The Labor Wipe Out: The Queensland Elections

The Labor Wipe Out: The Queensland Elections

When the tide goes out in Queensland, it goes out more quickly and more deeply than anywhere else.
Senior Labor figure, The Punch, Mar 24, 2012

It was the first state in Australia to form one of the world’s first Labor governments if only a short lived one, and it may well be the first state to see the party defeated in quite this way. There is little doubt that the biological metaphors of decay and decline apply to the Queensland Labor Party, whose government was wiped off the map in the state elections on the weekend. In the chamber of 89 seats, Labor has been left with a paltry 7 members. Campbell Newman’s victorious LNP coalition charged home with 78 seats, one of them being the premier-elect’s own seat of Ashgrove, which he nabbed from Labor’s Kate Jones. Bob Katter’s Australian Party won two seats and picked up 11 percent of the state vote.

Outgoing premier Anna Bligh was hoping that her report card in responding to the cyclones and floods that devastated the state would see her through. But the report card had become sketchy over time, a worn document of miscalculation and blunders. The ‘reconstruction’ mantra was shoddy at best. Some affected areas remained conspicuously untouched. In an act of ideological laziness and deception, the Bligh government seemed happy to be parting with the state silver, valued at $15 billion.

Then, in what could only be described as a tactic of ridiculous proportions, the Bligh strategists decided to personally assail the LNP leader’s personal credentials over his family finances, claiming they warranted a period in prison. Character assassinations rarely get purchase in election campaigns, and those who resort to them deserve the good defeat.

Others are also pointing the finger at Kevin Rudd, who decided to challenge for the federal Labor leadership close to the state election. Retiring water minister Stephen Robertson was particularly scathing. ‘The self-indulgence of what Kevin Rudd did, knowing that there was an election campaign going on in his home state, in my mind, is unforgivable’ (APP, Mar 25).

Queensland has its own peculiarities that need not translate into broader trends. Its elections tend to become tribal slaughter houses. In 1974, Labor found itself with a mere 11 seats. In 2001, Peter Beattie’s government annihilated the conservative forces in the state, winning 66 seats.

It is so typical of politicians outside that state who complain (and claim) that Queensland is Hicksville written large – till the trends favour them. Disassociation and re-association with the politics of that state make it a unique feature in Australian politics. Tony Abbott is no exception, and the federal opposition leader has argued that Queensland’s election result suggests that ‘the Labor brand is toxic right around Australia’ (The Australian, Mar 25).

And what breeds such toxicity? A lack of competence, an absence of frugality, and a lack of truthfulness. Reading the tea leaves, Abbott comes up with the stunningly simple analysis: ‘Certainly there were two candidates for Queensland one of them Anna Bligh, who was for the carbon tax, and the other Campbell Newman who was against it.’

Time and time again, the party that loses Queensland at the federal level, loses the election. The former Premier of Queensland Peter Beattie remarked that the Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard ‘needs to buy a house here.’ In that sense, the astrologers in the Gillard government must be careful. Defeat is around the corner, though the scale of it will depend on how the state votes federally.

Binoy Kampmark was a Commonwealth Scholar at Selwyn College, Cambridge. He lectures at RMIT University, Melbourne.

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