Campbell Newman - Run For State Parliament

Run For State Parliament

On 18 March 2011, Nine News Queensland's Spencer Jolly reported that the LNP's organisational wing was engineering a plan to make Newman the leader of the LNP. According to Jolly, party president Bruce McIver was trying to arrange for Bruce Flegg, the former leader of the Queensland Liberals and the MP for Moggill, the only safe LNP seat in Brisbane, to resign his seat. Newman would have then run for the seat in a by-election and, once he won, would have challenged Opposition Leader John-Paul Langbroek—who, like Newman, is from the Liberal side of the LNP merger—for the leadership of the LNP. Newman subsequently acknowledged he had been approached about moving up to state politics. Although he did not rule out running in the next state election he stated that, for the time being, he was committed to serving out his term as Lord Mayor and running for reelection in 2012.

However, on 22 March, Newman announced that he was seeking the LNP preselection for the state electoral district of Ashgrove, held by Labor's Kate Jones. If he won preselection, Newman said, he would then make a bid for the LNP leadership. According to ABC News, the LNP's organisational wing engineered Newman's bid for leadership when polls showed he was the only non-Labor politician who matched Premier Anna Bligh's popularity during the 2010–2011 Queensland floods.

Jones held Ashgrove with a majority of 7.1 percent, making it a "fairly safe" Labor seat, on paper. However, according to Australian Broadcasting Corporation elections analyst Antony Green, Newman carried The Gap ward, which contains the bulk of Ashgrove (Brisbane City Council wards are almost as large as state electorates), with 56 percent of the two-party vote in 2004 and almost 70 percent in 2008. According to Green, if Newman repeated his past performance in The Gap, he would be able to take Ashgrove off Labor.

Within hours of Newman's announcement, Langbroek and deputy leader Lawrence Springborg both resigned their posts. Langbroek had been under growing pressure from the LNP's organisational wing to stand down after Labor's polling numbers rebounded in the wake of the floods, However, as late as a day before Newman's announcement, Langbroek insisted he would not do so. On 2 April 2011, Newman was elected as the leader of the LNP. His first act was to announce a new slogan for the LNP, "Can Do Queensland" (stylised as "CanDoQld"). The next day he won the LNP preselection for Ashgrove, unopposed.

Since Newman was not in parliament, standard practice called for an LNP MP from a safe seat to resign so that Newman could enter parliament via a by-election. However, a by-election could not be arranged. To solve this problem, former state Nationals' leader Jeff Seeney was elected as interim parliamentary leader of the LNP—and hence Leader of the Opposition—while Newman led the LNP election team. Seeney agreed to cede the post of parliamentary leader to Newman should Newman win election to the legislature. Newman's ascent to the role of leader outside of Parliament led Bligh to briefly consider breaking her previous vow to let the legislature run full-term. She had promised to focus exclusively on recovery in 2011, but was concerned that the LNP's leadership situation could make the cooperation necessary for the recovery effort impossible. Bligh also accused Newman of "abandoning" the Lord Mayor's post, saying that Newman should not have "cut and run" while the recovery effort was still underway.

The first Newspoll taken after Newman assumed the leadership showed that the LNP had regained the lead in opinion polling; it had led most polls from July until the floods. Newman has also consistently led Bligh as preferred premier.

Soon after Newman became leader of the LNP, Labor state Treasurer Andrew Fraser used parliamentary privilege to claim he had received information from within the LNP that Flegg had been given an inducement to resign and allow Newman to run for his seat in a by-election. On 18 July 2011, the CMC announced that the investigation found no evidence to support Fraser's allegations and all parties were cleared. Billionaire and LNP benefactor Clive Palmer said the "CMC colluding with the government" while the LNP accused Fraser of "knowing too much about the investigation".

Newman made it clear that when he took over the LNP leadership, all policies previously announced would be scrapped and essentially become "null and void" with new policy announcements to be made. In an attempt to win voter support in regional Queensland, Newman's first official LNP policy announcement was that he would not support daylight saving in Queensland or South East Queensland, even though as Brisbane's Lord Mayor he had been a vocal advocate for daylight saving.

Newman has stated his support for same-sex marriage, however the LNP have stated that if they win government they may move to repeal such laws.