Queensland’s
Beattie government is in trouble following its loss of two seats to the
Liberals in Saturday’s by-elections (latest results here.) As with the post-Carr speculation in NSW, however, it’s time for a bit of a reality check.
The
swings were large – just over eight per cent in Redcliffe, about 13.5%
in Chatsworth – but not extraordinary. By-elections do produce large
swings, and these ones caught Labor at an especially bad time. The
government still has an absolute majority of 33 seats (not 17, as
several reports have said – that’s the same error as John Howard’s famous
“one-seat Senate majority”), and it would take a uniform swing of 7.3%
for it to lose it. Not impossible, but, just like New South Wales,
pretty unlikely.
Even that 7.3% figure probably understates the
opposition’s task. Assuming the allocation of seats among the non-Labor
parties remains unchanged, a uniform 7.3% swing would produce a
parliament with 44 ALP, 21 Nationals, 18 Liberals, 1 One Nation, 2
ex-One Nation independents, and 3 genuine independents. Putting
together a governing non-Labor majority out of that lot would be a nightmare scenario.
The fact that both by-elections were won by the Liberals, the junior opposition party, is highly significant. William Bowe, the Poll bludger
hit the nail on the head on Saturday when he said “I consider a Liberal
ascendancy in Queensland conservative politics to be an essential
precondition to a return to normal two-party system, difficult though
it may be to imagine how this might come about.”
Opposition
disunity is Labor’s trump card. If the National Party takes to the
trenches to retain its anachronistic status as the senior opposition
party – or if, as in the past, the Liberals meekly roll over and
concede it to them – then Peter Beattie is unlikely to be seriously
worried in 2007. But if Saturday’s results have delivered the Liberals
some intestinal fortitude, then he could yet be in trouble.
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