Unedifying end to Stafford race reveals much – even before the result

The turnaround was swift. Within minutes of a recommendation that Queensland Labor leader Steven Miles be found in contempt for misleading parliament, Premier David Crisafulli was touting it as an historic event.

Responding to one of his backbenchers on Thursday, Crisafulli crowed that he was answering the first question asked in parliament after such a finding against an opposition leader.

What neither Crisafulli, nor the onslaught of social media posts from his LNP colleagues that followed into Thursday night, disclosed, was that this was a partisan finding by only LNP members of the powerful ethics committee.

But the posts did all carry an election authorisation. “Steven Miles wants people of Stafford to vote for him at a byelection this Saturday,” Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie said down the barrel of a staffer’s camera in one.

“People of Stafford: You can’t trust Steven Miles, you can’t trust the Labor Party.”

The spectacle from the Legislative Assembly was politicised, but Miles’ original comments about Bleijie’s conflict of interest were an unnecessary misstep. And it handed Crisafulli a welcome distraction and ammo to take into the final two days of an important campaign for both leaders.

Unlike recent state elections and byelections across Australia, the result after polls close in the northern Brisbane seat at 6pm on Saturday will not be a further insight into the rise of Pauline Hanson’s One Nation.

Instead, by dint of the party’s absence, it will be – if recent history is any guide – a far more conventional contest, with the result wielded by the government or the opposition against each other.

Previously held by Jimmy Sullivan before his death in early April, the seat has been won by Labor – the party which expelled him from its caucus about a year earlier – at all but one vote since being re-established in 2001.

The 2012 flip to the LNP in the Newman government landslide lasted only two years, until a byelection triggered by MP Chris Davis’ falling out with the government delivered Labor one of the state’s largest byelection swings of 19 per cent.

That is the unreasonable goal the LNP are trying to cement for Labor candidate Luke Richmond, the party’s assistant state secretary whose campaign, in his own words, boils down to 10 words: “The LNP cut 93 beds from The Prince Charles Hospital”.

This claim is one the LNP have been, not without some merit, labelling a lie. While the full field of candidates sits at nine, the Greens and their returning candidate Jess Lane are the major third-party force in the seat.

Labor figures have been doing their own expectation management of a likely tight win. The average swing against a government or incumbent party in Queensland byelections back to 1996 is, respectively, 4.2 per cent and 5.9 per cent.

This would seem to suggest anything within that range wouldn’t be unexpected, in a seat which leans younger, and with a higher proportion of renters and tertiary education than the state average.

But, as independent election analyst Kevin Bonham wrote on his blog this week, even that doesn’t paint the full picture.

Bonham noted that while byelections do tend to see anti-government swings, this is subdued for opposition seats – sometimes even reversed – due to the loss of an incumbent MP’s personal vote and the fact governments sometimes don’t even run.

Because the LNP is running, Bonham suggested it was unlikely they would embarrass themselves. (Their candidate is former local councillor Fiona Hammond, who lost by a margin of 5.3 per cent in 2024.)

Any two-party swing to Labor of more than 3 per cent would be positive for them, Bonham said. But their result could be harmed by Greens’ how-to-vote cards that do not recommend their supporters give preferences to Labor.

“Any swing to the LNP at all would be a good result for the LNP,” Bonham wrote, noting a government win in a seat that topped Labor’s state two-party result by seven percentage points would be a disaster for the opposition, “of the sort that causes leadership change”.

This is where the danger lurks for Miles, and why the LNP is throwing so much venom at what is – beyond that – a relatively small-target campaign touting a fledgling fuel security plan amid community concerns about affordability, safety and transport.

Labor figures have previously pointed to, but since tempered, talk of an informal deadline later this year for Miles to boost primary vote support, lest the lessons from his too-short 10-month runway to the 2024 election loss not be fed into 2028 election planning.

While long-running LNP claims of Labor leadership turmoil should be taken with the heaping of self-interested salt they deserve, a particularly bad result could always give renewed spark for such calculations.

To date, Labor’s statewide primary vote support has failed to climb above its election result. While two-party preferred results show, if anything, a slight lift for the LNP. (With the current compulsory preferential voting system, anyway.)

Miles’ personal ratings continue to linger well below those of Crisafulli – who has this week been named in a second corruption watchdog referral by the opposition.

This time, Crisafulli and his chief of staff Richard Ferrett stand accused of failing to properly investigate and take action around allegations ministers Tim Mander and Amanda Camm did not adequately disclose their romantic relationship.

Late last year, it was allegations Crisafulli, Health Minister Tim Nicholls and Bleijie intervened to overturn the selection of the state’s chief health officer.

All involved in both matters have denied wrongdoing. Both occasions have also sparked some of the LNP’s fiercest efforts to deflect attention onto the opposition, including this week airing what were said to be misleading or false claims about Labor MPs.

And despite seeking to distance himself from such a strategy due to an apparently principled position on personal privacy, the suggestion Crisafulli has no hand or control over the attacks led by Bleijie is laughable.

In a parliament that repeatedly plumbs new depths, this week it reached another, capping a campaign for a seat last held by an MP known to have struggled with alcohol.

On not one but two occasions, in response to questions from Labor MPs about her water portfolio, Ann Leahy quipped that water was “definitely not their beverage of choice”.

Her office never responded to our questions seeking clarification about what she meant.

Heads up

• For the almost one-third (as of the last update on Thursday) of Stafford residents not among those who have voted early, there will be 12 polling places open from 8am until 6pm across the electorate on Saturday. For everyone else, the Electoral Commission of Queensland’s preliminary count will kick off after polls close, with an official count to continue on Sunday.
• Attorney-General Deb Frecklington has foreshadowed a “significant new policy” to be announced in a Queensland Media Club appearance on June 16 – a week out from the state budget. Need a hint? Look no further than recent teasing by Crisafulli in an appearance on Karl Stefanovic’s podcast of looming “really tough bail laws”, the LNP’s Hinchinbrook byelection call of “breach of bail, go to jail” for young offenders, and whispers of mandatory minimum sentencing being considered.