Queensland election: whoever leads does so without a mandate

Queenslanders have spoken, in a roundabout sort of way, but it is not clear what they have said. The likely result is a protracted mess.

The final individual seat results of this election campaign are still seven days or so away. Some seats that have been claimed may come back into play as further counting shifts margins and the run of preference flows changes order and possibly outcomes.

It is likely Annastacia Palaszczuk will form the next government (who else realistically can?) but sceptics may be forgiven for suggesting this was a begrudging win as voters reluctantly anointed a least worst alternative.

The real missed opportunity of this campaign was the lack of leadership and the absence of coherent policies, or even anything motivating a desire to improve the wellbeing or voters’ lifestyles.

Instead campaigners spent their time subjecting electorates to idiotic gimmicks and crude forms of local pork-barrelling (such as this or that school should get a grant of $1 million ­despite having been overlooked for decades).

Meanwhile, everyone was happily avoiding the subject of crippling debt — it was just too hard to put this issue on the agenda even though the cost is spiral­ling out of control and states have little ­capacity to pay down substantial debt commitments. Both sides were complicit in evading their public responsibilities.

On election night Labor did well to minimise its failures but could not capture enough offsetting seats to counter these inevitable losses. Pundits predicting a “solid Labor win” of 51 seats were so far off the mark as not to be funny.

Labor wasted chances to impress. It should have done much better in seats such as Toowoomba North, Maiwar, Everton, McConnel, Cook, Pumicestone, Whitsunday, and even Bundaberg.

In Maiwar, part of socialist inner-west ­Brisbane, the ALP candidate could not get past 28 per cent. She hardly deserves to get her deposit back, yet — bizarrely — may win the seat on an equal number of Green preferences.

By contrast, Labor did reasonably well in Mount Ommaney, Redlands, Gaven, Barron River and (only just) Mansfield. Deputy Premier Jackie Trad survived because of the myopia of Liberal National Party voters in South Brisbane, hardly a ringing endorsement of her left credentials. She promised a new school for Dutton Park in her electorate, which may have turned a few votes, but she may not be so fortunate next time.

With the state electoral commission not counting statewide figures even by yesterday (we probably need a parliamentary committee to do a complete overhaul of the somnambulant Electoral Commission of Queensland) the best guess is that Labor’s ­primary vote increased slightly to the mid-30s, whereas the LNP’s dropped to no more than 30 per cent.

Minor party support will come in at 35 per cent, but we need to ­factor in that most minors did not stand in every seat, meaning statewide figures are misleading. Had One Nation and Katter’s Australian Party stood in every seat we might have found that the support for the two major parties dipped below 60 per cent.

The LNP ran a generally positive campaign but it was lacklustre and poor in impact. Leader Tim Nicholls now has to re-evaluate his position, and Deb Frecklington looks the most likely successor. Labor was looking desperate ­towards the end of the campaign and threw substantial resources into shoring up its seats and (again) ­investing in a scare campaign about the LNP getting into bed with One Nation.

Even Palaszczuk’s last-minute plea for LNP voters to vote for the Labor Party just this time was an act of desperation. One Nation campaigned energetically but could not get over the threshold to be competitive in its selected seats.

The most it can win is five seats (Mirani, Hinchinbrook, Thuringowa, Cook and Callide), which is hardly a shake-up to the system the party advocated. Most likely it will end with one or two seats — at best. What One Nation has managed to achieve is to determine which of the major parties is able to claim victory in individual seats.

If elections determine mandates, this one has abrogated anything approaching a mandate to act. Whoever takes over this impressive state is handicapped by the fact that ­almost 70 per cent of the voters did not want them. Such is democracy in Australia.

John Wanna is professor of politics at the Australian National University and Griffith University.