Senator Andrew Bartlett gives his take on results in the rest of the State.  

Being a lifelong resident of Brisbane, I feel best qualified to give some comment on the results in that city. While I know less of other areas, it is still worth looking to lessons from some of them.

One result I was surprised at, even from as far away as Brisbane, was the defeat of long-standing Labor Mayor of Townsville Tony Mooney. Townsville was merged with its ‘twin city’ Thuringowa, and Townsville was the bigger half, so I was surprised when Cr Mooney not only fell short, but was well beaten – 55 per cent to 35 per cent – by Les Tyrell, who had served as Mayor of Thuringowa for about as long. The Greens’ Mayoral candidate Jenny Stirling has polled around seven and a half per cent. 

The contest for the other twelve seats on the new Townsville Council shows the ludicrously unfair nature of a first past the post system in a multi-member electorate. Despite their best performing candidate getting a vote from less than six per cent of voters, the likely result is that ‘Team Tyrell’ will win all twelve seats on Council, while  ‘Team Mooney’ (mostly Labor endorsed candidates) look like coming up with zero. Current Townsville Deputy Mayor, Jenny Hill, is the closest amongst Labor’s candidates to have a chance of winning a seat, but even though the count is still only at 10 per cent at time of writing, the trend looks very clear and her chances look slim. The seriously unbalanced result shows the merits of a proportional representation system of voting.

The only Indigenous candidate amongst the field of 49 candidates, Sam Reuben, will not be successful. Despite a sizable population of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Townsville has never had an Indigenous person elected to its Council. 

In other councils, one significant feature, at least in some areas, appear to be the success of mayoral candidates who ran on a platform of opposing (over)development.  Ron Clarke’s strong showing – he should still be the favourite to win – on the Gold Coast is one example of this. Melva Hobson’s win in Redlands Shire over former Bjelke-Petersen Minister (and local state member) Paul Clauson is another. The big win – 70 per cent to 30 per cent - by former Noosa Mayor, Bob Abbott, for the new Sunshine Coast Council,  
over former Mayor of Maroochy Shire, Joe Natoli, is another case where the candidate more opposed to overdevelopment had a strong win.
Even more significant is Val Schier’s win in Cairns over long-serving pro-development Mayor Kevin Byrne. It seems the vote against Kevin Byrne in the areas formerly covered by the Douglas Shire – such as the Daintree and Port Douglas – which are most at risk of overdevelopment, was pivotal to this result.

However, it is probably over-stating things to say there is a big trend away from developer supported candidates. There are some other results which signal more of a business as usual approach in that regard.

One result I was pleased to see came in the Mayoral contest in the greatly expanded Toowoomba Regional Council. About a year ago, this area was recently subjected to a controversial local referendum on water recycling, which I was disappointed to see was defeated. One of the most public opponents of water recycling, Snow Manners, a Councillor on the old Toowoomba Council, ran for mayor this time, but was easily defeated by Peter Taylor, formerly Mayor of Jondaryan Shire.

My final comment on Brisbane is to note that one of the long-term consequences of the big win by Campbell Newman’s team is that they now have the buffer of six very safe seats - McDowall, Chandler, Walter Taylor, Macgregor, Hamilton and Pullenvale - with a margin of over 20 per cent, plus another five with a margin of more than 10 per cent. In contrast, Labor now have very few safe seats, with only one – Morningside – clearly above a 10 per cent margin.  For more reflections on the Brisbane result, there is a series of posts at Public Polity, a blog by Sam Clifford, who was the Greens’ candidate for the northside ward of Marchant.