Peter Beattie's big chill

Even more chilling for Queensland Labor was that Catholics swung against Labor, reflecting the national significance of the by-election result as a part of the fundamental re-alignment of Catholics with the Liberals.

As noted, this was no ordinary by-election result and has profound implications for Beattie Labor's future.

ADS is reluctant to project these sorts of correlations on to state seats across Queensland, certainly outside the southeastern corner, but Labor seats dominated by richer professionals include Indooroopilly, Mt Coot-tha, Brisbane Central, Ashgrove, South Brisbane, Greenslopes, Mt Ommaney and Clayfield.

Even the seat of Bulimba, represented by new minister Pat Purcell, now has more dentists, scientists, engineers, doctors and accountants than watersiders, dockers and seamen.

Of these seats, Labor should lose six, and retain Bulimba, Brisbane Central and South Brisbane, but the real sting in the tail in these inner city seats is the 1998 tactic to dodge One Nation preferences by urging people to "just vote one".

Now they are and so are Greens, and Labor preferences from the Greens have been halved in the outer suburbs, because of exhaustion.

The previous Brisbane City Council poll demonstrated Greens were still polling about 20 per cent in the inner suburbs. If there were three-cornered contests, the Nationals and then the Liberals could elect Greens in the seats of the Premier and Deputy Premier.

When you move outside the inner urban area, you find 15 seats like Chatsworth in southeast Queensland, but requiring two-party preferred swings of 10 per cent or less, where that touchstone of Smart State suburbia - the personal assistant - reigns supreme.

In general terms, given spatial distribution of marginal seats and the erosion of preferences to Labor from minor parties, there are enough Chatsworth-like seats in southeast Queensland to elect a majority Liberal state government.While they're not waiting for Peter Beattie on their verandas with baseball bats, they are quietly sitting on their terraces, cappuccinos and lattes in hand, having already made up their minds about who's responsible for our schools, our hospitals, our electricity, our water supplies and our roads. And it's not John Howard.

Ben Rippingale, of MapInfo Australia Pty Ltd, provided assistance with the research for this project.