As for those 36 seats, it's pretty speculative, and your maths is right, yes. But Labor doesn't really have to win them. The LNP just has to lose them. Actually, while I as I said I consider the Katter party dead in the water, a two-or-tree person KAP 'party room' would be mildly interesting. If they really took orders from the guy in the gallon hat, they'd be unlikely to have much time for an ongoing Newman Government asset sales agenda.
Given Katter himself was the one cross-bench holdout from the ALP in 2010, it would be fascinating if KAP now threw its lot in with an ALP minority state government, should such a scenario come to pass. But I agree, I can't see them having any part of asset sales. If they did, it would ensure they don't survive another election.
A disgraced Borbidge government minister, Trevor Perrett, won Joh's old seat (in my hometown) running for the Citizens Electoral Council. Needless to say he later joined the Nationals.
This cracks me the fuck up every time I remember it.
Oh and the other thing, 'optional preferential voting', I don't know and I'm showing my ignorance here, if this is a factor at other state elections. But there has been a bit of a culture of 'just vote one' in Queensland in the last decades and so... shit can swing hard at times.
I think OPV is absolutely fucking terrible. I thought it was only a Queensland thing, but after poking around on Antony Green's blog this morning I've learnt that it apparently exists at NSW state elections too. Given Queensland's absence of an upper house, it's turned state elections into a glorified first-past-the-post shitshow. (We also have a form of OPV for the upper house in Victoria, but in that case you must number at least five boxes below the line, which usually means you must distribute preferences to a second party - and most people vote above the line anyway and accept a ticket with full preferences.)
It was Beattie who first popularised "just vote one" at the 2001 election to take advantage of the disorganisation between the Libs and Nats, and look at how that's now come back to bite the ALP. I wonder how many seats will remain LNP because of Green and other preferences exhausting rather than reaching the ALP.
Perhaps, however, this might be enough to force a closer alliance between the ALP and Greens on a state level. I understand the Greens fancy themselves for Mt Coot-tha?
I wonder whether she is better off absorbing herself into someone like Rise Up Australia and whoever the other mob was in the recent Vic election.
I think her name is such poison, even to the other nutjobs, that nobody would have her. She's seen as past-it and bringing too much unwelcome attention.
Also remember that most people on the extreme fringe can't work together. Too many egos, too much willingness to split into powerless fragments over minor disagreements. That's why we had four random fundie nutter parties at the Victorian state election rather than one organised one. Good thing that, too.