Premier Newman’s two leadership negatives

Tony Abbott and his federal government is top of the list of negatives as Campbell Newman sets out on his short-as-possible election campaign. Hoping the Prime Minister goes back to his holiday by the beach and stays there for as long as possible would be one reason for choosing 31 January polling day. For the Queensland Liberal National Party the less said about those federal colleagues the better. So let’s try and pretend we are different so we can quickly move on to other things

 The Courier Mail attempted product differentiation this morning before moving on to the separate aspect of leadership negatives: who actually will LNP voters be supporting as Premier? The fact that Premier Newman’s own seat is far more vulnerable than his government overall creates a diversion that Labor will delight in exploiting.

Of more concern to the Brisbane daily on its editorial pages was the danger of minor parties having an unhealthy influence. The Courier’s editorial pretended that a hung parliament controlled by a riff-raff was the problem when the real LNP concern is that the Palmers and the Katters will leach away support in a state where preferential voting is optional.

But the Townsville Bulletin most accurately summed up the campaigning day:

Many a true word …

And down on the Gold Coast it was a subject the government would be happy about with just a little bit of a backhander about the need to do more rather than less.

 Full Queensland election coverage HERE