THE POLL BLUDGER
Queensland Legislative Assembly Election 2006

SOUTHPORT
Labor 10.0%

Southport is located immediately north of Surfers Paradise and extends inland to Arundel. It was won by the Liberals upon its creation at the 1977 election and has since changed hands twice, to the Nationals in 1980 and Labor in 2001. Labor's 13.9 per cent swing in 2001 followed a series of narrow defeats and gave them a margin of 10.8 per cent. Defeated Nationals member Mick Veivers had humiliated his leader Rob Borbidge during the campaign by not only defying his ban on preference deals with One Nation, but also giving them second preference ahead of a fourth independent candidate. The result was little changed at the 2004 election, at which the Nationals contentiously won the right to contest at the expense of the Liberals. Former solicitor and Gold Coast councillor Peter Lawlor's (left) win in 2001 came after unsuccessful attempts in 1992, 1995 and 1998. He was named by the Courier-Mail as a front-runner for one of the Left's positions in the ministry immediately after the 2004 election, but it instead went to Albert MP Margaret Keech. The Nationals have yet again strong-armed the right to contest the seat ahead of the Liberals; their candidate for the second election running is Bob Bennett (right), a former detective, current Treasury Casino security director, and brother of Brisbane Broncos coach Wayne Bennett.

Southport was the target of two major government announcements in the first week of the campaign. The first was an upgrading of existing plans for a hospital at the Griffith University Gold Coast campus, which is to have 750 beds rather than 500 at a cost of $1.23 billion rather than $500 million, to be delivered two years earlier than originally scheduled. The second was Peter Beattie's announcement that the controversial cruise ship terminal proposed for Southport Spit would not proceed because of concerns raised in an environmental impact study.

ASSESSMENT: Labor retain