Rockhampton has been a Labor town for more than 90 years; voters in Australia’s “beef capital” have sent a Labor MP to the Queensland parliament in Brisbane at each of the last 31 state elections.
With Queenslanders heading to the polls on 26 October, few seats capture the state of play better than “Rocky”, a regional heartland that Labor held even in 2012, when it was reduced to just seven MPs.
“I recognise many of the people coming in to my office [as former Labor supporters],” says Margaret Strelow, a former mayor and now an independent candidate in Rockhampton.
“My signs are on fences that were Labor signs last time.”
Strelow knows more than most about why, according to opinion polls, Labor appears to be in serious trouble in more than a dozen seats in central and north Queensland, from Maryborough to Cape York. She was once a true believer: a longstanding party member who was even endorsed by the then-premier, Annastacia Palaszczuk, to run for Labor in 2017.
“There are basic things that we expect a Labor government to do well, health and education and looking after the things that are everyday life to us,” Strelow says.
“In Rockhampton we can struggle for air with the south-east corner, we struggle to compete for money. We see big projects like cross-river rail, where billions just roll off the tongue. [Meanwhile] people are dying on the Bruce Highway.
“I’m seeing teachers who feel like they’re not being properly compensated or supported. Our hospital is just not working. The Australian Medical Association information about wait lists for surgery says we are about the worst.”
Opinion polls that include regional breakdowns have consistently shown Labor in trouble in regional areas. The most recent, a Newspoll published in the Australian, showed just 15% of people outside south-east Queensland believed the Miles government deserved to be re-elected.
Dr Maxine Newlands, adjunct principal research fellow at James Cook University in Townsville, says two main issues – the cost of living and crime – will shape the election campaign.
She says a fourth consecutive term for Labor is “a big ask” when voters have basic safety and hip-pocket concerns.
Cost of living campaign
Labor has been in power almost permanently in Queensland since 1989, winning 11 of the last 12 elections. At the same time, the party has been consistently second-best at national elections, and now holds just a handful of federal seats in the state.
Labor’s state power base is in Brisbane. But the lord mayoralty has been held by the LNP almost unthreatened for more than 20 years.
Strategists from both major parties warn not to read too much into the implications of one result, given Queenslanders’ tendency to spray their votes around from poll to poll.
But with a federal election looming, the Queensland vote is being watched closely by both Anthony Albanese and Peter Dutton. Despite predictions of a heavy defeat for Labor, Albanese has been far more visible than Dutton in his home state.
The prime minister was in Cairns last week alongside the premier, Steven Miles, announcing a major new social housing project. Dutton appears to be keeping his distance from the Liberal National party’s campaign, and has rarely been seen in public with the state opposition leader, David Crisafulli.
LNP sources say it’s no secret the federal and state opposition leaders have “a very cautious relationship” that partly comes from a split over Dutton’s signature nuclear energy policy.
“My position has been very consistent, for a very long time, and it is not part of our plan,” Crisafulli has said.
One LNP member, a Crisafulli supporter, says enmity with Dutton increased in recent months, after public criticism by some Coalition MPs about the state LNP’s nuclear stance.
“[Crisafulli] knows he would be putting our lead at risk by backing nuclear or not backing emissions targets. Can you imagine the scare campaign? It would be madness.”
For Albanese, the Queensland poll will offer a guide for how to campaign during a cost-of-living crisis. It will also be a litmus test for Labor’s ability to counter the Greens’ push for more aggressive social reforms, particularly in relation to housing.
It’s no secret the Greens have deliberately spread its state campaign machine from the inner city to the middle suburbs, in directions where there are a high proportion of renters. Party sources say part of the strategy is to lay groundwork to challenge Labor in the federal seat of Moreton.
Hints from Labor this week about changes to negative gearing policies, and possible state “rent caps”, have been seized upon by the Greens.
“Make no mistake, the only reason Labor is finally considering something they’ve opposed for years is because they’re under massive pressure from the Greens this election,” says Amy MacMahon, the Greens MP for South Brisbane.
The Greens’ federal MP for Griffith, Max Chandler-Mather, says: “first they mock you, then they fight you, then they adopt your policies”.
‘A tired-looking government’
A week before the formal start of the election campaign, Crisafulli returned to his family cane farm at Ingham in north Queensland (with TV crews and his social media team in tow).
“My work ethic came from this place,” the Liberal National party leader told Channel 9, after a demonstration he could still drive his father’s beat-up old red tractor.
Crisafulli began his political career in Townsville before relocating to the Gold Coast and winning preselection for the safe and affluent seat of Broadwater.
“The best Queensland premiers are ones that can straddle the urban-rural divide,” says Paul Williams, a political scientist and commentator from Griffith University.
“Brisbane doesn’t vote for a farmer. But Crisafulli is a progressive from the south-east. His strengths come from his media training.”
Miles has had just nine months, since Annastacia Palaszczuk retired in December. to turn around polls pointing to an LNP victory.
Some colleagues privately doubted whether Miles – a popular MP but not a polished media performer – was the right choice for a short-term pitch for Labor to stay in power. Those concerns grew after poor results in byelections and the council elections in March.
Miles told Guardian Australia this month the job of a politician “doesn’t come natural to me”.
“But it is the thing I need to do to be able to do the job I love, and so that pushes you outside your comfort zone and teaches you. You learn ways to cope,” he said.
“And certainly I’ve been jealous at times of some of my colleagues who, you know, for whom it comes a bit more natural, or who draw energy from those situations … rather than being drained by it.”
Labor sources say Miles has had two key challenges to mount a competitive campaign. The first is “convincing people the government is under new management” to soften voters who had turned sharply away from Palazczuk.
The second is “convincing people he was on their side”, which Miles has attempted via ambitious cost-of-living relief: 50c public transport fares, car registration discounts, electricity rebates and even more radical ideas such as building state-owned petrol stations.
Historically, Queensland voters have entrenched cautious governments and rejected those that attempt bold, aggressive reforms.
Williams says Miles inherited a “double whammy” challenge, taking over the leadership after the pandemic election in 2020, when Labor won “gratitude seats” with support from older voters.
He says there will be a natural recalibration, in addition to a swing away from the government.
“It’s a tired looking government, it’s had leadership problems, we’re living in the worst cost-of-living crisis in a generation, and youth crime is the most salient it’s ever been for an electorate since Bjelke-Petersen’s time in the 70s and 80s,” Williams said.
‘They’re still going to vote them out’
Labor sources acknowledge the election will be difficult but say the government’s cost-of-living measures have at least given MPs a foothold to defend Brisbane electorates.
Williams says he expects the LNP to win comfortably but that the result may “not be the wipeout you’d expect”.
A recent poll by RedBridge found Labor’s support had rebounded in the inner and middle Brisbane suburbs, a result that Labor MPs campaigning in the city put down to the popularity and take-up of cheap public transport fares.
But any further out those fares run the risk of feeding into the “us and them” politics that tends to take hold outside Brisbane.
Newlands says only 2% of the population in Townsville use public transport.
“That doesn’t cut through. The buses don’t run at night so it’s hard to go to the footy.”
Strelow says cheap fares “are of no value to us” in Rockhampton.
“I don’t think the [handouts] have done what they were meant to do here. We tend to be bigger picture, long-term thinkers. They’ll take the $1,000 [off their power bills] but they’re still going to vote them out.”
