It took the landslide defeats of the Whitlam and Keating governments to loosen Labor’s grip on the central Queensland seat of Capricornia. The risk of a repeat has increased with the recently announced retirement of sitting member Kirsten Livermore.

The federal electorate of Bendigo has been trending to Labor since Steve Gibbons gained it for them in 1998, but it is reportedly back on the Liberals’ radar with his impending retirement.

It’s a measure of Labor’s woes in Sydney that the seat of Gough Whitlam and Mark Latham is routinely being included on lists of the potential casualties.

The eastern Melbourne seat held by Rudd numbers man Alan Griffin is theoretically loseable for Labor, although it stayed with them throughout the Howard years.

Despite an avalanche of controversy, polling indicates Mal Brough will have little trouble winning the Sunshine Coast seat of Fisher from its equally contentious incumbent, Peter Slipper.

Labor’s century-long hold on this inner southern Melbourne seat has never really looked threatened, despite being transformed by gentrification over the past few decades.

There have been suggestions that the electorate of John Curtin might be lost to Labor at the next election as part of a statewide conservative sweep, although they have faded with Labor’s recent improvement in the polls.

With the change in the state’s political breeze recently, Labor is hungrily eyeing Queensland as a potential source of seats to counterbalance anticipated losses in Sydney. An inner-city seat with the LNP’s lowest margin represents an obvious target.

A small-sample Morgan phone survey features the first published polling data on the AWU slush fund affair.