Listening to the Labor spin on the night of the Queensland election and in the days that have followed has been a clear example of attempting to hide a poor electoral result in plain sight.
During the ABC’s coverage on Saturday evening federal Labor minister Annika Wells was allowed to wax lyrical about how underwhelming the LNP victory was given that it came on the back of three Labor terms in power.
She highlighted that the state opposition was at best only going to scrape over the line, which after nine years of Labor rule was appalling bad.
‘What we’re seeing here is the LNP have been too busy measuring the curtains, wrapping themselves in cotton wool, (running a) small target campaign, more focused on making life as easy on the other side of getting the keys than going out and winning a mandate of Queenslanders first,’ Wells said.
But based on the current seat projections the LNP are likely to win 53 seats (47 is a majority). Labor is unlikely to win more than 34 seats (just 64 percent of the LNP total).
That’s a stronger, more emphatic victory on the numbers than Anthony Albanese’s win over Scott Morrison at the 2022 federal election, where Labor won 77 seats (a bare majority) and the Coalition won 58 (75 percent of Labor’s total).
And it was after three terms of the Coalition in power, the same as Labor in Queensland.
Does Wells think Albo limped over the line with a weak victory in 2022, given his win was less emphatic compared to what transpired on Saturday night?
Of course Wells wasn’t held to account for the hypocrisy of such statements, nor the downright inaccuracy of the comments.
Now that the absurdity of claiming the LNP’s victory was narrow is as clear as day, Labor has found some new spin to justify away the result: the Greens were the real losers on Saturday.
Never mind that the Greens primary vote held firm, whereas the Labor primary vote collapsed by seven percentage points.
And the fact the Greens didn’t win more seats is wholly down to the LNP taking the principled decision to preference against the minor party.
Otherwise LNP preferences would have delivered the Greens a number of new wins over Labor.
Will federal Labor look to do the same and preference against the Greens the way the Queensland LNP did? Given it is so impressed with the consequences?
Of course not. Which I don’t mind – parties can be electorally strategic with how they choose to preference if they want to be.
Just don’t claim the demise of the Greens off the back of the LNP not preferencing them is some sort of moral victory for Labor.
Because those are the lines printed on Labor’s talking points for federal MPs in the wake of the Queensland loss.
Voters have cottoned on to the Greens being unable to deliver what Labor can achieve, the talking points claim.
Senator Murray Watt was sticking to that script yesterday.
Really? Then why did Labor lose the election and the Greens primary vote remain intact?
Beyond the spin, what are the real implications from the LNP victory on Saturday?
Peter Dutton will hope new Premier David Crisafulli doesn’t do anything too radical between now and the federal election due by May next year that could turn voters off the party brand they share.
It is unlikely Crisafulli will, given the backlash to Campbell Newman’s antics after his 2012 state win.
Dutton might even benefit from the halo effect of Crisafulli still enjoying a political honeymoon come the next federal election. The same way Albo benefited from the popularity of WA Premier Mark McGowan in the wake of the pandemic at the 2022 election.
But nobody will ever be as popular in n politics as McGowan was back then. And Crisafulli could actually make Dutton’s life difficult on the question of nuclear power.
He’s already said that he opposes the idea, which is the central policy platform the federal opposition leader has announced so far.
Plus, Queensland voters have traditionally elected one major party at the state level and a different one federally.
Given that the Coalition holds the lion’s share of seats in Queensland federally (21 seats compared with just five for Labor) Dutton will desperately hope Queenslanders don’t seek to balance out the major party representation any time soon.
The odds are they won’t. Anthony Albanese is unpopular in Queensland and Dutton is a Queenslander.
But it is always a risk.