Newmania: Leadership Void

Queenslanders are once again faced with the likelihood that the outcome of the election in Ashgrove may determine who the Premier of Queensland will be for the next three years. Ashgrove, held by Premier Campbell Newman with a moderate margin of 5.7%, has the choice of re-electing the unpopular leader, or returning to Labor’s Kate Jones, who held the seat prior to 2012.

While the contest is a rematch between Newman and Jones, the battleground is very different to the one we saw three years ago. Back then, Newman was leading the LNP from outside the parliament, where the LNP were the Opposition. Newman was largely an unknown quantity outside of Brisbane, where he had served as Lord Mayor with a high public profile, although had never served in the state parliament.

The wave of change that blasted Newman into power has receded. Again, he has two opponents, Kate Jones and Opposition Leader Annastacia Palaszczuk, plus now, a record as Premier to protect and a government to lead to victory. Recent polling has Newman trailing Jones by enough to see the seat turn red again, which would see the Premier unseated and out of parliament. While you can lead a party without being a sitting MP, you cannot be Premier. So who would lead Queensland?

It’s a question that the LNP seem unable or unwilling to answer. When pressed this morning by 4BC’s Pat Condren, Treasurer Tim Nicholls denied that the scenario where Newman loses Ashgrove but the LNP retains government is possible.

Mathematically, it’s not impossible, and a Treasurer making ridiculous claims mathematical assumptions is becoming too common in Australia. That's another story.

In fact, it’s a statistical probability based on recent polling that the statewide swing away from the LNP will fall somewhere between the 5.7% buffer that Newman holds in Ashgrove, and the 11.5% swing needed to remove the LNP from power. The ABC’s Election Analyst Antony Green will remind us more than a few times between now and the election that swings are never uniform. Still, for the sake of argument, the 5.8% difference between the Ashgrove margin and the required statewide swing is the very scenario where Labor take Ashgrove yet remains in opposition.

When pushed further by Mr Condren this morning on whether he was contemplating a future as the next Premier of Queensland, Treasurer Tim Nicholls assured us that “We (the LNP) have a plan.”

It’s a plan they’re not willing to share with voters, and probably won’t until they need to implement their secret plan.

It’s a simple equation. Either Newman wins Ashgrove, or he doesn’t. If he doesn’t, he could conceivably ask a sitting LNP member to resign, forcing a by-election. Assuming he wins the by-election, he could then challenge for the leadership of the LNP and regain the position of Premier of Queensland.

There are plenty of questions remaining though: if Newman does lose in Ashgrove, and decides to tap another LNP member on the shoulder, who would it be? Whose is dispensible, but with a seat that is safely in the LNP’s hands? The worst possible outcome for the LNP would be if Newman did force a by-election, and then lost it.

The LNP must have a plan, and probably more than one, for various possible scenarios should Newman lose Ashgrove. If they are planning to force a by-election, who will act as LNP Leader and official state Premier in the lead-up to the by-election? What would happen if the interim leader (who would need to be officially sworn in and form government) takes a liking to the title, or a dislike to Campbell Newman, and has the numbers to win a spill against Newman?

This is sticky territory for the LNP, particularly given the leadership history of some of the current LNP front bench.

Does the uncertainty around LNP leadership make undecided voters more or less likely to gamble with another term of LNP government? Would knowing what the LNP’s secret plan is make Ashgrove voters more or less likely to vote for Newman?

And if, for whatever reason, Campbell Newman is not the Premier of Queensland after January 31, who are the frontrunners?

Stay tuned – we’ll look at the likely ladies and lads of the LNP next.

Newmania: Six Months Out

If a day is a long time in politics, the six or so months between now and the next Queensland election is an eternity. Weekend polling has the renascent ALP candidate Kate Jones sitting comfortably ahead of Premier Campbell Newman, while the latest Newspoll is positive for the LNP. Translated to an election result, Queensland would retain its LNP Government, but without figurehead Campbell Newman. 

Currently, the LNP hold Ashgrove with a 5.7% margin. In Queensland, in 2015, that’s probably small enough to class it as marginal, particularly in light of recent by-election swings of near 20% away from the LNP. 

Senior LNP QLD boss Bruce McIver must be feeling some stress, despite the stubborn insistence from a column of current ministers that their leader will win Ashgrove. Local Government Minister David Crisafulli, Racing Minister Steve Dickson, Tourism Minister Jann Stuckey, Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek and others all sang from the party hymn-sheet yesterday: voters can judge Mr Newman on his strong performance as premier blah blah blah. Even the Australian has Newman losing to the ALP’s Kate Jones, although that little prediction is buried in paragraph 4. 

But what happens to Campbell Newman if Ashgrove voters don’t like his track record of savage cuts to services, the arts, and environmental programmes, his antagonistic approach to problems with unions, bikies and security, and his perceived arrogance?

The reality that Campbell Newman might lose his seat is one that must be faced, regardless of what the LNP want to believe. If the LNP state bosses Bruce McIver and Gary Spence aren’t chained to a whiteboard right now, devising Plan B, they’re completely crackers.

The first item for the whiteboard should be determining just how important Campbell Newman is to the Queensland LNP. He was brought into state parliament to provide leadership into the 2012 election. After years in Opposition, and with a series of failed leaders behind them, the LNP needed a new leader with name recognition and a track record who could get them into Government. He’s done that.

Is he still useful to the party? His personal popularity has been sinking for most of his term as premier, and his lead over Opposition Leader Annastacia Palaszcuk as preferred Premier owes as much to Ms Palaszczuk’s blandness as it does to anything positive Newman may have done. Does the LNP still need Newman to lead them to victory?

The answer is probably yes, because without Newman, the LNP in Queensland is basically the same LNP that failed time and time again in opposition, albeit with a single term of governmental experience.

McIver and Co are certainly not afraid to parachute a candidate into a safe-ish seat, so should they move Newman out of Ashgrove now into a safer seat? . In fairness, Premier Newman himself has ruled out playing electoral hopscotch. He says he is committed to Ashgrove. 

On paper, a move is an option, but an option with consequences in the form of undecided voters who would see the move through cynical eyes. No electorate would not look fondly on a premier bumping an established local member to remain in power, and particularly not in a seat which was any distance from the Newman family home in inner-city Brisbane. There aren’t that many safe LNP seats close to centre of Brisbane from which to choose.

Just playing the hypothetical card for a moment, the most likely casualty in the event of a seat switch would still be Moggill, held by hapless former state Liberal leader Dr Bruce Flegg. Since the LNP came to power just two and a half years ago, Dr Flegg has attempted to fight off rumours that he continued practising as a GP while he was also Minister of Housing and Public Works. He’s also been engaged in very public spats with various members of his staff. It’s possible that the LNP might be glad to see the back of the negative headlines he generates.

Other candidates to step aside should Newman take up musical chairs may include Tracy Davis, currently Member for Aspley and Minister for Communities, Child Safety and Disability Services. Ms Davis’s single term in government hasn’t been smooth sailing either, with controversies around her daughter’s drug problems while working for yet another LNP Minister, Ros Bates.

The other possible shuffle would be Newman moving to Tim Nicholls’ seat of Clayfield, but it’s unlikely that the LNP would consider punting the Treasurer.

The red herring could be a move to Townsville where Campbell Newman’s experience as an Army man might work in the garrison town. The problem there is that the current member is John Hathaway, another former Army Officer, so any benefit would be negligible.

If Newman chooses to fight to Ashgrove, as he says he will, and he loses, the LNP must consider who is next in line to lead the state. The ReachTEL poll conducted over the past weekend asked the question about potential LNP leaders, but left Newman in the mix. The next most popular, after Campbell Newman, was Lawrence Springborg, who has lead the National Party to two electoral defeats in Queensland. A career politician from the National Party side of the LNP merger, he is unpopular in Brisbane, and the probability of Mr Springborg as potential Premier could cost the LNP several marginal seats in Brisbane. 

Other names to emerge from the ReachTEL poll were current Deputy Premier Jeff Seeney, Education Minister John-Paul Langbroek, Treasurer Tim Nicholls and Attorney General Jarrod Bleijie. Of the four also-rans, Langbroek fared best with 13.3%.

For now at least, the LNP seem to be backing Newman. It paid off last time, but the election is at least six months away. Six months out from the 2012 election, when ReachTEL conducted a similar poll in Ashgrove, Mr Newman’s primary vote was close to 20% ahead of Ms Jones. This time around, he doesn’t have that advantage.