THE POLL BLUDGER
Queensland Legislative Assembly Election 2006

BUNDABERG
Labor 5.3%

As the scene of the Beattie government's defining disaster, the Jayant Patel "Doctor Death" affair, Bundaberg is thought to be all but a lost cause for Labor. The electorate again took centre stage when Nita Cunningham's resignation due to illness prompted Peter Beattie to call an early election on August 15, rather than initiate a soon-to-be-redundant by-election that Labor was sure to lose. Defeat would end a Labor winning streak going back to 1896, barring the complication of the QLP/DLP between 1957 and 1969. However, the seat has not been entirely safe since 1995, when an 8.2 per cent swing brought it down to the wire. Popular former Bundaberg mayor Nita Cunningham became the member at the 1998 election, at which she held on against One Nation by 2.0 per cent. Like many of her Labor colleagues, Cunningham consolidated her hold at the 2001 election, defeating the Nationals by 14.9 per cent in a two-horse race. The Nationals achieved one of their most encouraging results in 2004 on the back of discontent in the sugar industry, a 9.7 per cent two-party swing bringing the seat well back into the marginal zone.

Labor's new candidate is Sonja Cleary (left), a university lecturer and former nurse. Rosemary Odgers of the Courier-Mail reports that Cleary was imposed by the union-appointed electoral college against the wishes of local branches who backed Marcia Courtice, electorate officer to Cunningham and wife of former federal Hinkler MP Brian Courtice. This followed a deal between the Left and Cleary's faction, Labor Unity, in exchange for the latter's support for Kate Jones in Ashgrove. Later in 2005 Courtice was sacked from her job with Cunningham, which she claimed was a payback for her husband's leaking of party documents (which were tabled in parliament by Rob Messenger, the Nationals member for Burnett) that purportedly exposed the "siphoning" of $7,000 of branch funds. It was reported in January 2006 that the affair had inspired Brian Courtice's collaborator, former Labor branch secretary Greg McMahon, to run as an independent.

Other potential independents included Beryl Crosby of the Bundaberg Patients Support Group and Toni Hoffman, the nurse whose attempts to blow the whistle on Patel met only with bureaucratic obstruction. Hoffman was also approached by Lawrence Springborg and Rob Messenger to run as a Nationals candidate with the promise that she would become parliamentary secretary to the Health Minister in a Coalition government. Both Crosby and Hoffman decided not to run and the Nationals nomination again went to their 2004 candidate, local police officer Jack Dempsey.

Burnett MP Rob Messenger has enjoyed immense prestige for his role in uncovering the "Doctor Death" scandal, and he heavy-handedly drove the point home when Peter Beattie visited the hospital in the first week of the campaign. After struggling to get a word in amid Messenger's heckling ("you stand in a hospital where you have blood on your hands"), Beattie cut short a press conference called to announce that the hospital would receive a $41 million upgrade. The previous day, Lawrence Springborg and Bruce Flegg had been in town to promise that an entirely new hospital would be built at a cost of $250 million, which did not go down as well as they would have hoped. The Australian ran a devastating article from Michael McKenna which reported that the idea was hurriedly cooked up by Messenger without reference to Flegg, who conceded to an unnamed source that the election announcement had left him "standing there like a stunned mullet" with "no time to research". The proposal was also criticised by Beryl Crosby, who said staffing rather than facilities were the issue, and that Beattie's cheaper proposal was a "much better option". Messenger also copped a blast from Crosby three weeks earlier after he covertly taped a support group meeting he attended, which he claimed was necessary because members of the group had been threatening to sue him for defamation. On the other side of the ledger, Sonja Cleary’s cause has been damaged by Greg McMahon's confirmation that he will run as an independent.

An TNS opinion poll published in the Sunday Mail on August 20 was at odds with all expectations: after distribution of the undecided, Labor led 47 per cent to 35 per cent on the primary vote and 58-42 on two-party preferred. However, the sample for the poll was only 200.

ASSESSMENT: NATIONALS GAIN