It’s all happening in the Queensland election.
One of the few impressive MPs in the LNP’s line up – Stuart Copeland – whose seat of Cunningham was abolished during the recent redistribution – has announced his intention to run as an independent against Condamine MP Ray Hopper. If the Borg had been serious about the claim of a “fresh”, “new” team, he might have tapped longserving former Nationals leader Mike Horan on the shoulder to retire – enabling a current frontbencher, Copeland, to contest the safe seat of Toowoomba South. The Borg preferred to let his close advisor Horan notch up yet another term in Parliament and end Copeland’s political career. Copeland’s decision is the Borg’s failure to act decisively coming back to haunt him.
In other news, a Newspoll purporting to show “the LNP gaining on Bligh” has been splashed everywhere. As my distinguished colleague Possum explains, it appears as if Newspoll interrupted their regular data collection to release some premature and therefore eminently questionable results. The truncated nature of the poll sends the statistical level of confidence about its findings sliding down the accuracy meter. It’s an intriguing decision by News Limited – showing up how some of the imperatives to have a “scoop” eat themselves. Anna Bligh will be quite happy to be positioned as the underdog by folk who take this poll seriously. Helps keep that nasty protest vote Labor is scared of down.
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Something is highly creepy about Queensland politics. Why does it swing from eras of obviously skewed governance under left or right administrations? This time the same party is fronting for a fifth time in ten years sporting a Zimbabwean-like report card having failed to deliver water, power, transport and health and creating billions of dollars in state debt. Labor calls this ‘Keeping Queensland Strong’! Reel back two elections when the state was crippled with widespread blackouts and failed power grids. Beattie didn’t blink when he urged Queenslanders to keep their state “moving forward”! It was still moving forward when Bunderberg took place and Beattie shut down hospital emergency units and used buses, cabs, police cars and ambulances to shuttle outpatient casualties between a handful of operative outposts. And all to a background of MPs passing through the CMC, jails or courts! Such blatantly bad administration can’t have missed the majority of Queenslanders. That Bligh, Spence, Schwarten, Lucas, Mickel, Robertson et al can keep straight faces when asking electorates to vote for them is surely even more infuriating? Isn’t this Joh’s era mach 2? Over to you Mark to put some sense into this stupidity!
Stuart Copeland’s decision to run as an independent is a bit of a distraction for Springborg but probably won’t hurt him much. If Copeland wins he would be likely to back the LNP in the Parliament on anything that matters.
The Copeland vs Hopper contest is somewhat akin to a US style primary contest, where two candidates for the same run against each other, seeking the votes of people who support their party.
There is a bit of irony in the contest, seeing Ray Hopper first got elected to the seat in 2001 standing as an Independent himself, beating the National candidate on the back of ALP preferences. I imagine the ALP will preference Copeland ahead of Hopper this time, so a win for the ‘Independent’ may well happen again.
Better yet, Horan might have been better utilised by translating his (apparently?) popular local profile to fighting Labor in Toowoomba North.
I don’t see Copeland being much of a threat here. Particularly in light of Hopper’s history of winning as an independent.
That could be a two-edged sword, though – depending if there’s any residual resentment of Hopper joining the Nats/LNP.
The constitution of the merged party was criticized heavily for its concept of allowing sitting members to be automatically preselected. It hasn’t worked out well for Stuart Copeland or Shane Knuth who risks losing the newly created seat of Dalrymple to One Nations Rosa Lee Long.
The big winners were the sitting senators but at state level it killed the prospect of renewal leaving serial non performers locked in when one would have expected a new party to have some new blood. The redistribution just exacerbated the flaw in the consitution.
Why is the Newspoll “misleading”? Several other polls late-ish last year had Labor bouncing around the 51-53% TPP mark. The last Newspoll gave Labor a huge lead of 57% TPP, but this one reduces it to about where it was last time, suggesting the 57-43 one might have been a rogue.