Conservative candidates have accused Labor’s three Ipswich MPs of taking their massive majorities for granted, saying they had become arrogant and avoided any scrutiny during the campaign.
LNP candidate for Ipswich Scott O’Connell and One Nation candidate for Bundamba Sharon Bell said Labor had been “hiding” incumbents Lance McCallum (Bundamba), Jennifer Howard (Ipswich) and Jim Madden (Ipswich West) during the campaign.
Mr O’Connell said the Labor MPs were ducking for cover on the big issues facing the city.
“I’ve been out at pre-polls every day from open to close. I did not miss a beat and combined those three Labor MPs did not do as many hours as I did. What are they hiding from?,” he said.
“They didn’t front up to pre-poll; they didn’t front up to the debate. What have they got to hide?
“On pre-poll and again today I had people talking to me about the rail extension, talking about infrastructure projects, talking about the hospital and talking about the major growth issues we have here, the waste and landfill and the current sitting members don’t have solutions for any of these.”
Ms Bell said the Labor members were avoiding scrutiny and appeared complacent.
“I think they are hiding,” Ms Bell said. “They don’t want to face people about the super dumps and the incinerator. There are things they don’t want to be questioned on.
“Their role is to be a servant to the people that voted them in.They have forgotten that they are public servants and they are there to do the will of the people. People have said to me they haven’t seen Lance (McCallum), they can’t get a hold of him and I’ve even heard that about Jennifer Howard and Jim Madden as well.”
With more than half of the vote counted in Bundamba, Mr McCallum had 70 per cent of the vote, suffering a slight swing of 1 per cent to One Nation.
In Ipswich and Ipswich West the Labor vote had strengthened with both Ms Howard and Mr Madden achieving 66 per cent of the vote, a 5.5 per cent swing to Labor in Ipswich and a 7.5 per cent swing to Labor in Ipswich West.
Mr McCallum and Mr Madden could not be contacted today.
Ms Howard spoke earlier today on her visits to booths and pre-polls each day of the past fortnight and said the reaction from voters was overwhelmingly about the government’s performance during COVID and in steering the state into recovery.
“I have phoned thousands of people. I have doorknocked and talked to loads of people. The pandemic is the big issue. We have a lot of vulnerable people in Ipswich. We have an older population in some areas, people with disabilities, people with comorbidity in terms of health makes them vulnerable.
“People see that Annastacia Palaszczuk has steered a steady ship. Even if you don’t agree with her policies they can see she has steered a steady ship for the past eight months and those character traits are what we need going into recovery.”