All eyes on Bligh-Newman showdown

The forthcoming Queensland election due by March is more than just a test of 23 years of almost unbroken Labor rule in Queensland.

If the newly amalgamated Liberal National Party, no longer a coalition between the National and Liberal parties, wins the election it will be a watershed for state and national politics.

Its impact will be as important as when the Bjelke-Petersen Coalition government reduced Labor to a mere 11 seats at the 1974 state poll, which heralded the beginning of the end of the Whitlam federal Labor government.

The election represents a test for all the key players.

First and foremost, it is a test of Anna Bligh, who succeeded Peter Beattie as premier in 2007. Since then and with her premiership confirmed by the easy win at the 2009 election, it has been a Bligh-dominated government.

Bligh has done it her way. Ministers, with a couple of exceptions, hardly get a look in. It is Bligh who attends the funerals, manages the disasters and speaks across all portfolios. Following the recent Department of Health fraud issue, it was Bligh, not the Health Minister who took the running.

If Labor falls in Queensland, then Bligh must shoulder full responsibility. If Labor hangs on, then Bligh can take the credit.

Of course, a loss will have greater personal impact for Premier Bligh than other defeated Labor leaders. It would mean the end of a career almost solely based in politics.

Bligh represents that new phenomenon in Australian politics, the professional careerist politician. Bligh's options will be more limited than her predecessor Beattie, who took an overseas Queensland posting.

There will be no sympathetic Queensland government to send her overseas and the hard-pressed Gillard government could hardly oblige.

Perhaps a position at one of Queensland's sympathetic universities would suffice.

For Labor nationally, another state domino to fall following losses in Western Australia (2008), Victoria (2010) and NSW (2011) reinforces the view that the Labor brand is tarnished and under serious threat.

Nor will a Queensland Labor loss be as easily quarantined from affecting the Gillard government as other state elections. Queensland has a large number of federal seats. Queensland votes and trends increasingly count in national polls. And for the Gillard government a Queensland loss means another non-Labor state government to say no to its latest delicately negotiated policies with the independents and Greens.

Most importantly, the Queensland election is a test of not just of the new amalgamated LNP brand in Queensland, but also on the future of non-Labor politics nationally. Amalgamation of the Liberal and National parties has been a long-time dream in non-Labor circles. Robert Menzies never achieved it, and that it occurred first in Queensland, where the rivalry between the National and Liberal parties has been fiercest, is significant.

Such rivalry destroyed the Coalition in Queensland in 1983, has long afflicted federal-state relations, provoked brawls over joint Senate tickets, adversely affected referendum results and distorted national policy.

A Queensland LNP win would give considerable momentum to similar amalgamation elsewhere, especially federally, where the Nationals have long been in decline. It would mean the beginning of the end of the Nationals once and for all.

And if the new Katter Australian Party contesting the Queensland election fails to duplicate the success of the Hanson One Nation Party in 1998, and it will fail to duplicate that success, then this will end the myth that amalgamation of the Nationals means the emergence of a viable country-based populist party to take its place.

However, an LNP loss in Queensland will have dire consequences.

The new Queensland LNP will just unravel. It would also cause organisational, financial and political headaches for the Tony Abbott-led opposition similar to how the 1987 Joh for PM campaign undermined the John Howard-led federal opposition.

This election also tests the Campbell Newman external political leadership model.

Newman, the politically successful and popularly elected Liberal lord mayor of Brisbane, in March 2011 became leader of the LNP and the alternative premier, although not holding a seat in parliament.

This was a circuit-breaker to continuing leadership problems in the LNP parliamentary wing. The opinion polls that put Newman and the LNP ahead of Bligh and Labor suggest it has worked.

The broader impact is that if Newman and the LNP win, then this model may be adopted by other opposition political parties frustrated with poorly performing parliamentary leaders. It would add new pressures on opposition leaders around the country, including Abbott in Canberra.

The Queensland election is also a test for the Greens. Their star does not shine as brightly in Queensland as elsewhere. A poor showing would blunt their present momentum in Queensland and nationally.

Since the 2009 state election, opinion polls have mostly been predicting an LNP victory, but given their poor performance in the past, the LNP has to gain an extra 14 seats to win office in its own right. It is a big ask

A lot is riding on the Queensland election: the political careers of Bligh and Newman, the viability of the amalgamated LNP, the performance of right of centre populist groups, the impact of the Greens and possibly the very future balance in federal politics.