But there are potential upsides, particularly if Crisafuli can only cobble together a potentially unstable minority government, and Albanese will be well aware of it.
Miles has outperformed expectations and limited the swing against Labor, particularly in Brisbane, where federal Labor has its sights set on the seats of Longman, Brisbane and Bonner (Leichhardt, centred around Cairns, is also a target).
Albanese will be heartened by the performance of Queensland Labor in both holding the line against the LNP and pushing back against further gains by the Greens.
Queenslanders aren’t quite as conservative as the stereotype suggests – in fact, they like divided government.
Since December 1989, the Liberal and National parties in Queensland have had a premier in office for just a touch over five years – a woeful record that puts even the accident-prone Victorian Liberal party to shame.
Through the long years of the Howard government, for example, former premier Peter Beattie mostly led the state and it was during the Gillard government that Campbell Newman was elected. Newman survived just a single term before being turfed out, and a state Labor government ruled through the rest of the Abbott-Turnbull-Morrison years.
Some federal Labor strategists believe that a new LNP government state government could be just what the Albanese government needs to improve the low number of Queenslanders in the federal Labor caucus.
While the LNP has been poor at state level, in the federal parliament it provides 21 of Peter Dutton’s 55 lower house seats, while Labor holds just five of Queensland’s 30 federal seats.
To govern in majority after the next election, Albanese must win back at least a handful of seats in Queensland to offset losses expected in other parts of the country such as Western Australia and New South Wales.
A narrow Crisafulli victory or even a minority LNP government would remind federal Labor that it must maintain a laser-like focus on addressing the cost of living crisis – and that it might even be able to pick up a crucial seat or two in the state at the next federal election.
Cut through the noise of federal politics with news, views and expert analysis. Subscribers can sign up to our weekly Inside Politics newsletter.
Source link
[redirect url=’https://fastpowers.com/’ sec=’3′]