THE POLL BLUDGER
Queensland Legislative Assembly Election 2006

CHARTERS TOWERS
Nationals 2.7%

As an old gold mining town, Charters Towers was traditionally a stronghold of the Australian Workers Union and by extension the Labor Party. The seat was lost to Labor in 1957 when long-standing member Arthur Jones wound up on the Vince Gair/Queensland Labor Party side of that year's split, and ongoing population decline saw it subsumed by the largely rural electorate of Flinders in 1960. Flinders was henceforth held by the National/Country Party (the member from 1974 to 1992 was Bob Katter, now the independent federal member for Kennedy) and remained so after the name was changed to Charters Towers at the 1992 election. The electorate in its modern incarnation extends far beyond the town of Charters Towers, for about 300 kilometres to the north-west and to the south. Labor polls competitively in the Charters Towers booths and very strongly in the coal mining town of Moranbah in the south, but is drowned out by the strength of the Nationals vote in the rural areas. It was won narrowly for the Nationals in 1992 by Rob Mitchell, who survived comfortably in 1995 but needed One Nation preferences to overhaul a primary vote deficit in 1998. A 5.4 per cent swing in 2001 gave victory to Labor's Christine Scott in 2001, but this was reversed by a 4.9 per cent swing in 2004 that delivered the seat to the Nationals' Shane Knuth (left).

A pastoralist and former railway welder for Queensland Rail, Knuth is the brother of Jeff Knuth, the One Nation member for Burdekin from 1998 to 2001. Shane Knuth was made Shadow Communities and Disabilities Minister immediately after the election, but had to make room for others when the coalition agreement was struck in September 2005, at which time he became parliamentary secretary to the Northern Development Minister. Knuth enjoyed a great deal of sympathy when he was seen to be unfairly ejected from parliament by Speaker Tony McGrady in October 2005, prompting Mirani MP Ted Malone to declare him "the gentleman of Queensland Parliament". However, the Nationals felt compelled to deny that bullying and harassment had been involved in the resignation earlier in the year of two of Knuth's staff members, whose absence led to concerns about the functioning of his electorate office. Labor has nominated Bruce Scott (right), school teacher, prodigious writer of letters to the editor, and husband of previous member Christine Smith. He is not to be confused with the federal Nationals member for Maranoa.

The Australian carried a report by Ian Gerard late in the third week which queried whether "dissatisfaction with the health system" would overcome "the voices of the thousands of coalminers who have flooded into the sprawling regional seat of Charters Towers in recent years". Labor candidate Bruce Scott sounded a note of caution on the latter point, saying "it depends where these miners are registered, a lot of them are probably fly-in fly-out".

ASSESSMENT: Nationals retain