumby and his well-entrenched outfit down in Tijuana land.

His fate is salutary for Bligh in two respects, after her strong showing in yesterday's Newspoll in The Australian.

First, it reinforces the Schweppes factor of political leadership: doing right by the voters today is no guarantee you won't get up their nose tomorrow.

Second, when opportunity knocks, it's an idea to open the door. Like Bligh, who took over from Peter Beattie in 2007, Brumby was handed the job by a successful premier in the figure of Steve Bracks.

And as with his Queensland counterpart, his honeymoon with the electorate didn't last long.

Through 2008, Baillieu made progress in eroding Labor's position. In September-October of that year, the conservatives got within two points of the state ALP's two-party-preferred vote.

Then came that hellish Saturday in February 2009.

Labor's vote jumped to 60 per cent in the aftermath of the bushfire disaster, 20 points clear of the Coalition.

Brumby, however, didn't have the option that has been tantalisingly presented to Bligh by the astonishing recovery in her political fortunes over Queensland's summer of disaster, and the desperate move by the Liberal National Party to turn to Campbell Newman.

Victoria's bicameral parliament operates on a four-year fixed term. No such strictures apply in Queensland, which also has no added complication of an upper house.

The opening Newspoll of 2009 was as good as it got for Brumby, and 11 years of baggage caught up with him when he went to the polls, on time, 21 months later.

Certainly, there are risks for Bligh if she does break repeated commitments to run full term.

Labor's Alan Carpenter jumped to an early election in Western Australia in 2008 and was turfed out when the voters saw through the gambit.

But no one around Bligh is suggesting a bolt to the polls right now. More like a brisk jog to an election in late May at the earliest, or after the state budget is brought down in June.