Queensland election 2017: brutal messages from LNP failures

This wasn’t just Labor vs LNP but an election of the Labor-led alliance of trade unions, Greens and GetUp!against the LNP.

Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull (left) and Queensland OppositIon Leader Tim Nicholls (right) during a street walk at St Lucia in Brisbane during the campaign.

For the conservative side, there are two irresistible messages from this poll: the merged Liberal National Party failed to manage the political fragmentation of Queensland and the conservatives must turn the truism that “a vote for One Nation means a Labor government” into a national battle cry.

There is also a deeper message confirmed in this poll but not unique to Queensland. This was not just a Labor versus the LNP election; it was an election of the Labor-led alliance of trade unions, Greens and GetUp!against the LNP. It saw the former out-campaign the latter in skills, message, numbers and money.

A weak Labor government has almost certainly been returned in another demonstration of the electoral power of the Labor/progressive/union alliance that in current circumstances the conservative or Liberal/National side of politics seems unable to match anywhere outside NSW.

Queensland, the decentralised state, is where the fragmentation of the political culture is most accentuated and where the conservative side must offer two distinct brands — a polished Liberal brand in southeast Queensland and an aggressive Nationals brand in rural and regional parts of the state. The merged LNP entity seemed unable to deliver fully on either front.

In this election the LNP was savaged in urban seats around Brisbane, while One Nation polled strongly in the regions, stealing LNP votes. The upshot was a fall in the LNP primary vote of 7-8 per cent overall.

Queensland is where the structural crisis on the right flank of the conservatives is greatest and this applies at both state and federal level. The election exposed the limitations of One Nation — still struggling to win any seats — but also revealed its capacity to ruin the LNP voting performance.

The Turnbull government needs to propagate this truism for all disaffected conservatives: sure, they may be alienated, they may split away, but voting for One Nation guarantees a Labor government, whether in Brisbane or Canberra.

At this election, LNP leader Tim Nicholls struggled against One Nation in the regions but also saw his party’s vote fall away in urban Brisbane. Labor senator Anthony Chisholm, a former ALP state secretary, correctly argued yesterday that the LNP had failed to fathom how to deal with One Nation.

The LNP dilemma is that it would have needed “confidence” from One Nation to govern but refusing to rule out an arrangement with One Nation did lethal damage to its image in the southeast urban centres. The laws of arithmetical show One Nation delivers fewer preferences to the Coalition than it steals in primary votes, thereby becoming a voting transfer mechanism from Coalition to Labor.

Resources Minister Matt Canavan said the poll showed the need for a strong Nationals identity, a process easier at federal elections when separate Liberal and National parties campaign in Queensland.

Beware self-serving false claims that the result is the fault of Malcolm Turnbull — the campaign was dominated by state issues.

The result, however, highlights the structural problems that will plague the Coalition at national level: in Queensland, in a national poll, it must appeal to sharply different constituencies on the right and left; the One Nation breakout has the obvious potential to terminate the Turnbull government; and the Coalition desperately needs a strategy to combat the Labor-Greens-union-GetUp!alliance.