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Queensland is set to go to the polls this month and it is an election with more significance than most in the state's history.
If a week is a long time in politics then try four years which is the new mandatory term of Queensland's unicameral government decided by referendum in 2016.
That referendum also fixed the date of the election as October 31, so mercifully we have been free of the useless speculation of when premier Annastacia Palaszczuk would call the damn thing.
Nature abhors a vacuum of course, so the speculation instead has been on whether Ms Palaszczuk can deliver a third successive term of office for Labor.
Queensland has been such a wasteland for Labor in the federal arena, it comes as a surprise to learn that they have won 10 of the 11 state elections since 1989 (that includes 1995 where they were only turfed out after a later byelection).
Campbell Newman won the solitary victory for the LNP in 2012 though somehow managed to lose an unloseable election three years later, losing his own seat in the process to Kate Jones.
Ms Jones was touted as a future leader so it was a shock recently to hear she and two other senior ministers say they won't contest again this time.
Yet the smart money is on Labor just about hanging on to power, with most Queenslanders supporting Ms Palaszczuk in her hardline response to keeping the borders closed to COVID.
And despite her big announcement last week to spend half a billion dollars duplicating the Bruce Highway from Brisbane to Cairns opposition leader Deb Frecklington has largely failed to cut through.
That Bruce Hwy play is especially geared towards the battleground seats in the north of the state with Cairns, Townsville, Mackay and Rockhampton less enamoured of Labor than suburban Brisbane.
But if seats are to change hands in those places the winners may not be the LNP but the north Queensland-centric Katter's Australian Party.
The KAP won three seats in 2017 and will be confident of retaining all three in 2020 and perhaps even adding to them.
If Labor does lose a seat or two then there is a strong possibility the KAP will get the balance of power.
That will put the spotlight firmly on KAP leader Robbie Katter who has the safest seat in Queensland here in the North West in Traeger (the vast seat stretches from Charters Towers to the NT border).
Renominating again a few months ago Mr Katter wants key investments in water, power, health and living affordability.
They would establish a North Queensland Future Fund, financed by the State Government's $5 billion Queensland Future Fund, to identify and build major infrastructure projects in the North including big dams such as Hell's Gates Dam and Big Rocks Weir.
He also wants the electricity transformer project CopperString 2.0 to connect the North West Minerals Province to the National Electricity Market which will increase the longer-term viability of the Mount Isa copper smelter.
There is some action happening on all these things and more federally if his father Bob Katter gets his way with tomorrow's federal budget.
If the KAP fits, they will wear it regardless of who forms government on October 31.
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