Leaderboard

The ON surge is understandable in one way and unexplainable in another. Sure, I'm a Queenslander and know well that ON, a Queensland based party, has always done ok in elections in this state for a small party. By ok, I mean polling numbers like 10% compared to much smaller figures in other states. But this time around, I don't know how to put it in words, except to say the shift is major going by what I'm hearing from people everywhere. By that I mean people who haven't voted that way before. If we were six months out from a Federal election, I'd be of the opinion a lot of people still aren't fully aware of what's about to hit on voting day. But we're not six months out and the two major parties have almost two years to turn things around. Not such a hard job for the government as it is for the Liberals; if they don't rebuild to a reasonably solid base in the next twelve months, they're done and dusted for sure. The last year of a three year term is almost like one big long election campaign, so the Libs don't have much time on their hands. They're still sliding down, so they have to halt that before they even have any chance of heading back in the other direction. They're probably looking for a circuit breaker but it's hard for them to get traction when they're still losing supporters and One Nation is dominating the media. If it was newspapers, you'd find mention of the Libs somewhere down the back between the sport and classified ads, while the front page is all about Albo and Pauline.