New MP for Fadden Cameron Caldwell and his wife Lauren (Image: AAP/Jono Searle)
New MP for Fadden Cameron Caldwell and his wife Lauren (Image: AAP/Jono Searle)

Is the Albanese honeymoon finally, definitively over, with a swing to the Liberal National Party in Fadden?

Not according to today’s Newspoll, which despite some truly desperate spin by Simon Benson — reminiscent of Dennis Shanahan’s finest work — shows the Coalition back to 10 points adrift of Labor in two-party preferred terms and Prime Minister Anthony Albanese increasing his personal lead over Opposition Leader Peter Dutton.

Still, Dutton’s leadership is safe for now; losing a safe seat in his home state would have truly been the death knell for him, but that was never seriously on the cards — Fadden is Gold Coast LNP heartland that also votes for One Nation at higher levels even than the Queensland average. Instead, the LNP received a 4.3% swing on its primary vote, erasing the swing against Stuart Robert last year; though in 2PP terms, it still hasn’t recovered to 2019 levels.

Labor’s primary vote held steady, falling just 0.25%, with the extra LNP votes likely to have come from the absence of a Clive Palmer candidate, which left 6% of the vote up for grabs. That may have also helped One Nation’s primary vote — which rose 0.25% — hold up.

The only party to suffer anything noteworthy was the Greens, whose vote fell from nearly 11% to just over 6%, obliterating its gains in 2022. Still, for a right-wing retiree heartland, that’s not going to worry the Greens too much.

The other loser, if you like, was democracy: turnout fell markedly. There were more than 110,000 votes in Fadden in 2022; turnout on Saturday was less than 90,000, and the level of informal voting increased significantly.

Otherwise it was a fairly standard byelection. Queensland remains difficult for Labor, and will probably not improve while the ageing Palaszczuk government remains in office.

Federal Labor knows it can turn around difficult states — WA was once a wasteland for the ALP, but it took a pandemic, sublime stupidity from the federal Liberals and an extraordinarily dominant state leader in Mark McGowan to make it happen.

Given the teals in NSW and Victoria and the slow but sure self-destruction of the Liberals in Victoria, if anything Queensland may become the federal Liberals’ fortress. But as the Newspoll numbers show, you can’t win federal government by winning Queensland.