Queensland Premier Anna Bligh has announced this morning the state election, originally intended to be held on March 3, will now be held on March 24. Local council elections, scheduled for March 31, will be delayed until April or May.
The extended campaign is justified by the fact that floods inquiry chair Catherine Holmes has requested an extension of time on the Commission’s report, after claims made in The Australian that SEQ water authorities had initiated the wrong strategy for releasing water from the Wivenhoe Dam last year.
Bligh says Queenslanders have a right to see the report before they vote.
The announcement comes as localised flooding again hits Brisbane and South East Queensland, and other parts of the state. Torrential rain continued to fall in Brisbane overnight.
The election campaign will be a very long one. Liberal-National Party leader Campbell Newman has been agitating for some time for an election date, and he now has his wish. But presumably the LNP will have been planning for a five or six week campaign, and no doubt will be discombobulated by the announcement.
There is something of a question mark as to when the campaign will move into top gear, as many Queenslanders feel unnerved by flooding so close to the anniversary of last year’s disastrous inundations.
Parliament is expected to sit on February 14, as scheduled, and the caretaker period and the formal election campaign will not commence until Bligh visits Governor Penelope Wensley on February 17 to request the dissolution of the Legislative Assembly and the issuing of writs for the poll. In the meantime, we are in faux campaign mode, and Labor continues to govern.
So Campbell Newman and the LNP face a decision as to how intense they want to play the political game until parliament is dissolved. No doubt Bligh is hoping there’ll be a contrast between her continued leadership and an LNP she will be hoping will present as shrill, carping and overly political.
Bligh’s press conference repeatedly sounded two notes: the importance of leadership and trust, and Newman’s inexperience at state level.
The long campaign will be designed to apply maximum pressure to the former mayor, whose chances of winning Ashgrove can’t be rated as better than 50/50. There are significant risks in such a lengthy campaign for the Labor Party, not least the likely annoyance factor to the voters, but if the ALP is banking on indiscipline and shenanigans from the LNP there is also now greater potential for fracture lines to emerge.
*This article was originally published at Larvatus Prodeo
Thanx for this.
I’d also be interested in an analysis of the new material about last year’s floods strategy.
While it may be the go for lawyers to bury important and instructive information. It is against the law for public servants to fail to keep adequate records which may be used in later court cases. We have been hearing that what was offered up as gospel in regard to the way Ivenho dam released water several weeks ago, may now be questionable, in the light of emails which have just turned up telling a different story. Edward James
“Leadership and trust”?
The way Labor is viewed – even a Can-do Newman could lead the LNP to victory.
And it’s been all their own work, they have no one but themselves to blame for the routing they are about to receive – second best has been good enough for too long.
(The only question is “Limited News coverage?” – with their on-going feud from when Newman wouldn’t do what they wanted, when he was mayor. He still hasn’t said sorry!)
Edward James: It is only an allegation from the Australian Newspaper that information was buried and this allegation has been denied by SEQWATER. It is my understanding that the flood enquiry has been extended to investigate whether these allegations have any basis.
In the circumstances extending the enquiry and delaying the election seems to me to be the right and proper thing to do.
If she’d gone before “they” would have accused Bligh of avoiding enquiry pain. I presume now people will accuse her of hoping for an enquiry whitewash.
Since every dog and their pollster believes Labour is out on its nose, I’d like to offer a second choice here: Maybe Bligh has genuinely seized the moral high ground, by concentrating on a “let the voter decide” platform.
If, it turns out that the water authority staff didn’t follow the rulebook their specific immunity falls. Therefore, arguably a bunch of postures around ‘Minister must resign’ are pretty foolish, because the statutory authority in question is not the same as the government of the day. Arguably, Bligh/labor can dodge a bullet here and the Lawsuits are going to point at the waterboard, not at the minister.
Can’t dance Campbell is coming across as a bit of a ning-nong these days. He’s approaching the minor foothills of Abbotts foot-in-mouth syndrome, making a lot of rather silly “I am a big man about town and I know of what I speak” speeches which .. don’t quite strike the right chord.
Katter is usefully destructive of LNP votes. Few if any Labor votes lie in the hands of the big hatter. He’s entertaining but so was Joh: nobody, not even the unionists who remember Katter working in the union movement, are fooled by his posture about jobs, rural or mining. He’s just going to fracture the LNP vote.
So maybe, just maybe, Bligh can take a ‘High Moral Ground’ strategy.. and come out on top?
Stranger things have happened. Its Queensland.