The Labor government and the Liberal National Party opposition both suffered swings against them in the November 25 Queensland election. Greens on the left and One Nation on the right both increased their vote, but it is not clear that either have won any seats. The final results will be unclear for days.
The swing against the LNP (more than 8%) was much larger than the swing against Labor (1.5%). Labor is likely to form government, though it is unclear if it will be a majority or not. At the close of counting on polling day, Labor had 43 seats against the LNP's 35. Katter's Australian Party held two seats.
Thirteen seats are in doubt. Of those, the Greens are in contention for one seat and independent Sandy Bolton is likely to win Noosa. Six are straight up contests between Labor and LNP. Another two are likely to be won by Labor and the others are unclear. Progressive independent Rob Pyne appears to have lost the seat of Cairns.
One Nation still has the chance of winning a seat (and maybe more than one) but has clearly not had the breakthrough that it was predicting. One Nation “leader” Steve Dickson has lost his seat and high profile candidate Malcolm Roberts did not come close to winning Ipswich.
Its statewide vote of 14% is significant — boosted in large part by the uncritical corporate media — however One Nation's brand of right-wing extremism was not taken up in the way it had hoped. The LNP was also damaged by its flirtation with One Nation.
The Greens won 9.9% of the statewide vote and around a third of the vote in a number of Brisbane seats. They would hold 9 seats in the 93 seat chamber if there were proportional representation in the state.
Socialist Alliance ran its first electoral campaign in Brisbane in a number of years. Candidate Kamala Emanuel received 164 votes (0.8%) in the seat of McConnel by close of counting on polling day.
Green Left Weekly will have further coverage of the results in coming days.
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