Woman set to replace Johnson

BRISBANE councillor Jane Prentice is the conservative frontrunner to replace Michael Johnson if he jumps or is pushed from the Liberal National Party

BRISBANE City councillor Jane Prentice is the conservative frontrunner to replace Michael Johnson if he jumps or is pushed from the Liberal National Party.

Mr Johnson's once blue-ribbon Liberal seat of Ryan, which has been shifted towards Labor-voting territory in Brisbane's west by boundary changes, is central to the bitter squabbles that turned the Queensland Liberals into a rabble.

The fresh-faced Chinese-Australian MP has been in the thick of the fighting since he beat the establishment candidate, former state Liberal president Bob Tucker for preselection in 2001, after Ryan was stunningly picked up by the ALP at a by-election.

Mr Johnson, 40, was the beneficiary of an election campaign that went all John Howard's way courtesy of the Tampa border security affair and 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US, and Ryan returned to the Liberal fold.

Wags said that members of the then Queensland Liberal Party were too busy knifing each other to worry about the ALP.

The divisions were bitter, based partly on factions but mostly on personal rivalry between key players, including Mr Tucker and his sometimes ally Bob Carroll, and hardline conservatives around Santo Santoro, the Howard minister who lost his parliamentary career in 2007 over undisclosed share dealings.

Ms Prentice, aligned with the Liberal moderates, had a special place on the spite-list of the Santoro crowd, and the fact she figures so prominently in calculations to replace Mr Johnson shows their loss of influence.

Having run a faction of one during his three terms in parliament, the MP himself is lethally isolated.

Ms Prentice was keeping her head down yesterday, and would not be interviewed.

The other contender is Seb Monsour, brother-in-law of Brisbane Lord Mayor Campbell Newman, and a man with a colourful past. After the 2004 Brisbane council elections, Mr Monsour was caught entering the offices of Brisbane Water to prevent documents being shredded by the outgoing Labor administration.

In 2006, he was forced to quit as Liberal candidate for the state seat of Ashgrove after falsely claiming he had played for the Queensland Reds rugby union team.

He said yesterday he was still keen to enter parliament, but would not speculate on his prospects for Ryan. "It's up to the state executive what happens."

Former Howard minister Mal Brough, who lost the seat of Longman north of Brisbane in 2007 and was being courted to make a comeback for the Liberals in Ryan, has ruled himself out.

The seat, now the second-most marginal held by the conservatives in Queensland with a margin of 1.2 per cent, is being eyed by Labor to offset the possible loss of regional electorates in Kevin Rudd's home state.

The political machine Mr Johnson fashioned gave him clout in the Queensland Liberal Party, but the merged LNP has damaged his prospects of survival.