Federal Election 2004
QUEENSLAND
| CLICK ON ELECTORATE NAME BELOW FOR FULL PROFILE | |||
| Region | Non-Labor electorates | Labor electorates | Region |
|---|---|---|---|
| Townsville | (1.5) HERBERT | BRISBANE (0.9) | Inner Brisbane |
| Bundaberg/Gladstone | (2.3) HINKLER | BONNER (1.9) | Outer Brisbane |
| Inner Brisbane | (2.5) MORETON | RANKIN (2.4) | Southern Brisbane |
| Sunshine Coast | (2.5) LONGMAN | ||
| Bayside Brisbane | (3.1) BOWMAN | ||
| Northern Brisbane | (3.5) PETRIE | LILLEY (4.6) | Northern Brisbane |
| Outer Brisbane | (6.0) DICKSON | CAPRICORNIA (5.5) | Rockhampton/Central |
| Cairns/Cape York | (6.4) LEICHHARDT | GRIFFITH (6.2) | Inner Brisbane |
| Brisbane Valley | (6.7) BLAIR | ||
| Brisbane Fringe | (7.1) FORDE | ||
| Central | (8.0) DAWSON | OXLEY (8.0) | Ipswich/Inala |
| Northern Outback | (8.5) KENNEDY | ||
| Western Brisbane | (9.4) RYAN | ||
| Sunshine Coast | (9.5) FAIRFAX | ||
| Maryborough | (9.9) WIDE BAY | ||
| Sunshine Coast | (11.8) FISHER | ||
| Gold Coast | (12.2) McPHERSON | ||
| Gold Coast Corridor | (13.1) FADDEN | ||
| Toowoomba | (15.1) GROOM | ||
| Southern Outback | (15.4) MARANOA | ||
| Gold Coast | (16.3) MONCRIEFF | ||
Key - Australian Labor Party Liberal Party National Party Independent * Region classifications are based on those used by Antony Green in his election summaries at ABC Elections. | |||
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BLAIR (Liberal 6.7%)
THE CANDIDATES: Cameron Thompson, the man who ended Pauline Hanson's career, hasn't embarrassed himself since his election in 1998 but he's still best remembered for defeating Hanson. John Black at ABC Brisbane tells us he is a "former radio journalist, press secretary to assorted tough talking characters in the NT Government and Chief of Staff to one of the former Queensland Liberal Leaders Joan Sheldon", and "one of the Lance Corporals of Life". Labor candidate Shayne Neumann is a partner in Brisbane law firm Neumann & Turnour. CAMPAIGN UPDATE: The prevailing local issue has been the Ipswich Motorway, a federally funded road which the Queensland Government wants widened, while the Federal Government's preferred option has been to construct a "missing link" between Ipswich and Goodna to relieve pressure on the existing road. Few of the interested parties have been impressed by the Federal Government's stance, and Roads Minister Jim Lloyd floated the possiblity early in the campaign that they might change their mind. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain One Nation were down 9.7 per cent and the Liberals were up 8.3 per cent, from which you can draw your own conclusions. Labor were up 1.1 per cent on the primary vote, but suffered a 4.6 per cent swing on two-party preferred. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (11.2%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum BONNER (Labor 1.9%)
THE CANDIDATES: Sicilian-born Con Sciacca established himself as a Right factional stalwart at a young age and became member of Bowman in 1987. By March 1994 he had climbed the ladder as far as the junior Veterans Affairs ministry but like most of his Queensland colleagues he lost his seat when the Keating Government was dumped in 1996. He recovered it in 1998 and was made Labor spokesman on Immigration, which became politically explosive in a way no one had foreseen as the Tampa incident unfolded in August 2001. The drubbing Labor suffered over the issue fed directly into their election defeat and Sciacca declined to remain on the front bench under Crean. In 2003 he became one of the core of "roosters" plotting for Kim Beazley's return and was burned politically by his failure, commenting at the time that Labor would "have to live" with the outcome. Latham would show a heretofore unsuspected magnanimity when he endorsed Sciacca in a preselection dispute in early 2004. Bowman had been made notionally Liberal by the redistribution and elements of the Left disputed Sciacca's right to jump ship for the notionally Labor new seat of Bonner, Sciacca defeating union official Tom Schultz 144 votes to 67. A Right faction challenge to the Left's Kirsten Livermore in Capricornia, similarly unsuccessful, was widely seen as a retalitation. The Liberal candidate is Ross Vasta, whom Wynnum-Manly Online tells us is "well known in the local area as the former owner of Elio's Restaurant at Carina Heights". His previous assignment was against Kevin Rudd in Griffith in 2001. Not that we should give the kid too hard a time, but his father is Angelo Vasta, the former Justice of the Supreme Court who as a result of the Fitzgerald inquiry became the first judge in Australian history to be removed by parliament. ASSESSMENT: Labor notional retain Normally a Greens vote of 4.9 per cent would save Labor if they trailed 42.8 to 44.1 per cent on the primary vote, but here there was a strong performance from Family First (4.4 per cent) to contend with. Ross Vasta thus had 0.5 per cent of his lead left after the distribution of preferences, recording a notional swing of 2.4 per cent. OUTCOME: LIBERAL NOTIONAL GAIN (0.5%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum BOWMAN (Liberal 3.1%)
THE CANDIDATES: Andrew Laming is an eye surgeon and was also the party's candidate here in 2001. The redistribution added some extra spice to the Liberal preselection contest with Laming, an ally of Senator George Brandis, defeating Logan City Councillor Peter Collins, from the rival Santo Santoro camp, 89 votes to 23. At a meeting of the party's Bowman federal electorate council Collins brought to light an Australian Electoral Commission investigation into donations Laming received during his campaign in 2001, claiming they came from a brothel manager. As The Australian reports it, "local Liberal powerbroker John Bonney then told the meeting that 'I am that brothel manager'". Bonney said he had supplied office space to Laming and that there was "nothing improper about that". The investigation is proceeding and Laming is "confident" he will not be prosecuted. Labor's Donna Webster works as an advocate for the Australian Services Union. INTELLIGENCE: Bowman was one of seven Queensland marginals surveyed by Newspoll in the first week of the campaign, which produced a collective result showing the Coalition leading Labor 46 to 38 per cent, with only a 1 per cent two-party swing to Labor from the 2001 election. John Black at ABC Brisbane has performed a complicated set of calculations to factor in the effects of redistributions and departing sitting members and concluded that Labor needs an effective swing of 4.4 per cent to win the seat. ASSESSMENT: Liberal notional retain A huge win for the Liberals, who presumably gained an extra dividend from the Labor member jumping ship. The Liberal vote was up 3.2 per cent while Labor was down 4.7 per cent, translating into a 6.1 per cent two-party swing. OUTCOME: Liberal notional retain (9.1%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum BRISBANE (Labor 0.9%)
THE CANDIDATES: Arch Bevis spent the 1980s as a Queensland Teachers Union official and Old Guard factional figure, entering parliament in 1990. He rose to the position of parliamentary secretary in the last 18 months of the Keating Government and after surviving 1996 became Labor spokesman first on Defence and then Industrial Relations. That came to an end after the 2001 election when he was removed from the front bench to make way for Queensland colleague Kevin Rudd. Perhaps encouraged by the redistribution, the Liberal preselection brought out a big name candidate in Ingrid Tall, openly lesbian former president of the state branch of the Australian Medical Association. Tall defeated 2001 candidate Sebastian Monsour 55 votes to 43, and immediately faced uncomfortable questions on the Howard Government's policies on gay marriage. Sparing no effort to boost the vote for their separate Senate ticket, the National Party are also fielding a candidate. Their nominee is Major Nick Withycombe, who told The Australian he was "the first Australian soldier to be deployed to Baghdad during combat operations last year". CAMPAIGN UPDATE: For a candidate with no serious chance of winning, Nick Withycombe has been grabbing his fair share of headlines. The National Party's insistence on running here and in Rankin, intended to boost their profile in a Senate contest that pits them against the Liberals for the seat certain to be lost by One Nation, has set off one of the Queensland Coalition's customary episodes of internal friction. Matters were further aggravated when Withycombe suggested Ingrid Tall would lose votes because of her sexuality, although some more suspicous folk have noted the convenience to the Coalition of having one candidate appealing to social liberals while the other appeals to conservatives. In the first week of the campaign a controversy erupted over Withycombe's military record that will sound familiar to those following the American presidential race. The Courier Mail reported "senior Australian Defence Force sources" saying Withycombe's claims to have been the first Australian soldier in Baghdad were "either untrue or grossly exaggerated". But a week later a "Department of Defence spokesman" was quoted saying "Brigadier Maurie McNairn has said publicly that Major Withycombe was the first Australian soldier to enter Baghdad during last year's combat operations". Withycombe also claimed to be a victim of email hacking and a bogus phone call telling him a local candidates debate had been postponed. The debate proceeded without him, with Ingrid Tall being repeatedly shouted down by what she described as a "left-wing stacked audience". INTELLIGENCE: John Black at ABC Brisbane says Arch Bevis "has been having a pretty quiet time of late in the media and in the electorate, according to my sources, and needs to lift his profile among non-traditional ALP supporters. The up-coming battle for Brisbane will be no place for the faint-hearted, as the seat of Brisbane is a ripe plum ready to fall to the Coalition, following major demographic and distributional change". Brisbane is only one of three seats in which Family First will preference Labor ahead of Liberal, on account of Tall's "values". ASSESSMENT: Labor retain Labor's few strong performances came in inner-city seats, including this surprisingly good showing in a seat for which the Liberals clearly had high hopes. Instead Arch Bevis added 4.8 per cent to his primary vote while Liberal candidate Ingrid Tall went backwards 1.2 per cent, apparently losing votes to the National Party's Nick Withycombe. A notably ugly showing from the Democrats - down 7.1 to 1.6 per cent - from which the Greens yielded little benefit, nudging up 2.7 per cent. OUTCOME: Labor retain (3.9%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum CAPRICORNIA (Labor 5.5%)
THE CANDIDATES: Prior to entering parliament Kirsten Livermore worked as a solicitor and organiser for the Community and Public Sector Union. She backed the right horses in both 2003 leadership challenges and has edged her way up to the position of parliamentary secretary to the Shadow Environment Minister. Leading into the current election she faced a pre-selection challenge from "training and employment consultant" Greg Clair, which was widely seen as a revenge attack on her Left faction after the challenge to the Right's Con Sciacca in Bonner. Rockhampton crocodile breeder John Lever is again running for the National Party. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain The Nationals can take heart from the fact that they poached votes from the Liberals here compared with 2001 (although the electoral boundaries changed a fair bit in the interim), rising 3.1 per cent while the Liberals fell 1.3 per cent. Notably, Family First (4.2 per cent) doubled the Greens (2.0 per cent). Kirsten Livermore's vote was pretty much stable. OUTCOME: Labor retain (5.1%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum DAWSON (Liberal 8.0%)
THE CANDIDATES: At the time of the One Nation onslaught, which was felt most keenly in electorates like Dawson, De-Anne Kelly became so vocal a critic of the Government that some were wondering if she intended to remain a part of it. It's a sign of the times that Kelly has since been well-behaved and co-operative enough to have been entrusted with parliamentary secretary positions in October 2003. What's more, one of those positions is with Trade Minister Mark Vaile, which placed Kelly in an uncomfortable position when the sugar industry was cut out of the US free trade deal. Bob Katter is again planning to endorse independent candidates in this and other sugar seats, with Margaret Menzel, the wife of former state National Party MP Max, flying the flag in Dawson. Katter's candidates polled disappointingly at the February state election but that was before the trade deal. Labor's Cherry Feeney is described by the ALP website as a "successful local businesswoman" involved with the Mackay Regional Health and Electricity councils. ASSESSMENT: Nationals retain Margaret Menzel did okay to pick up 6.9 per cent of the vote, 2.1 per cent of that apparently at the expense of De-Anne Kelly who had to go preferences this time. But with Labor's vote down even more, she still managed to pick up a 2.4 per cent two-party swing. OUTCOME: Nationals retain (10.4%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum DICKSON (Liberal 6.0%)
THE CANDIDATES: Thirty-two year old Peter Dutton is a former police officer who owned a child care centre in Brisbane prior to moving into his present creche. In August 2004 he was the subject of a withering editorial in the Courier Mail after a protest by a group purporting to be locals indignant at Peter Beattie over electricity problems was exposed during the act as a stunt co-ordinated by his campaign manager. Beattie exploited the situation with characteristic genius by insisting on posing for cheery photographs with the now-squirming protesters. The Mail editorialised that Dutton had been "making a habit of pushing the boundaries of political campaigning", noting "he fell foul of the Australian Electoral Commission by writing to residents in his electorate who lodged a postal vote in 2001, offering an early opportunity to apply for a postal ballot again", and politicised the police service with "a billboard featuring himself in front of a Queensland police car, with words attributed to the Police Federation of Australia offering its strong support". Dutton received more helpful publicity for earlier campaigns against double jeopardy and for fathers' rights in child custody cases. His Labor opponent is Craig McConnell, a Pine Rivers Shire Councillor, who need only present himself as the sensible citizen that Dickson voters are no doubt yearning for by now to take the contest right up to his opponent. INTELLIGENCE: The Courier Mail ran a TNS poll of about 300 respondents the day before the election which had Peter Dutton ahead 59-41. This continued a sharp trend across three TNS polls, with Labor ahead 54-46 on July 3 and behind 44-56 in the first week of the campaign. On September 1, Scott Emerson of The Australian reported that "Liberal Party polling is understood to show Mr Dutton in a good position to hold the seat". But the Courier Mail reported on September 24 that internal polling had Labor feeling the seat was "winnable". ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Peter Dutton shook off the curse of Dickson in fine style, hanging on to his supposedly Kernot-charged swing from 2001 and adding on an extra 6.6 per cent of the primary and 1.8 per cent of the two-party vote. Also a strong showing from Family First, who managed 4.5 per cent compared with 5.9 per cent for the Greens. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (7.8%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum FADDEN (Liberal 13.1%)
THE CANDIDATES: David Jull entered the shadow ministry in 1989 and remained there until Alexander Downer wielded the new broom after assuming the leadership in May 1994. Upon the election of the Howard Government he was made Administrative Services Minister, in which capacity he conspired with Transport Minister John Sharp to cover up the latter's travel rorting, costing both their jobs in September 1997. This was during the short-lived period when the Prime Minister was taking seriously the charter of ministerial standards that sounded like such a good idea in opposition, and Jull was treated more harshly than worse offenders later on. Labor's Peter Eather is an organiser for the Liquor Hospitality and Miscellaneous Workers Union. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Another Queensland seat where a big increase in the Liberal vote (up 6.2 per cent) can be credited to the collapse of One Nation (down 5.2 per cent). Labor and the Greens hardly budged, both improving less than 1 per cent on 2001. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (15.3%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum FAIRFAX (Liberal 9.5%)
THE CANDIDATES: After his triumph in winning his seat for the Liberal Party, Hungarian-born Alex Somlyay served his time with enough competence to be granted the minor Regional Development, Territories and Local Government portfolio in October 1997, but he made little impact and was eased out after a year. Labor have endorsed Ivan Molloy, one-time labourer and truck driver and now head of Politics and International Studies at the University of Sunshine Coast, a self-identified leftist who nonetheless announced support for the Howard Government's policies on illegal immigration in an article in The Australian in April 2002 (helpfully reproduced by the good people at On Line Opinion). He also describes himself in the article as a "defacto Green". CAMPAIGN UPDATE: There's always one. Dr Ivan Molloy has been the campaign's obligatory major party candidate to have caused his party embarrassment after his skeletons emerged from the closet mid-campaign. On September 28 the Courier Mail published a photo taken in the Philippines in 1983 that showed Molloy bearing a sub-machine gun and standing next to a similarly equipped local who the Mail claimed to be a member of the Moro National Liberation Front, a Marxist rebel group with roots in the same soil as the troublesome Moro Islamic Liberation Front. Molloy might have been able to argue that his penetration of this organisation constituted legitimate and indeed quite remarkable academic research, but the Coalition had other ammunition to hand. Having accumulated a career's worth of leftist academic literature on terrorist/separatist groups, it was simple enough to locate a few choice quotes that jarred badly with contemporary public opinion. But the real career-killer was his failure to distance himself from the politically (and indeed intellectually) stupid comments of his wife, state member for Noosa Cate Molloy, that she held Liberal sitting members "accountable" for deaths resulting from the Bali and Jakarta bombings. Molloy took the opportunity of a column in The Australian to find less objectionable language with which to express similar sentiments, but his wife's comments were always going to be the ones to linger in the public mind. The controversies prompted Mark Latham's most embarrassing gaffe of the campaign when he confused his candidate with similarly named serial killer Ivan Milat, but most would have been impressed by his sure-footed recovery. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Despite (because of?) the pre-election publicity, Ivan Molloy didn't end up doing too badly - up 1.7 per cent on the primary and down 1.9 per cent on two-party preferred, a superior performance to the state average on both counts. The Greens did well too, gaining 4.6 per cent to make double figures. That said, the 9.9 per cent of the vote that went to independent candidate Shane Paulger in 2001 was up for grabs this time. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (11.1%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum FISHER (Liberal 11.8%)
THE CANDIDATES: Peter Slipper was lucky to have begun a second political life with the Liberal Party after his first stint in parliament as National Party member for Fisher from 1984 to 1987. Slipper enthusiastically followed the Queensland branch of the party in pursuing the Joh-for-PM folly, apparently going so far as to buy a house in Canberra in the expectation that he would emerge as a minister in a Bjelke-Petersen junta. The substantial achievement of their efforts was to cost the Howard-led Coalition the 1987 election with particular help from the voters of Queensland, with Slipper among those to lose his seat. Slipper found his way back as a Liberal after his old seat had been dramatically redistributed in 1993 and was made a parliamentary secretary after the 1998 election, but has risen no further. No doubt in part due to his reputation as a right-wing moralist, Slipper was the only Queensland Coalition MP to be on the receiving end of One Nation preferences at the 2001 election. There was talk that up-and-coming member for Longman Mal Brough hoped to unseat Slipper due to the uncomfortable margin in his own electorate but in the event a preselection challenge came from barrister Glen Garrick, with Slipper prevailing 168 votes to 75. Slipper was seen with a black eye after the weekend of the challenge, the Sunshine Coast Daily reporting a Mooloolaba nightclub patron claimed Slipper had confirmed to him that he had been involved in "a scuffle". ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain With One Nation down 4.9 per cent, the Democrats down 2.2 per cent and independent candidate Ros Hourigan (who polled 7.8 per cent in 2001) there for the taking, Liberal, Labor and Family First were each able to add an extra 4 per cent to their vote from 2001 (which was zero in Family First's case). That translated into a 1.2 per cent two-party swing to Peter Slipper. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (13.0%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results RELATED POSTS: Dead Wood and Bad Blood (13/3/04). Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum FORDE (Liberal 7.1%)
THE CANDIDATES: Despite rising to the position of Government Whip by the beginning of the Government's second term Kay Elson has generally kept a low profile. Scurrilous scandal sheet Crikey talked of a looming preselection challenge in May 2002 but none emerged. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Another case where the Liberals (up 5.6 per cent) appeared to benefit directly at the expense of One Nation (down 5.9 per cent). Neither Labor (down 2.4 per cent) and the Greens (up 1.1 per cent) did as well out of the comparable decline of the Democrats (down 3.3 per cent), resulting in a handsome 6 per cent two-party swing to Kay Elson. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (13.0%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum GRIFFITH (Labor 6.2%)
THE CANDIDATES: A cultivated former diplomat fluent in Mandarin, Kevin Rudd moved into politics via a job as chief of staff to former Queensland Premier Wayne Goss, and he was a prize pick as Labor candidate for Griffith going into the 1996 election. However the scale of the anti-Keating backlash in Queensland was such that a 6.2 per cent swing delivered the seat to the Liberal Party. He tried again in 1998 and this time the GST counter-swing saw him through. Former Labor MP Gary Johns wrote in the Adelaide Review that Rudd had joined the Labor Unity faction because he "relied on preselection numbers in (former member) Ben Humphrey's old base", and in his first speech to parliament he also acknowledged the support of Wayne Swan, Con Sciacca and John Hogg from the rival AWU grouping. After one term in the reserves he was dramatically elevated to Foreign Affairs following the 2001 election. Rudd somehow managed to emerge looking good amid Labor's muddle over Iraq and was spoken of seriously as a successor to Kim Beazley, taking his time to announce he would not contest after Simon Crean stepped down on November 28. He is apparently considered a "knucklehead" by the Opposition Leader, but such was his stature that he remained in his portfolio despite voting for Beazley. Latham's opinion was no doubt reciprocated when Rudd had to defend his leader's impetuous declaration that the boys should be home by Christmas in the face of his well-known view to the contrary. Rudd's Liberal opponent is Janelle Payne; some clue to her background is provided by her involvement with Queensland Young Lawyers and the Women Lawyers Association. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain This was either an excellent personal result for Kevin Rudd, or an example of Labor's good performance in inner city electorates. Either way his primary vote was up 3.2 per cent and he picked up a 2.5 per cent two-party swing. OUTCOME: Labor retain (8.6%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum GROOM (Liberal 15.1%)
THE CANDIDATES: Ian Macfarlane is a gruff-voiced former president of the Queensland Grain Growers Association and might have been thought a natural for the National Party, but read the breeze correctly in plumping for the Liberals. Before his first term was through he was Small Business Minister, but this proved an unfortunate portfolio to be stuck with in view of the difficulties he encountered uncomfortably close to the 2001 election. That August it emerged his electorate committee had been engaged in GST rorts and he did very poorly in first claiming he had raised the matter with Treasurer Peter Costello's office and then deciding he hadn't. However the controversy was soon drowned out by the Tampa incident and September 11, and he was actually promoted to cabinet following the election in the Industry, Tourism and Resources portfolio. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain A notably strong showing from Family First, whose 6.4 per cent was far higher than the Greens' 4 per cent. Without a National Party competitor this time, Ian Macfarlane added 2.5 per cent to the Coalition vote and picked up a 3.9 per cent two-party swing. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (19.0%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum HERBERT (Liberal 1.5%)
THE CANDIDATES: Peter Lindsay had been a fairly quiet back-bencher since his election in 1996 but he had a thing or two to say about the Iraq War, such as "I utterly reject the notion of a premature, pre-emptive strike by the US", which "would be foolish and I hope that Australia would have no part in it". No doubt acting on orders from Zionist neo-cons at the Pentagon, factional interests in the Queensland Liberal Party marshalled a challenge to Lindsay's preselection from Townsville oncologist Peter Fon. The party's state executive, headed by president Michael Caltabiano with whom Lindsay had crossed swords, was seen to have indicated where its sympathies lay when it suspended the Townsville branch of the Young Liberals, expected to deliver 45 preselection votes to Lindsay, on branch-stacking charges. In the event Fon made a last-minute decision that he did not wish to jeopardise the future of the Howard Government by challenging a sitting member. The Townsville Bulletin had earlier reported that despite Lindsay's pre-war mutiny "top-level moves" were afoot to secure Fon's withdrawal, while the Courier Mail said the Prime Minister was "believed to be closely monitoring the situation". Labor too had a lively time choosing its candidate, state member for Thuringowa Anita Phillips standing aside at the February 2001 Queensland election in order to contest the seat but failing to get a clear run. Phillips eventually won the day over solicitor Ted Lindsay, a colleague in the party's Right faction. Reports emerged in 2002 of potential challengers to Phillips' state preselection receiving "hate mail", eliciting disapproving comments from Premier Peter Beattie. Threats by the independent member for Kennedy, Bob Katter, to endorse an independent to run against Lindsay appear not to have come to anything. INTELLIGENCE: The day before the election, the Courier Mail ran a TNS poll from a sample of about 300 which had the Peter Lindsay leading 56-44. The Townsville Bulletin ran a poll from a sample of 472 on October 2 which had Peter Lindsay and Anita Phillips tied on 38 per cent of the primary vote, or a bit over 41 per cent after distribution of the 8 per cent undecided. With the Greens on about 8 per cent this would give Phillips a fairly comfortable win. ASSESSMENT: LABOR GAIN Marking this down as a Labor gain was the Poll Bludger's wrongest call of the election. With independent candidate Conway Brown (7.9 per cent in 2001) not contesting and the One Nation vote halved, Peter Lindsay gained 6.8 per cent to almost win the seat on the primary vote. For all her profile as a former state MP, Anita Phillips actually took Labor backwards, by 4.7 per cent on the two-party measure. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (6.2%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results RELATED POSTS: Dead Wood and Bad Blood (13/3/04). Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum HINKLER (National 2.3%)
THE CANDIDATES: Paul Neville has had a funny old career - state secretary of the Arts Council at 23, then "theatre supervisor 1967-81" and manager of the Bundaberg District Tourism and Development Board. Throughout he kept a toe in the pond of the National Party and won the nomination for Hinkler as the seat returned to the party fold after it was lost during the Queensland Coalition's crisis period in the late 1980s. He has since been entrusted with the none-too-demanding National Party Whip position but has otherwise been left free to hold the line on the home front. Labor candidate Cheryl Dorron, a Queensland Nurses Union vice-president and member of the party's Left faction, worked for 32 years as an aged care nurse and suffered agonisingly narrow defeats as candidate in 1998 and 2001. She was installed through an affirmative action ruling from the party's administrative committee after losing the preselection vote to local real estate agent Garry Parr by 92 votes to 81. The combination of her previous defeats, however narrow, and the help she needed to secure a spot this time have prompted many to conclude that Dorron does not have the look of a winner about her. CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Bundaberg was the venue for Mark Latham's first "community forum" of the campaign, conducted late in the second week. INTELLIGENCE: Alan Ramsey of the Sydney Morning Herald reported late in the campaign that this was "the only Liberal (sic) marginal in the entire country Labor has written off, for internal reasons". Those reasons presumably relate to their twice-unsuccessful candidate Cheryl Dorron and her installation by affirmative action. Two polls released at the end of the first week of the campaign gave Paul Neville cause to feel confident. The Courier Mail published a TNS poll of about 300 respondents which showed him with an effective majority on the primary vote and 57 per cent on two-party preferred (an earlier TNS poll conducted in late June had him at 50.5 per cent). Hinkler was also among the seven Queensland marginals surveyed by Newspoll at around the same time which showed Labor recording a swing of just 1 per cent. The Courier Mail reported on September 24 that while Labor sources were still hopeful in five other Queensland marginals, Hinkler had "slipped from the party's grasp". Further confirmation came the day before the election with a TNS poll of about 300 respondents in teh Courier Mail showing Neville ahead 61-39. ASSESSMENT: Nationals retain Labor's much-maligned candidate actually managed to add 3.2 per cent to her primary vote, although she did so in the absence of a candidate for One Nation, who polled 9.2 per cent in 2001. Paul Neville gained 6.6 per cent on the primary vote and 2.6 per cent on two-party preferred. OUTCOME: Nationals retain (4.8%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum KENNEDY (National 8.5%)*
An enormous electorate covering most of northern Queensland apart from the bulk of the Cape York Peninsula, from Tully and Innisfail on the coast to Mount Isa and the Northern Territory border. Due to its declining population, successive redistributions including the current one have seen it encroach upon Townsville to make up the numbers. It is a fact little-known in Victoria that their state Attorney-General, Rob Hulls, held this seat for Labor between 1990 and 1993. He gained the seat for Labor upon the retirement of Bob Katter Sr, who had generated a considerable personal vote since his election in 1966. Hulls could not survive the emergence in 1993 of Katter's heir, who won the seat with a solid swing against the national trend. Little surprise then that Katter Jr's parting of ways with the National Party in 2001 posed no threat to the continuation of the dynasty, his vote actually improving at the subsequent election from 44.1 to 47.1 per cent. Katter's widely publicised outlook on life no doubt helped to dampen the vote for One Nation, which nevertheless was 18.8 per cent in 1998 and 9.9 per cent in 2001. THE CANDIDATES: Bob Katter remained true to the agrarian socialism and social conservatism of the old Country Party as the balance of power in the Coalition drew the Nationals in the Liberals' policy orbit. His use of the term "slanty-eyed ideologues" to describe critics of a similarly blunt National Party colleague is widely remembered; less well-known is former Prime Minister Paul Keating's apparently disparaging reference to Katter's late father as "the camel driver", presumably in reference to his Afghan heritage, and the respect Katter won in indigenous communities as Aboriginal Affairs Minister in Mike Ahern's state government in the late 1980s. More recently he attempted to ignite a revolt against the major parties at the February 2004 state election by publicly endorsing independent candidates in sugar-growing seats. Despite the extremely limited success of this venture he was soon threatening to form his own party and direct its preferences to Labor, although he would be conscious that his own seat would be at risk if he came to be seen as a pro-Labor wrecker. Citing lack of finances he will instead anoint just four independent candidates for the federal election, the treatment of the sugar industry in the US free trade agreement expected to boost his cause in Wide Bay and Dawson. Puzzlingly, one of the other seats will be Murray in country Victoria. CAMPAIGN UPDATE: On the third day of the campaign Bob Katter's stepmother Joy Katter publicly endorsed his National Party opponent. The second wife of Bob Katter Sr, Joy Katter said she did not approve of his performance since leaving the National Party and that his late father wouldn't have either. INTELLIGENCE: On September 9 Ian Gerard and Patricia Karvelas of The Australian reported that National Party polling showed support for independent member Bob Katter "has dropped 15 per cent and, for the first time, he is coming second to the ALP's Alan Nenilan (sic), followed by the Nationals' Mr Doyle". The report cited concerns that Katter "represents only the fringe elements of Kennedy and does more harm than good for industries in the electorate", noting that "the north Queensland beef industry, a previously rich source of rural angst, is booming and One Nation has all but collapsed as a political force". One who thinks differently is Martin Tenni, north Queensland party executive member and former Bjelke-Petersen Government minister, whose letter to state president Terry Bolger reporting "one thing is definite, we cannot win Kennedy" was leaked to The Australian. ASSESSMENT: Independent retain While Bob Katter may have to let go of his ambitions to extend his cult of personality beyond his own electorate, he at least remains safe in his own seat. His 40.1 per cent share of the vote was down 3.2 per cent on 2001, but as long as a chasm remains between him and the Nationals (whose candidate added 7.3 per cent to the Coalition vote but still managed only 23.8 per cent) his position is secure. OUTCOME: Independent retain (18.9% vs ALP) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results RELATED POSTS: Sugaring the Poll (26/8/04). Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum LEICHHARDT (Liberal 6.4%)
THE CANDIDATES: Warren Entsch's pre-parliamentary CV includes "crocodile catcher" along with grazier and RAAF engine fitter. He made parliamentary secretary level after the 1998 election but has gone no further, although he is better known than many at that level as a feeder of quotes to the press pack seagulls at the entrance to parliament. He also became fairly well known in 1998 after he called for a boycott of churches over their opposition to the Government's Wik legislation, and in 1999 when it emerged that he had not declared his directorship of a company that supplied concrete for an RAAF base. Labor argued this was in breach of the Constitution and disqualified him from sitting, but declined to pursue a High Court challenge on the grounds that they couldn't afford it. As a member for a regional Queensland seat, Entsch was a surprise objector to the Government's recent ban on gay marriage. Labor's candidate is Jim Turnour, an agricultural consultant who has worked as a researcher to Senator Jan McLucas. INTELLIGENCE: Leichhardt is one of only three electorates where Family First will preference Labor ahead of the Coalition, owing to his refusal to support what he described as the Government's "offensive" stand on homosexual marriage. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain A 4.6 per cent lift in his primary vote meant Warren Entsch didn't have to go to preferences for the first time since he won the seat off Labor in 1996, making this another once-marginal seat that has become safe Liberal over the lifetime of the Howard Government. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (10.0%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum LILLEY (Labor 4.6%)
THE CANDIDATES: Wayne Swan's career as a political adviser goes back to 1978 and the beginning of Bill Hayden's period as Opposition Leader. He moved into the Queensland Labor Party machine in the 1980s and was closely allied to Wayne Goss through his rise to the premiership. In this time he became identified with the Australian Workers Union faction, putting him at odds with Peter Beattie, then state party secretary. Swan escaped the sinking of the Goss Government by being elected member for Lilley in 1993, only to be dumped along with most of his Queensland Labor colleagues in 1996. He was back in 1998 and went straight into the Family and Community Services shadow ministry where he has remained since, barring a two-and-a-half month interruption from December 2000 when Federal Police and the Director of Public Prosecutions investigated claims he provided a brown bag full of cash to the local Democrats office as part of a preference deal at the 1996 election. These emerged as part of the Shepherdson Inquiry which Beattie skilfully used to checkmate his factional rivals, not the least of whom was Swan. More harm was done to his prime ministerial aspirations through his role as one of the coterie of Beazley comeback plotters described by Mark Latham as "roosters", which he took on after counting his own numbers and thinking better of it. The Liberal candidate is Alan Boulton, a former mayor of Redcliffe. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain Wayne Swan's 0.7 per cent two-party swing was enough to move him out of the technically marginal zone (5 per cent or less), but he would no doubt have liked a bit more. Still, in picking up any kind of swing he did better than most of his Queensland colleagues. As was so often the case, the decline of the Democrats and no One Nation candidate meant all comers went up a little on the primary vote. OUTCOME: Labor retain (5.3%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum LONGMAN (Liberal 2.5%)
THE CANDIDATES: A former army officer and business proprietor, Mal Brough was made a parliamentary secretary in 2000 and then Employment Services Minister in February the following year. Brough's swearing in upon the latter promotion was delayed while the Federal Police investigated vote rorting allegations involving staff members who were falsely enrolled in his electorate, and he subsequently hit a few bumps with his portfolio responsibility for managing Job Network. He has nevertheless been considered an effective performer and was given extra responsibilities assisting Defence Minister Robert Hill in the September 2003 reshuffle and then promoted to Revenue Minister and Assistant Treasurer in July 2004, providing timely pre-election publicity for the holder of a crucial marginal seat. Brough would have needed persuading not to challenge Peter Slipper's preselection in neighbouring Fisher after the redistribution strengthened that seat for the Liberals at Longman's expense, particularly since he has lined up against Slipper's allies in the Michael Caltabiano/Santo Santoro faction in the Queensland Liberal Party. Labor's candidate for the second successive election is Stephen Beckett, a 29-year-old policy adviser to Queensland Local Government Minister Desley Boyle. INTELLIGENCE: The day before the election, the Courier Mail ran a TNS poll of about 300 respondents which had Mal Brough ahead 56-44. This was the third such TNS poll for Longman, earlier efforts in late June and in the first week of the campaign having Mal Brough leading with 54 per cent of the two-candidate preferred vote. Commenting on the earlier poll, John Black at ABC Brisbane said his "contacts tell me the Liberal Party, as a party, is behind in Longman, as we predicted, but when Labor's candidate is compared with the Liberal sitting member, the latter is well in front", indicating "the disparity between the strong Mal Brough campaign presence and the inexperienced ALP candidate". Longman was one of seven Queensland marginals surveyed by Newspoll in the first week of the campaign, which produced a collective result showing the Coalition leading Labor 46 to 38 per cent, with only a 1 per cent two-party swing to Labor from the 2001 election. But the Courier Mail reported on September 24 that internal polling had Labor feeling the seat was "winnable". ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Did somebody say "winnable"? Obviously things went badly awry for Labor in the last two weeks of the campaign as they ended up suffering a 5.2 per cent swing, losing 1.4 per cent of their primary vote despite the gap in the market from the decline of One Nation and teh Democrats. Mal Brough was up a hearty 6.6 per cent on the primary vote. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (7.7%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results RELATED POSTS: House of Cards (15/7/04). Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum McPHERSON (Liberal 12.2%)
THE CANDIDATES: Margaret May was a surprise preselection winner over former Brisbane Lord Mayor Sally-Anne Atkinson and 20 other candidates for this blue-ribbon seat in 1998. She is linked with the Queensland Liberal Party's Right faction and there had been mid-term scuttlebutt that she would attempt to depose moderate George Brandis from his spot on the Senate ticket. Other than that she has been little heard from. Kellie Trigger, electorate officer to state MP Dianne Reilly, obviously had fun being Labor candidate last time because she is doing it again. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain A standard result - Liberals up 4.1 per cent, Labor up 1.4 per cent, Greens up 0.2 per cent, Democrats down 3 per cent, One Nation down 4.2 per cent, Family First at 2.8 per cent on debut, 1.7 swing to Liberal on two-party. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (13.9%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum MARANOA (National 15.4%)
THE CANDIDATES: Bruce Scott was in the junior ministry two years after entering parliament in 1990 and was made Veterans Affairs Minister when the Howard Government came to power in 1996. Scott survived revelations during the 1997 travel rorts affair that he had been using a taxpayer-funded plane to visit a friend's property and went on to perform well in his portfolio, but he lost it when the National Party's losses in the 2001 election cost them a front bench spot under the Coalition agreement. Few would argue that the Government has been strengthened with his substitution by Danna Vale. Glenn Milne in The Australian reported that former party leader Tim Fischer had mused at a private function that Scott might retire at the coming election, although he seemed to be doing so as part of a theoretical worst-case scenario for the party's potential losses at the next election, to Liberal as well as Labor. Until then Scott has only to deal with Labor's Shane Guley, candidate for the even less winnable seat of Gregory at the February 2004 state election. A bit of Googling informs us that Guley was a QRail worker and AMWU delegate who was sacked for harassing and intimidating colleagues. On taking the matter to the Industrial Relations Commission, Guley was awarded four months' pay but his dismissal was upheld. ASSESSMENT: Nationals retain Few would have paid attention to Maranoa on election night, but those who did saw one of Labor's many little disasters unfolding - even with One Nation collapsing by 10.1 per cent, their candidate still went backwards. Bruce Scott was up 7.4 per cent on the primary vote and 5.5 per cent on two-party preferred, and now inhabits one of the safest seats in the land. OUTCOME: Nationals retain (20.8%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum MONCRIEFF (Liberal 16.3%)
THE CANDIDATES: Former Young Liberals Queensland president Steven Ciobo was 27 years old in 2001 when he replaced long-serving underachiever Kathy Sullivan in this safe seat. Among those Ciobo defeated for the preselection were former National Party Senator Bill O'Chee. Shortly afterwards Sullivan sued Ciobo for defamation after he allegedly told a local branch meeting she was responsible for Aboriginal Senator Neville Bonner's demotion to an unwinnable spot on the Liberal Senate ticket in 1983. The action was withdrawn after intervention by the Prime Minister, who had been spooked by reports Gold Coast Mayor Gary Baildon would take advantage of the party's troubles by running as an independent. Ciobo had earlier worked for Queensland Senator Brett Mason and McPherson MHR John Bradford (who would quit the Liberal Party to stand for Fred Nile's Call to Australia). ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Even accounting for the 5 per cent made available by the fact that the Nationals did not contest this time, Steven Ciobo's 10.9 per cent improvement on the primary vote is pretty impressive. Given that Labor was down slightly and the Greens not up by much, it's slightly surprising that this only translated into a 3.8 per cent two-party swing. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (20.1%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum MORETON (Liberal 2.5%)
THE CANDIDATES: Gary Hardgrave's career as a broadcaster in the 1980s included a spell as presenter of nationally broadcast children's television show Wombat, alongside Bob La Castra, now a Liberal member of Gold Coast City Council, and Aggro, present political affiliation unknown. He then moved on to news reporting and jobs as adviser to one-time state Liberal leader Angus Innes and Liberal Senator David McGibbon. For holding his marginal seat at three election he was rewarded with the lowest-rung junior ministry of Multicultural Affairs in 2001, to which the role of Minister Assisting the Prime Minister was added in October 2003. Labor candidate Graham Perrett is a lawyer and union official for the Queensland Independent Education Union. CAMPAIGN UPDATE: The prevailing local issue has been the Ipswich Motorway, a federally funded road which the Queensland Government wants widened, while the Federal Government's preferred option has been to construct a "missing link" between Ipswich and Goodna to relieve pressure on the existing road. Few of the interested parties have been impressed by the Federal Government's stance, and Roads Minister Jim Lloyd floated the possiblity early in the campaign that they might change their mind. INTELLIGENCE: On the day before the election, the Courier Mail ran a TNS poll of about 300 respondents that had Gary Hardgrave ahead 53-47. Labor has reportedly been concentrating its advertising on what it perceives to be its best hopes, Moreton and Petrie - "Liberal strategists" saying Moreton was "in trouble". Moreton was one of seven Queensland marginals surveyed by Newspoll in the first week of the campaign, which produced a collective result showing the Coalition leading Labor 46 to 38 per cent, with only a 1 per cent two-party swing to Labor from the 2001 election. But the Courier Mail reported on September 24 that internal polling had Labor feeling the seat was "winnable". ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Gary Hardgrave might be slightly disappointed with his modest 1.6 per cent swing, given the performance of some of his colleagues and the lack of fat on his existing margin. This was largely a status quo result, poor performances from One Nation and the Democrats in 2001 meaning their decline did not have much of an impact. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (4.2%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results RELATED POSTS: Two Bob Watch (11/9/04). Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum OXLEY (Labor 8.0%)
THE CANDIDATES: Bernie Ripoll entered parliament in 1998 after five years as an organiser with the State Public Services Federation of Queensland, having earlier been an electrician for the RAAF. The biography on his website is unusually forthcoming with details of how he got there, telling us he "underwent a bitter preselection battle" against "fellow AWU faction member" Anne Scott, wife of Les, who lost the seat to Hanson in 1996. In March 2004 Bernie Ripoll faced a preselection challenge from Brooke Johnson, who according to a source quoted in the Queensland Times on 10 March 2004 was "put up by the Labor Left against Mr Ripoll's AWU faction because of that faction's challenge to Kirsten Livermore in Capricornia". CAMPAIGN UPDATE: The prevailing local issue has been the Ipswich Motorway, a federally funded road which the Queensland Government wants widened, while the Federal Government's preferred option has been to construct a "missing link" between Ipswich and Goodna to relieve pressure on the existing road. Few of the interested parties have been impressed by the Federal Government's stance, and Roads Minister Jim Lloyd floated the possibility early in the campaign that they might change their mind. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain Labor's reasonable performances were few and far between, and they rarely happened where it mattered. This was one of them - their 1.2 per cent increase on the primary vote and 1.8 per cent two-party swing were no great shakes, but they were still positive results against the statewide trend. OUTCOME: Labor retain (9.7%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum PETRIE (Liberal 3.5%)
THE CANDIDATE: Teresa Gambaro is a former marketing associate with a finger in the pie of a well-known local family restaurant and seafood wholesaling company. Gambaro was one of a number of marginal seat holders to be promoted in the July 2004 reshuffle, at which she became parliamentary secretary to the Defence Minister. Labor candidate Gavin Brady is a quantity surveyor, a vocation made famous by Monty Python's Ethel the Aardvark. INTELLIGENCE: On the day before the election the Courier Mail ran TNS polls for Queensland marginal seats with sample sizes of about 300 each, and while they appeared not to provide specific results for Petrie, it appeared Liberal member Teresa Gambaro was shown as being in the clear. Nevertheless, Labor has been concentrating its advertising on what it perceives to be its best hopes, those being Petrie and Moreton. The Courier Mail reported on September 24 that internal polling had Labor feeling the seat was "winnable", but late in the campaign "Liberal strategists" were reported as saying that polling had rebounded for them in the last week of the campaign. Petrie was one of seven Queensland marginals surveyed by Newspoll in the first week of the campaign, which produced a collective result showing the Coalition leading Labor 46 to 38 per cent, with only a 1 per cent two-party swing to Labor from the 2001 election. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Yet another important Queensland marginal where Labor got badly stung, going backwards 4.4 per cent on two-party preferred and 0.8 per cent on the primary vote. Teresa Gambaro added 4.5 per cent to her primary vote and can sleep fairly easily for the next three years. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (7.9%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum RANKIN (Labor 2.4%)
THE CANDIDATES: Craig Emerson worked as an adviser to the Hawke Government in the late 1980s while establishing a power base with the Australian Workers Union faction of the Queensland ALP, then landed the job of director-general of the Queensland Department of Environment under the Goss Government. In 1998 he secured preselection for one of Labor's few reliable seats in Queensland, replacing fellow AWU stalwart David Beddall, and after the 2001 election he entered the shadow ministry with the Innovation, Industry, Trade and Tourism portfolio. Emerson boldly defied AWU factional boss Bill Ludwig to become the only member of the Queensland Right to line up against Kim Beazley in both leadership votes, and he was rewarded for his efforts with the Workplace Relations portfolio. Liberal candidate Wendy Creighton is a journalist and former editor of the Fassifern Guardian. Independent Darren Power is a Logan City Councillor. INTELLIGENCE: The Gold Coast Bulletin ran two polls for Rankin during the campaign, one being published the day before the election. It had Craig Emerson with 42 per cent of the primary vote (after distribution of the undecided) against 40 per cent for the Liberals. Their earlier poll, published on September 11, had Emerson leading 51-49. Both polls had samples of about 450. ASSESSMENT: Labor retain The only headway Labor made in Queensland was in its own seats in and around Brisbane. In Rankin, the Coalition vote fell 2.5 per cent (the Nationals fielded a candidate for some reason, who polled an uninspiring 1.5 per cent) but Labor fell too, by 1.0 per cent. The slack was taken up by an unusually high vote for Family First (5.1 per cent), and for an independent by the name of Darren Power who had escaped the Poll Bludger's notice (6.6 per cent). OUTCOME: Labor retain (3.3%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum RYAN (Liberal 9.4%)
THE CANDIDATES: Former barrister Michael Johnson is Ryan's Hong Kong-born Cambridge-educated half-Chinese Liberal MP, aged 34. Johnson had to withdraw from his run for preselection for the March 2001 by-election due to his British citizenship, the unlucky winner being former state party president Bob Tucker. Labor won the seat and rivalries that festered in the first preselection contest boiled over during the re-match, by which time Johnson had sorted out his citizenship issues. Tucker, who was the Prime Minister's preferred candidate, successfully took Supreme Court action against a move by his factional enemies on the state executive to bypass a local branch plebiscite and install Right candidate Matt Boland. The plebiscite was duly held and Johnson emerged the winner amid allegations of massive branch stacking. Nevertheless, Ryan returned to its normal habits at the November 2001 election and Johnson won the seat with about the same margin achieved by John Moore in 1998. His efforts to secure the seat came back to haunt him when it emerged that one of his allies in the Ryan branch had authorised a $10,000 repayment to Johnson for a campaign "loan", which others involved with the campaign had understood to be a donation. Labor's candidate is Victoria Chatterjee, who apparently became the first Indian-born woman endorsed for a federal seat when she ran as candidate for Moncrieff in 2001. CAMPAIGN UPDATE: Michael Johnson maintained his habit of causing the Prime Minister trouble in the first week of the campaign, vouching for the "character and integrity" of the man who claimed Senator George Brandis had called him a "lying rodent" whose "arse" needed covering over the children overboard affair. That man was Russell Galt, Johnson's campaign treasurer for the 2001 election who had contentiously authorised repayment to Johnson of $10,000 for a campaign "loan" which others in the branch had understood to be a donation. Galt had received Johnson's backing for preselection in the unloseable state Liberal seat of Moggill (all loseable state Liberal seats having been lost) and for his subsequent efforts to have his defeat overturned, first internally and then in the courts. It appears Johnson was subsequently persuaded that Galt wasn't such a good chap after all, as he later said "I completely reject Mr Galt's actions" and "I am very concerned about his motivation in making these allegations". Galt now faces explusion from the Liberal Party. ASSESSMENT: Liberal retain Ryan largely followed the pattern for affluent Liberal seats in the cities, which were the only places where the Greens went up more (4.4 per cent) than the Democrats went down (3.9 per cent). It did buck the trend though in delivering an extra 6.3 per cent to the Liberal member, although the surge for the Greens meant this only translated into a 0.9 per cent on two-party preferred. OUTCOME: Liberal retain (10.4%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results RELATED POSTS: Dead Wood and Bad Blood (13/3/04). Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum WIDE BAY (National 9.9%)
THE CANDIDATES: Warren Truss describes himself in his website biography as a "third generation grain farmer from the Kumbia district". He served as a Kingaroy Councillor from 1976 to 1990, including seven years as Mayor, and entered federal parliament in 1990. In December 1994 he became Shadow Consumer Affairs Minister, playing a key role in bringing down Sports Minister Ros Kelly over the "sports rorts" affair. However he did not enter the Howard Government ministry until October 1997, after the travel rorts affair claimed two National Party scalps. He then moved up from Customs and Consumers Affairs to Agriculture, Fisheries and Forestry over the following two years. Even John Black at ABC Brisbane knows nothing of Labor candidate Sean Ambrose, and has a characteristically amusing way of saying so. Independent Lars Hedberg was unveiled as the Bob Katter-endorsed candidate two days before the announcement of the election. Much of the coverage focused on the response of Katter's sparring partner, National Party Senator Ron Boswell, who ridiculed Hedberg for owning a McDonald's franchise. Pretending not to have noticed the difference between Country Party-style agrarian socialism and the campus left, Boswell said it was "hypocrisy" for such a person to run on a "platform of anti-globalisation". ASSESSMENT: Nationals retain With no Liberal candidate in the field Warren Truss piled 13.5 per cent on to his primary vote, but the overall Coalition increase was a more modest 12.7 per cent. With Labor down 1 per cent and everyone else going much as you would expect, that translated into a 3.0 per cent two-party swing to the Nationals. OUTCOME: Nationals retain (12.9%) Click here for Australian Electoral Commission results RELATED POSTS: Sugaring the Poll (26/8/04). Return to federal pendulum Return to state pendulum | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||