Youth crime, cost of living top of agenda as LNP set to send Labor packing in Queensland election

The next four weeks in Queensland will be filled with jabs, haymakers and eventually a knockout blow as Labor and the Liberal National Party fight to govern in the Sunshine State.

But while the official campaign is set to get underway, the battlelines have already been firmly established.

Youth crime, health, housing and cost-of-living pressures shape as the defining topics when voters go to the polls on October 26.

Opposition Leader David Crisafulli was already ahead in the polls before former premier Annastacia Palaszczuk retired and Steven Miles assumed the top job.

A Newspoll published in The Weekend Australian on September 20 continued that trend and had the LNP leading Labor 55 per cent to 45 per cent on a two-party-preferred basis.

It could be about to get a whole lot worse for the three-term Labor government.

Associate Professor Paul Williams, a political commentator from Griffith University with 40 years’ experience, told AAP a “big swing” in seats is coming.

“Anything on the Labor side that’s (held by a margin of) 10 per cent and under is at risk,” Prof Williams said.

The Labor government has 51 seats in Queensland parliament after losing Ipswich-West at a March by-election.

Of those, 23 have a margin of less than 10 per cent.

Inala, once considered Labor’s safest seat, was retained by candidate Margie Nightingale with 37 per cent of the primary vote in March’s other by-election, but only after a 19.3 per cent swing to the LNP.

And while the government’s cost-of-living relief measures - including 50c public transport fares, $1000 towards energy bills and 20 per cent off car registration - are expected to slightly alter the two-party preferred vote, Prof Williams suggests it will not turn around their election odds.

“It’s halted, or it might have slightly reversed the LNP juggernaut,” he said of the government’s concession-focused June budget.

Prof Williams predicts some seats falling to the LNP in Brisbane, and two seats going to the Greens in the inner-city.

Michael Berkman, the first Greens member elected to Queensland’s parliament, said the party is quietly confident in its four inner-city primary targets.

Those seats are McConnell and Cooper, two that Prof Williams believes will go Green, and Miller and Greenslopes.

In 2022 voters created what was dubbed ‘Greensland’, where the federal Greens elected three MPs in Brisbane, Ryan and Griffith.

Mr Berkman said he is optimistic about the party’s state prospects two years on.

“Cooper, McConnell, Greenslopes and Miller are definitely the ones where we think we’re in a position where we could take them, or we’re within a hair’s breadth,” he told AAP.

Elsewhere, Labor looks set to lose its presence on the Gold Coast, with Housing Minister Meaghan Scanlon facing an uphill battle to retain Gaven.

The LNP holds all other seats in and around the glitter strip with Currumbin, Burleigh, Mermaid Beach and Southport all under five per cent margins. It is expected the LNP will retain these electorates.

Prof Williams said Labor could face the prospect of retaining just two seats - Gladstone and Maryborough - on the coastline after October 26, with crime-plagued regional centres like Cairns and Townsville set to fall.

“All things being equal, using arithmetic only, you’d expect that the LNP will pick up 23 seats from Labor, and the Greens will pick up two seats from Labor, reducing Labor by 25 seats and bringing them down to the high-twenties,” he said.

“Once the swings get as big as we saw with Ipswich-West and Inala, that can’t be ignored, something’s up.

“Because we are dealing with an out-of-cycle swing. Not only we have we got cost-of-living and crime, but there was a swing to Labor in 2020 that they wouldn’t otherwise normally have got - the COVID swing.”

Since taking over as premier in December 2023 and watching as Ipswich-West fell and Inala swung, Mr Miles has put on a brave face.

He did concede shortly thereafter that winning the October election is like “climbing Mt Everest”, with his party not yet at base camp.

Mr Miles is banking on ambitious health, housing, community safety and energy future policies.

“He (Crisafulli) wants to be a small target, I want to outline a big vision,” Mr Miles said at his first State of the State address in August.

“In October, Queenslanders will have a choice ... between my clear and detailed vision for Queensland and an opposition who are unknown and are determined to stay that way.”