Tide of public opinion to be taken by Queensland ALP

I blame reality TV.

Once upon a time the tide of public opinion used to rise and fall a few metres, but now it's like some of those rivers in northwest Australia where the differential's huge enough that if you could harness it for hydro you could theoretically produce enough electricity to power Perth.

Reality TV is shallow, and it's convinced people that nothing much turns on their vote. That's the way contemporary politics has gone.

Or perhaps they're both products of deeper underlying forces.

To see the effect look at the Kevin 07 phenomenon, and then the Kevin Redux repeat, or Julia Gillard's brief spell of popularity.

Queensland politics is full of the phenomenon with governments and parties tumbling from power with huge margins, only to claw back a few elections later.

And if nothing changes, Campbell Newman might be just the latest episode in the churns of modern politics.

At the last state election Newman got the largest majority in the history of the Queensland parliament. The next closest was Joh Bjelke-Petersen in 1974.

In 1974 Bjelke-Petersen won 69 seats out of a total of 82, but Newman won 78 seats out of 89.

The following election Bjelke-Petersen went backwards by 5.14%, but still won 59 seats.

If current polling is anything to go by, Newman won't do as well, and could even lose.

Twelve months ago I would have dismissed this as an impossibility, but not anymore.

The latest Galaxy polling in the state shows the Newman government on 53% of the two-party preferred vote, but given the slight bias towards Labor in the state's electoral boundaries, this is line ball.

Added to that, Galaxy is undoubtedly calculating its 2PP using last election's preference distributions, but this is unwise. Based on the last election at least 23% of the Queensland electorate will vote for independents and minor parties.

Of those, around a third will be Greens who lean overwhelmingly Labor. The balance is shared between independents and the Katter and Palmer parties. Last election they favoured the LNP, but if that doesn't happen this time, the 2PP figures will be worse for the government than they appear.

From our qualitative polling the biggest issues for voters at the moment appear to revolve around the style of government and the personality of the premier, Campbell Newman.

While LNP voters continue to be concerned about the economy and paying down debt, many voters are concerned about what they see as an authoritarian style of government that threatens their livelihoods and privileges.

Bjelke-Petersen held power for as long as he did partly on a law and order agenda, which included draconian curbs on peaceful protest.

On this comparison Queensland's VLAD laws are fairly benign, and are targeted at drug-running bikie gangs, so should play well.

While they have their supporters, they also have their opponents, and the balance is such, that after dithering over their support for the laws for the last 12 months or so - now supporting them, now subtly undermining them - the Labor opposition has vowed to repeal them if they win government.

The Queensland Attorney-General's response to this news demonstrates why the Queensland government is having trouble winning hearts and minds, even on a law and order agenda.

Instead of using this opportunity to lock his opponents in as supporters of organised criminals who are the main suppliers of methamphetamines to Queensland's youth he launched a diatribe accusing Labor of hypocrisy.

That politicians are hypocrites is no news to anyone, and rarely shifts votes very far.

To sell a political solution you need to demonstrate that it fixes a real problem and at the moment Queenslanders don't think bikies are the huge problem that they are.

Crucially, many of the minor party voters are more likely to feel threatened by bikie laws than other voters, so while they are a blue collar constituency, generally open to law and order campaigns, this one appears to be backfiring.

And this has ramifications for the two-party preferred vote.

Another government policy minor party voters don't like is privatisation, but if treasurer Tim Nicholls has his way, this will be one of the key planks in the government's re-election pitch as it seeks endorsement for its plans to sell assets to bring the government debt under control.

Some of this is reflected in the Redcliffe by-election result two weekends ago with somewhere around a 17% swing against the LNP.

But byelections aside voters are not convinced that Labor is the answer. You can see this in the approval ratings of the two leaders. According to our polling Newman has a net negative rating of -19%, not dissimilar to Campbell Newman, while Anastacia Palaszscuk has a rating 28%.

All other things being equal you would think this would translate into a preferred premier win to Palaszscuk, but it doesn't as the table below shows.

Newman is ahead, but only just, and notice how minor party voters are evenly split on the issue, albeit the largest category in their vote is "Unsure".

But that is measuring Newman against Palaszscuk. What if someone more charismatic were to be drafted as leader by Labor?

We might not have long to find out the answer to that question. Labor has a pretty good leadership contender who is currently off-stage, but preparing to come back on.

Cameron Dick lost his seat of Greenslopes at the last election after only one term, but what a term it was. He was immediately made Attorney-General, and then subsequently moved to Education. While he lost Greenslopes, his margin in this traditionally swinging seat was better than margins in much notionally safer Labor seats such as Sandgate and Nudgee.

Sources say that the plan is to parachute Dick into Woodridge where the incumbent, 70 year old Desley Scott, is likely to step aside. This may involve a byelection, or Labor may copy Newman's tactic, and run Dick from outside parliament.

That would change everything.

The biggest challenge for a party struggling back from a defeat like the last one is to attract any talent, let alone good talent, to run in even the best seats. Even with Dick as leader the party would still need to have enough talent to look like a credible alternative government.

In Redcliffe Labor got lucky because Yvette D'Ath, the former federal member for that area, was still at a loose end after losing the last federal election. She risked very little in putting her hand up for Redcliffe, and didn't win by that much.

Career changes are rarely that easy, and running for a seat you don't win is an interruption many people don't want.

The recent poor polling of the LNP will also help with candidate selection.

It is already having an effect on LNP morale with a junior front-bencher in open revolt against the government. Newman has been hit by some defections, like Carl Judge, Alex Douglas and Ray Hopper, the latest insurrection is more serious.

Assistant Health Minister, Dr Chris Davis, member for what should be the very marginal seat of Stafford, is in public revolt against his senior minister over the issue of contracts being offered to specialists in the state's hospitals.

Convention demands that he resign before campaigning, but in this case convention be damned. Not only hasn't he resigned, but he is using the threat of his resignation to try to wring concessions from the government.

That he hasn't been stood aside is a sign that the government is not as confident as it appears. That he doesn't appear to understand that he should stand aside is emblematic of a government that has been struggling to pull the right levers of power.

This is another sign to prospective Labor talent that the government's huge majority may not be a good predictor of its next election performance.

Politics is a dynamic business, so things will change again before the next election. And one thing that has changed is the perception that the government can't lose.

That will shake the confidence of the government, making it difficult to stick to a corporate line, as ministers look for short-term popularity over long-term performance, and make the back bench more restless.

It's clear that after the next election a lot of the backbench will not be coming back.

One of those on margins that could disappear if nothing changes, is the premier himself, putting even more pressure on the government. It's not impossible that this could be a one-term government.