Qld election 2020: Last-minute manoeuvres as race goes down to the wire
Annastacia Palaszczuk and Deb Frecklington were leaving nothing to chance as the election campaign entered its dying hours, writes Steven Wardill.
Opinion
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THE election like no other, they called it.
The COVID campaign.
The people’s choice during a pandemic.
However, while the coronavirus might have cast its dark shadow across the playing field throughout the 26 days, the traditional game was still played on the ground with Annastacia Palaszczuk and Deb Frecklington clocking up massive frequent flyer miles crisscrossing Queensland to try and win votes.
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Palaszczuk, the second-term Labor premier who has dominated the news cycle for months during the crisis, finishes the campaign the unbackable bookies’ favourite.
Yet Frecklington, the underrated Nanango MP who led the LNP from start to finish this term, has run a disciplined campaign and remains a fighting chance.
Perhaps what really sets this Queensland election apart from others is that while the campaign itself might have been rather pedestrian – with very few colourful scandals and candidate calamities – the result still remains incredibly difficult to pick.
Labor began the election with 48 of 93 seats, effectively a two-seat majority.
Hold what she has and Palaszczuk will leapfrog Wayne Goss and Peter Beattie to become the second longest serving Labor premier during the four-year term to come.
Meanwhile, the LNP began with 38 seats, meaning Frecklington needs a net gain of nine to govern in her own right.
Just twice in the last six elections have the perennial second-place-getters at Queensland elections achieved those kind of gains, so it’s not going to be easy for Frecklington.
Still, the flight patterns of the leaders just demonstrates the leaks Labor is attempting to plug to try and remain afloat.
Repeatedly, Palaszczuk and Frecklington have jetted into Townsville and Cairns during the campaign.
Frecklington headed north again yesterday as soon as her Queensland Media Club debate against Palaszczuk was over.
Three of the seats in each city are considered vulnerable.
Further south there’s the Labor seats of Mackay and Keppel and One Nation’s lone electorate of Mirani.
It starts to make the mathematics for Frecklington appear possible, particularly when you consider the LNP is a shot in Aspley, Mansfield and Redlands.
Throw in the seats where Labor is under siege from the Greens, like Jackie Trad’s South Brisbane, Grace Grace’s McConnel and Cooper where Kate Jones is retiring, and the question starts to emerge as to whether punters might have got it all horribly wrong.
Yet statewide polling at the start and in the middle of the campaign has shown a consistent swing to Labor from 2017, nothing that would deliver a Newman or Beattie-like majority.
But as they say all you really need is one and the rest are just for ego.
However, Labor’s introduction of compulsory preferential voting in 2016 is the wildcard at this election and explains why Labor remains nervous and the LNP head into tonight’s count with their fingers crossed.
“Last Sunday I thought we were gone,” one Labor insider close to the campaign said. “But we’ve improved, particularly in Mackay and Keppel. The question is whether it’s enough.”
A senior LNP figure, who’s been on the ground in northern Queensland, is convinced regional voters are on the march.
“We might not get a majority but we are a very strong chance of minority. And I just can’t see how Labor can get to 47 seats if they lose seats up here,” they said.
From the first days of the campaign, it was clear that both leaders were trying to draw a line under problem areas that threatened to undermine their campaign.
Palaszczuk flew to Mount Isa to talk resources and electricity as her Government battles against an image it is anti-coal following former deputy premier Jackie Trad’s infamous comments about miners needing to “re-skill” and deliberate delays to the Carmichael and New Acland mines.
Frecklington delivered the controversial news that her party would place Labor last on most of its how-to-vote cards as she attempted to end the guessing game over LNP preferences which haunted her predecessor Tim Nicholls in 2017.
And both leaders made claims about how they wouldn’t do a deal to form a minority government even though when push comes to shove they will have no choice.
Perhaps not since Kevin Rudd so successfully stalked John Howard has a campaign had so many “me too” style policy commitments.
Clearly both Labor and the LNP were looking at the same internal polls.
Both have committed to aircondition every state school classroom, building a second M1, pro-Queensland procurement policies and investigating whether the New Bradfield Scheme to irrigate the regions stacks up.
After Frecklington announced big plans to four-lane the Bruce Highway before the campaign, Palaszczuk announced she would build a second Bruce Highway midway through the election.
Yet there are significant policy schisms between the pair.
The LNP has proposed a curfew plan for Townsville and Cairns to tackle major community concerns about youth crime.
Palaszczuk has promised to introduce voluntary-assisted dying laws in February.
With about 800,000-odd Queenslanders left to vote on polling day and Labor having the best of the first fortnight of the campaign, many pundits have assumed this election was already over.
Yet those who haven’t voted are more likely to be undecided, meaning the final days of the hustings would have been crucial. This election is going to go down to the wire.
Originally published as Qld election 2020: Last-minute manoeuvres as race goes down to the wire