For those other than the LNP’s ‘true believers’, this Noosa election campaign has been an abject failure, in many respects worse than their last abject failure four years ago.

Even with a relatively high profile candidate, ex-mayor Clare Stewart, and a wave of anti-government wind in their sails, they failed to even dent the popularity of Independent Sandy Bolton and her seemingly unassailable local lead.

We offer some explanations for all this, but first, what happened?

You will see here, from the ABC’s election graphics, that Sandy Bolton’s lead from four years ago held up firmly.  The 7-percent swing to the LNP – in line with the statewide trend leaked mostly out of the ALP vote with only 0.2 percent lost from Ms Bolton’s rock-steady lead.

And you will see below from the flow of preference votes, that of those who did not vote first for Bolton or Stewart, more than 80 percent directed their preferences to the sitting Independent, comfortable in the knowledge that this was where their vote would end up.

This was about as emphatic as an endorsement gets for a local member.  And in the all-important count between the last two standing, for the LNP it was like running a marathon and finishing exactly where you started.

So why did this happen?  In this analysis it boils down to two, connected reasons; a hard-working, responsive Independent member who left the LNP little of substance to throw mud at, and the fact that – in the end – throwing mud is precisely what their campaign devolved into, despite promising a clean fight. 

It was only last January that we had this pledge from the LNP candidate and her state leader to run a clean campaign in Noosa that would not degenerate into personal attacks.

I’m not going to bag Sandy but I’m certainly going to say if the community want a change of government, we need to win seats and they can vote for me“.

Clare Stewart. January 2024.

But when the low-point of the campaign arrived in letterboxes in the form of a nasty, poor-taste and dishonest Scratchie Card asserting that the very Independent member for Noosa was – in effect – a Labor stooge, voters saw it for the kind of mendacious American politics that leaves a nasty aftertaste.

Another bit of ‘mis or disinformation’ doing the rounds including what is being received into mailboxes via an ‘election lottery scratch card’ is that I vote with Labor. FACTS. In the last 4 years during divisions, Noosa voted with Labor 22 times, with the LNP 92 times, and with the Crossbench 13 times.

Sandy Bolton. Noosa MP

The ‘Scratchie’ attack was endorsed by one of the LNP’s faceless men in Brisbane, but it was the local branch and the local candidate who went along for the ride.

For months, dubious local voters had seen a steady drip of doubtful LNP campaign claims.  

• Was there really a threat to the Noosa Hospital, or was this an LNP ‘beat-up’ based on some lease extension issues surrounding an expansion?
• Was Noosa suffering a wave of crime, or some high-profile incidents against the backdrop of mostly-decreasing crime figures statewide?
• Was local LNP representation “the only way” to stop threatened High Rise in Noosa, or would an Independent MP continue to battle beside Noosa Council for our Town Plan as she always had?
• Would the LNP’s last-minute pledge of $30-million for the next stage of the Tewantin bypass be meaningful when it was just a fraction of the final sum actually required to complete the work?

Amongst the concocted issues and scares, the one bright spot for Ms Stewart was her response to the threat of fast-tracked High Rise development in Noosa.  With no hope of winning here, the ALP government had thrown its hapless local candidate under the proverbial bus with its gift to developers in Noosa.  Even though the LNP had earlier allowed the legislation behind this to sail through parliament, the issue presented an opportunity for their Noosa candidate to listen to local voices of reason and garner an LNP pledge to work WITH our Council and Town Plan. This was her moment to briefly shine.

But then that deft political footwork was about to be tripped up by the party cynic who dreamt up the Scratchie Card debacle…an echo of the same nasty, misleading attack used against Ms Bolton by the previous LNP candidate in 2020.  The same lies about her being, effectively, a Labor stooge, something the electorate knows to be false. Only the means of delivery – the letterboxed Scratchie Card – was different.

Was this the work of the mythical Alan Smithee?  That was the pseudonym given, until the year 2000, to Hollywood film directors so embarrassed by their latest movie that they used the name in the end credits when they could prove to the Directors Guild of America that they lacked creative control and wanted to disown their miserable flop.

Will the LNP’s “Alan Smithee’ stand up and take the blame for this disastrous Noosa campaign production? 

And, more importantly, will the local branch and candidate learn from the experience and run a clean campaign based purely on the issues next time?  

In the final analysis, the style and ethics of every campaign – regardless of who designs each piece of the puzzle – is a reflection of the candidate, and we will judge them accordingly.

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Elsewhere in Noosa Matters, you can read Tony Wellington’s view of how Noosa was saved, for now, from that High Rise threat.

And Kerry Finch has an insightful view of Noosa’s highly effective grassroots campaign that got our Independent MP over the line again.