The Poll Bludger - Australian State and Federal Elections

RYAN Liberal 10.4%
Western Brisbane, Queensland Click here for Ryan discussion forum
	JAMES PAGE Democrats NEVILLE SOLOMON CEC MICHAEL JOHNSON Liberal (top left) LEISA SCHMID Family First ROSS DANIELS Labor (bottom left) CHARLES WORRINGHAM FALSE EVAN JONES Greens JOCK MACKENZIE LDP

The western Brisbane seat of Ryan was created in 1949 and currently covers the suburbs on the north bank of the Brisbane River to the west of the city, from St Lucia and Indooroopilly through Fig Tree Pocket and Moggill to Karana Downs, extending across D'aguilar Range to Peewee Bend and The Gap. The seat has been easily won by the Liberals at every general election since its creation, being held by Nigel Drury until 1975 and John Moore thereafter. After serving as Defence Minister in the early years of the Howard government, Moore retired in early 2001, precipitating a by-election which produced a 9.8 per cent swing to Labor and a narrow victory for their candidate Leonie Short. While this provoked much excitement in Labor ranks at the time, it in no way proved a pointer to the election held nine months later, at which the seat was recovered for the Liberals by Michael Johnson, a 34-year-old Hong Kong-born Cambridge-educated barrister of part Chinese extraction. Johnson had nominated for preselection at the by-election but was compelled to withdraw as he had not sorted out his British citizenship issues, the dubious prize going to former state party president Bob Tucker. Rivalries that simmered during this contest boiled over during the re-match, with Tucker successfully taking Supreme Court action against a move by the state executive to bypass a local branch plebiscite and install Right candidate Matt Boland. The plebiscite was duly held but Tucker was defeated by Johnson, who was widely accused of branch stacking. Labor's candidate is Ross Daniels, Queensland University of Technology lecturer, former international chairman of Amnesty International and president of the Queensland Council of Social Services.

Michael Johnson has reportedly blamed alarming party polling on the government’s determination to solve western Brisbane’s traffic problems by building the Goodna bypass rather than upgrading the Ipswich Motorway. This decision, which was made with a view to shoring up the Ipswich-based seat of Blair, has had voters in the affected area complaining that the value of their homes would be halved. As Graham Young of Online Opinion puts it: “People in Ipswich refer to the current motorway, which serves as their major link to Brisbane, as a carpark, and people in the western suburbs of Brisbane are happy to live in a quiet cul-de-sac and don’t want another link road with connections to them put through their area”. The Prime Minister's support for the bypass was put down to factional alignments, in which Thompson as a member of Santo Santoro's faction was favoured over Michael Johnson and Bruce Flegg, the moderate state party leader and member for the corresponding state seat of Moggill.

The first week of the campaign saw Labor commit $500 million to the Northern Link tunnel joining the Western Freeway at Toowong to a bypass at Kelvin Grove (in neighbouring Brisbane), winning applause from Brisbane’s Liberal lord mayor, Campbell Newman.

In early October, Michael McKenna of The Australian reported that the Liberals' internal polling was worse in blue-ribbon Ryan than in any other Coalition-held Queensland seat, apart from Bonner. Remarkably, Tony Wright of The Age went so far as to report later in the month that the seat had been “virtually written off”. Graham Young noted that the Prime Minister's pursuit of the “blue-collar conservative” vote had involved “trading” seats like Ryan for working-class seats like Blair, which were now also returning to Labor on the back of discontent over industrial relations. On the last Tuesday of the campaign, the Courier-Mail cited “leaked Labor research” which had the party extremely confident of its chances of taking the seat.