Beaudesert is a rather largish seat to the South West of Brisbane, South of Ipswich and West of the Gold Coast that takes in a large part of the NSW/QLD border region.
Using the spiffy google maps of the Tally Room, you can see it in all its glory.
In the 1998 election at the height of the Qld One Nation craze, the One Nation candidate scored 27.4% of the primary vote in Beaudesert – coming third behind the Nationals on 32.9% and the ALP on 31.3%. That flowed through to a Nationals two party preferred of 54.1% compared to Labor’s 45.9%.
This isn’t the strongest piece of One Nation country in Qld, but it’s got its fair share of racoon hat wearing crazies on the one hand and general agrarian socialist disenchantment on the other. What will work in Hanson’s favour is that the current Member for Beaudesert – the National’s stalwart Kev Lingard – has retired, leaving relative LNP novice Aidan McLindon as the favourite to take the seat.
Currently Beaudesert sits on an LNP margin of 5.9% – however should Hanson attract around 20% of the vote and her preferences experience a high exhaustion rate that One Nation candidates have often experienced in Qld in the past, this seat could become marginal if a large swing away from Labor doesn’t manifest.
Aiden McLindon’s life just became a whole lot more complicated.
UPDATE:
More from Antony Green – including some interesting bits about Aiden and Big Brother
30 Comments
I’ll admit I’m partial to a bit of cynicism, but does anyone actually think that Hanson is running for anything more than a meal ticket?
Maybe the fish and chipper has been hit hard by the GFC…
Sorry about that Marmaduke – everyone goes into the moderation bin with their first post. From now on you’ll be free to post in real time.
I would love to see Hanson in federal politics again.
Now why doesn’t that surprise me Bree!
You almost wonder whether Hanson is a secret ALP stooge. Supposedly from the ‘Right’, she directly cost the conservatives government in Qld in 1998 and WA in 2001, contributed to their decimation in Qld in 2001, and scared the daylights out of every conservative party during elections in the late 90s. And God knows how many votes she’s cost the Liberals in Brisbane by rising zombie-like every election.
I’m joking, of course. She’s not that clever. But if she’s genuinely ‘right-wing’ then the One Nation experiment would have to be one of the most spectacular own goals in political history, by directly boosting the prospects of left-wing parties for a decade.
MDMConnell: There seems to be no shortage of right-wingers willing to shoot themselves in the foot by voting for her though…
I’m sure you are right though, a smile must have come across the face of many ALP supporters when she made that announcement.
When Hanson was in Federal Parliament the camera often panned across to an empty seat. She seems to have all the political strategy of a dog chasing a car. It seems to be the thrill of the perpetual chase that attracts her and then vast tracks of absenteeism while the latest distraction captures her attention.
Another point: One nation have failed to win this seat despite winning surrounding seats like Lockyer and Ipswich West. If the Nats could hold off ON at the height of the Hanson era, why would they be in trouble now?
MDM, they probably won’t be in trouble unless Hanson has a large personal following there.
But depending on the preference exhaustion, the seat might become a bit more marginal (assuming of course that the underlying swing against Labor there isn’t too great)
Of course there were the scurrilous and obviously untrue allegations that she often took a keen interest in Ugandan affairs with some members of her staff of a slow arvo in Canberra.
Thanks for the plug. I didn’t have the good sense to take a screenshot myself.
“When Hanson was in Federal Parliament the camera often panned across to an empty seat.”
Its because the opposition side of the chamber (where Hanson sat) was very empty because Labor only held 49 seats from 1996-1998. There was a huge gap between the Labor MPs and the Independent MPs.
might I be mischievous and suggest that anyone in her electorate opposed to LNP, vote for PH to get her over 20-25% and put the wind up Aidan?
Beaudesert is a marginal LNP seat – if Ms Hanson splits the conservative vote and her preferences exhaust it may be a seat to watch.
Beaudesert just became a lot more marginal.
Beaudesert on 5.9% LNP is not a huge margin at all considering the sitting member has just retired. Anyone know roughly how much usually peels off the margin when a sitting member exits?
Steve, Federally the sitting member benefit seems to be worth about 1.5%. I think that’s the figure Antony uses on his Federal Election spiffy pendulum toys and it’s what I came up with as well last year when I looked.
But for the State elections, or more specifically QLD elections, I couldn’t tell you. One Nation has polluted the data when it comes to trying to calculate it over a reasonably recent time frame.
Thanks Possum.
No probs – just put in a coin and pull the handle!
Let’s say Hanson get 20%. I’d say this would be roughly 15% from LNP, 4% from Labor, 1% from Green.
Say 40% exhaust, and these are evenly distributed by the party they would have come from. So in effect she’s trimmed the LNP vote by 6% and the ALP vote by 1.6%, net 4.4%.
So instead of a 5.9% seat this is a 1.5% seat. Now given that I expect a swing to the LNP, particularly outside Brisbane, that should still make it LNP, but the loss of a sitting member may hurt, particularly if McLindon is perceived as a clown.
Sparrow,
They were the same sort of figures I was floating around my head when I thought the seat would probably end up marginally LNP (assuming no big anti-Labor swing and a 20% primary for Hanson – although that is probably a pretty optimistic vote for Pauline).
But I reckon young Aiden McLindon shit himself today!
Is Pauline any worse than half the candidates in this election? I just had a look at Antony Green’s run down on Beaudesert and they’d all fail public service exams if we still had them. Aiden’s deleted his full of holes Wikipedia site (you can look at) and bombed an attempt to star on TV, McCreadie sounds like he’s swallowed the Labor bible with a bottle of Bundy and Pauline’s looking like star material. In ten years political party memberships have dried up leaving people like Pauline the best of a bad lot.
>>In ten years political party memberships have dried up leaving people like Pauline the best of a bad lot.
Ummm.. Greens membership is growing nicely
It is starting to get interesting, now we have the former One Nation then Independent former Member for Gympie on the comeback trail. The Gympie Times whose former General Manager is the current Member for Gympie, weighs in with a couple of interesting stories.
http://www.gympietimes.com.au/story/2009/02/25/early-heat-in-gympie-election-clash/
http://www.gympietimes.com.au/story/2009/02/25/anti-dam-cards-out-in-brisbane/
Not in Queensland it isn’t.
I don’t know specifically about the Queensland Greens, but Greens membership generally has largely levelled off after large jumps in the early 2000s. On the other hand, by definition nearly all of our members have joined recently, rather than people who joined the ALP decades ago and stay loyal for the sake of nostalgia or family ties. I think this is reflected in a higher proportion of the membership who are actually active.
Yes, for sure, Ben, but I gather that the membership of the Qld Greens is pretty small nevertheless. In some ways, The Greens should probably be thinking more about how to use election campaigns to draw a few more activists in.
C’mon – let’s get PH over 20%… can we reach 25%.. yes we can!
Wouldn’t that make Qld politics fun if she won?
Come on… ALP won’t win the seat – so really shit the LNP and vote PH
Yeah, Queensland would have to be considered the weakest of the state branches, no insult intended to all the great Queenslanders I know in the party, which is probably partly the result of Queensland’s political landscape and the tough electoral system.