Palaszczuk in poll position as ALP maintains lead at the expense of One Nation
ANNASTACIA Palaszczuk appears destined to win Saturday’s Queensland election but could be forced to do deals with the Greens and independents to form the state’s next government.
The final Newspoll of the campaign, published in Saturday’s Australian, has revealed
Labor holds a small two-party preferred lead over the LNP, 51.5 per cent to 48.5 per cent.
Labor’s primary vote of 37 per cent was identical to polling conducted at the start of the campaign and an improvement on the 35.4 per cent it achieved at the 2017 election.
The LNP primary vote was 36 per cent compared to 33.7 per cent three years ago.
The improvement by the
major parties comes at the expense of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation, which has fallen out of favour with many regional Queensland voters.
However, the LNP is confident of finishing second in more seats at this election and stronger preference flows from PHON and Katter’s Australian Party, which will deliver more than the 39 seats the party won in 2017.
Labor’s Cairns and Townsville seats remain vulnerable while several of the party’s inner-city seats, particularly Jackie Trad’s electorate of South Brisbane, are under threat from the Greens.
But the LNP is at risk of losing Pumicestone, Currumbin and Caloundra.
With 93 state parliament electorates up for grabs, 47 are needed to form majority government.
KAP, the Greens and Noosa independent Sandy Bolton are expected to make up the crossbench.
The result follows Friday’s Queensland Media Club debate – the second and last time the leaders came face-to-face to convince voters in their race for power.
But both continued to deny they would do any deals to form minority government, asking for majority government and refusing to commit to working with the parliament voters deliver them.
Ms Palaszczuk asked voters to stick with “stability” over the “chaos and reckless behaviour” of Ms Frecklington as she continued her assault on the LNP for previously calling for borders to open.
“Queenslanders can trust me because every day I am keeping them safe and doing everything I possibly can to ensure that we do not see what has happened in other parts of the world and what happened in Victoria,” she said.
“That’s what drives me and people know me.”
But Ms Frecklington launched her own attack over the integrity issues that have plagued the Labor administration, and accused the Premier of using $6m of public money to advertise herself ahead of the election campaign – which she said was “against the Fitzgerald principles”. “Again, how can we trust a Premier that breaches those principles when it is so blatant,” she said.
“Those are the issues, the integrity issues, the trust issues that are there for all of Queenslanders to see.”
The Premier spoke of her own family several times and of the families in her Inala electorate and said she understood the dignity of work and would create more jobs.