Today’s campaign has remained focused on Pauline Hanson’s announcement last night that she will be running. It now appears she will be running in Beaudesert, a seat to the south of Brisbane in South-East Queensland. The ALP, LNP and Greens have all committed to not preferencing Hanson or preferencing her last. A fascinating idea is that, in order for the other parties to maximise the anti-Hanson vote, they would be required to number all other preferences in order to put Hanson last. If the Greens decide that they don’t want to preference the ALP over LNP, it would not be possible to preference te LNP ahead of Pauline Hanson, and exhausted Greens preferences could help Hanson in such a situation. This could result in higher preference flows in the seat to lock out Hanson.
In other news, LNP Member for Cunningham Stuart Copeland has announced he will run as an independent in the notional LNP seat of Condamine, which covers the rural areas to the west of Toowoomba and created by the merger of Cunningham with Darling Downs. Antony Green commented on the topic:
Stuart Copeland is currently the Liberal National MP for the abolished seat of Cunningham. His seat has been amalgamated with the neighbouring seat of Darling Downs, also abolished, putting Copeland and fellow LNP MP Ray Hopper in a head to head contest in the new seat of Condamine.
Under the deal that merged the Liberal and National Parties to form the LNP, a procedure was put in place to determine which sitting MPs would get which seats. This was based on seniority and continuity of electorate populations and had been expected to resolve disputes between MPs from the two former parties. Instead, it came into play in solving who would be the candidate in Condamine. More voters in the new seat came from Darling Downs rather than Cunningham, giving Hopper the automatic endorsement for Condamine. Copeland was offered the chance to run in Labor held Toowoomba North but initially decided to retire.
In other news, I’m crazy for First Dog on the Moon’s work on the banner for Crikey’s new blog Pineapple Party Time. I’ve re-posted it below, for your entertainment:
