THE POLL BLUDGER
Queensland Legislative Assembly Election 2006

GAVEN
Labor 5.0%/Nationals 3.4%

Gaven was the scene of an alarming by-election defeat for the Beattie government on 1 April 2006 when it was won by Nationals candidate Alex Douglas with an 8.4 per cent swing, adding to the defeats Labor had suffered in Chatsworth and Redcliffe the previous August. Labor's primary vote was down from 47.3 per cent to 36.7 per cent, while the Nationals' 42.5 per cent compared with 38.1 per cent for the Liberals in 2004. The by-election was held to replace Labor member Robert Poole, who had embarrassed the government with the amount of time he was spending with his wife and children in Thailand. The last straw came in February 2006 when Poole told Peter Beattie he would be gone for another three months to receive knee surgery. When Beattie demanded he return immediately, Poole instead chose to resign.

The defeat was Labor's first in the short history of the electorate, which was created at the 2001 election as a result of the area's exploding population (the continuing scale of which is indicated by the fact that more votes were cast in 2006 than 2004, an almost unprecedented occurrence for a by-election). Gaven is immediately inland of the coastal electorates of Broadwater and Southport, from Helensvale in the north to Nerang in the south, and was created largely from territory carved out of Albert to the north. Labor's vote is weakest at the northern and southern ends and strongest at Gaven and Pacific Pines in the centre. The new electorate had a notional Nationals margin of 7.0 per cent in 2001 and was reckoned the more attractive option by the party's member for Albert, Bill Baumann. However, both seats were swamped by the Gold Coast Labor tidal wave, which delivered Gaven to Labor's Robert Poole with a 14.6 per cent swing. The coalition agreement signed ahead of the 2004 election allowed the Liberals to contest the seat without interference from the Nationals, and their candidate Ray Stevens did 5.3 per cent better than Baumann in 2001. The highlight of the campaign was a reprimand delivered to Poole by Peter Beattie after he distributed a pamphlet portraying Stevens as a pig with his snout in a trough, in reference to Stevens' actions as a Gold Coast councillor.

Curiously, the Nationals won the right to contest Gaven when the coalition agreement was reached in September 2005, which went directly against the obvious trend to the Liberals on the Gold Coast. A commenter at Ambit Gambit, the blog of former Liberal Party state vice-president Graham Young, suggests the Liberals had used it as a bargaining chip to win the right to contest Redlands, which was "so important to the new Liberal mantra that the Nats should contest no seat in the Brisbane metropolitan area". A poll conducted by TNS for the Courier-Mail at the time the by-election was called allowed respondents to nominate whether they hoped to vote for the Liberals or the Nationals, and the respective figures were 25 per cent and 8 per cent. Given their brand's apparent lack of appeal, the Nationals did well to nominate Alex Douglas (left), husband of Gold Coast councillor Susie Douglas and a GP who had worked locally for 18 years. Douglas's urban polish presumably blunted the impact of Labor radio advertisements that used barnyard animal noises to mock the Nationals.

Labor has again nominated defeated by-election candidate Phil Gray (right), a former president of the Left faction Queensland Public Sector Union. Gray had been campaign manager for Robert Poole in 2001 and 2004, but nominated for preselection against him in August 2005 before "senior party members" persuaded him to withdraw. According to the Gold Coast Bulletin, Gray "has swapped allegiances and been part of virtually every Labor Party faction over the past 15 years". He won preselection for the by-election ahead of Labor Unity's Liz Pommer, who has had to settle for the much less attractive prospect of Robina.

Labor was on the attack after the Gold Coast Bulletin reported Nationals member Alex Douglas had allowed his 18-year-old son to attend a high-school formal after-party held at the Bandidos bikie gang clubhouse at Mermaid Beach.

ASSESSMENT: Nationals retain