Today Anna Bligh announced that the next Queensland state election will be held on March 24 2012.
This is an unusually early announcement of the election date, which is due to a number of complicating factors. Bligh has stated that she had intended to call the election for March 3, but these plans came apart after the inquiry into the handling of the Queensland floods disaster delayed the release of its report until March 16.
Another complicating factor is the impending Queensland local government elections. These were scheduled for March 31, less than a week after the three-year anniversary of the last state election. It was not considered practical to hold both state and local elections in such close succession.
The state government has the authority to postpone the local government elections by regulation, and Bligh has announced that the council elections will be postponed until late April or early May. The government is planning to consult before announcing the election date, with a decision presumably needing to be made before the election is officially called on February 19, when the caretaker period will begin.
The Bligh Labor government is expected to struggle against the Liberal National Party, now lead by former Brisbane mayor Campbell Newman. Some have suggested that a longer campaign may help Labor against the LNP, but polling has the LNP well in front.
You can read about each electorate, and post your own comments about the campaign in each electorate, by going to the Tally Room’s Queensland election guide.
In addition, I’m announcing today that I have posted a complete set of Queensland local government ward boundaries as a Google Earth map. You can download the ward map for 2012, along with the current local government areas, the current state and federal electoral boundaries, as well as old sets of electoral boundaries for all three levels of government. You can download them all from the maps page.
Very much enjoying the tally room updates 🙂 Thanks for your work.
Love the site Ben, but any chance we can piss off some of the more blatant and tenacious political hacks that infest the site?
They ain’t fooling anyone by pretending to be “local independent voters”, and just regurgitate the same old BS thread after thread.
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