Labor looks down the barrel after Queensland rout

[Valin]

The AGE:

Tony Wright and Michelle Grattan

March 26, 2012

 

THE Queensland Labor Party, all but wiped from the electoral map at the weekend, is now reduced to a frantic search for a leader after a ''heartbroken'' Anna Bligh announced yesterday she was quitting Parliament.

 

With no more than eight MPs likely to be left in the 89-seat Parliament - seven when Ms Bligh's resignation becomes effective - Labor faces an overwhelmingly powerful Liberal National Party government led by new Premier Campbell Newman.

 

The result will rattle the federal Labor Party - it could lose all its Queensland seats if Saturday's swing was repeated in that state. But federal Labor figures said the poll was fought on state issues and tried to play down its implications for the Gillard government. ''This was a Queensland election about Queensland issues,'' Infrastructure Minister Anthony Albanese said.

 

 

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H/T Ricochet