The tide has turned

An assessment of the latest ABC polling material conducted on state voting intention confirms The Courier-Mail TNS poll.

Voters have lost confidence in Premier Peter Beattie's ability to manage Queensland Health and seem determined on a change of government at the earliest opportunity.

When we project the polling results on to the demographic profiles of the two by-elections last August, the projected outcomes show the state ALP likely to lose up to half of its 61 MPs and be replaced with a Coalition majority led by Lawrence Springborg.

The only difference between our latest on-line ABC poll last week of some 670 Queenslanders, and the TNS poll earlier this month of 500 Queenslanders is that our poll shows the Beattie Government's attacks on the Howard Government over lack of doctor numbers is having some impact - but only to increase the Nationals' vote at the expense of the Liberal Party.

There is now an ABB camp - anyone but Beattie. Voters are simply embarrassed and insulted by the Premier's attempt to protest against the actions of his own Government by wearing more ribbons and baubles than Leonid Brezhnev on May Day.

The voters think the Premier is behaving like Brezhnev when he turned up to Parliament one day wearing one black and one brown shoe and was asked why he didn't go home and change them - he replied that his pair at home were different colours, too. Like Brezhnev, the Premier just doesn't get it.

The respondents to our online poll ending last week blame a lack of funding, mismanagement, lack of planning or excessive bureaucracy for the problems in Queensland Health.

Our survey results came in before news last weekend that the Beattie Government has cut Queensland hospital beds by 500, including 78 in Bundaberg in 2000, in the face of the climbing Queensland population growth shown in the Premier's newspaper ads.

The latest 10-point plan - following two commissions of inquiry, the Forster review and management consultants’ reports into inquiries - is only taken seriously by 41 per cent of respondents voting Labor at the last election, while 28 per cent of last-time Labor voters disagree with the plan. Among Liberals and Nationals, 84 per cent and 74 per cent respectively disagree with "the plan".

The voters actually like the Nationals' plan to cut bureaucracy and replace it with powerful local boards.

Our polls, as of yesterday and following the hospital bed news and the Premier's latest Bundaberg stunt, show a Labor vote in free-fall, with usual ALP voters shuffling off to the Greens, from which point Labor is only regaining a minority, due to Green votes exhausting, as Beattie's "just vote one" strategy of 2001 returns to haunt his own MPs.

When it comes to applying the results of the surveys and by-elections to actual seats and making predictions, the task isn't as simple as it could be, due to optional preferential voting and an increasing tendency for Green voters to simply vote one, not to mention the concentration of votes, which benefits the Nationals.

In reality, a leading candidate polling 45 per cent or more is looking set to retain their seat, if there are more than two opposing candidates.

The more opponents, the lower the primary vote needed. With seven candidates in the field, Liberal Terry Rogers won Redcliffe with 41.2 per cent of the primary vote.

With an average primary vote swing of 12 per cent from the polls, we have modelled the likely primary vote outcome for Labor candidates according to the by-election demographic profiles.

These provide a range of swings, which, when we remove the two outliers, leaves swings of between plus 4 per cent down to minus 25 per cent, and bearing in mind the swings in Chatsworth were up to 19 per cent, this seems reasonable.

The computer projections can best be interpreted by drawing a circle around the older inner-city seats along the river, and then a line, from north of Mackay to north of Mount Isa.

The swings in some of the inner city marginal Labor seats, like Clayfield or Indooroopilly, look negligible, while the swings on the Sunshine Coast, in Noosa, Glasshouse and the northern provincial-rural based seats of Cook, Barron River, Townsville, Cairns and Thuringowa, seem to be within manageable proportions for Labor sitting MPs. That's about it for the good news for Labor.

Unfortunately for the Government, the big swings wipe them out across large swathes of seats across the middle ranging suburbs to the north and south of the Brisbane CBD and swings worsen as the distance from the CBD increases, out to Capalaba, Cleveland, Ipswich and the Gold Coast. The real disaster zones for the Beattie Government are looking like Rockhampton, Mount Isa and Mackay.

Government members remaining in Parliament - perhaps as few as 28 - once again will become defenders of parliamentary standards and the rights of an Opposition led by Anna Bligh (with 12 Left votes) and Deputy John Mickel (with 8 AWU votes).

The results for the Liberal and National parties show a picture of votes and seats very reminiscent of the 1970s and '80s.

The Coalition, with up to 55 MPs, will be led by premier Lawrence Springborg, courtesy of his current 15 MPs being supplemented by strong performances in the southern provincial cities and in three-cornered contests with the Liberals, and the likely regaining of some Independent seats.

The Liberals will poll well in Brisbane, with some Independent challenges, one suspects, but the doubtful seats are all ones being fought over by Liberals and Labor, and whatever our computer programs tell us, we can't see Tom Burns' old seat of Lytton being won by a Liberal.