Accidents don`t "happen".
They are caused.
Always.
However the causes are not always all that obvious.

"They wanted to scare the government, not sack it..."

The author is giving far more credibility to the average voter than they deserve. No, what they wanted to do was get their vote done as quickly as possible and return home from being inconvenienced. Opinions were made from a Chanel 9 news report or from radio commentary on the trek to work.

Newman's numberless repetition of "Strong Team, Strong Plan, Stronger Queensland" shows with what derision he held the QLD people in by thinking that an abecedarian slogan would influence them. Well, it would have, were it not so frustratingly annoying. Labor weren't much better; they all talk down the camera like their receiving audience are toddlers

Newman and Abbott had the same plan from day one, it just goes to show that the public has had enough of politicians that tell lies and go back on promises.

Another great failing of govt; is to blame the other for their own inability, or changing minds after the election. Just like Abbott it’s all Labor’s fault, it doesn’t hold water. Where do you find someone else that says AU debt is out of control besides LNP worshipers or Abbott.

When we have a change of govt; The swinging voters vote is only there for a lend. So performance and fairness is right at the top of the changing minds.

Environment considerations were sidestepped in the name of business, The scene was set for a massacre.

QLD war drums were beating for quite some time, NSW will be next. Good on the people of QLD for saying loudly this is not a fair way to run a govt;

Graham Young: “Bikie related drug crime was squashed and crime statistics improved dramatically”.

According to a recent ABC “fact check”, the crime rate has been tracking down for many years and has not accelerated under the LNP or its policies.

The rest of Graham’s analysis seems fair enough from a conservative standpoint and allowing for his clear political bias.

It seems to me that both parties have to address the fundamental problem, which is not to pay down debt with cuts, but to raise taxes and fund decent living standards for everyone.

As both parties know, this means a higher consumption tax, though from Labor’s pov not necessarily broad-based.

Consumption tax is one way of squeezing tax out of the wealthy, but it’s not enough. The wealthiest 20% command 62% of Australia’s economic pie; the poorest 20% command 1%, with the rest somewhere in between.

Taxes don’t need to rise much in the middle, but clearly the top bracket has to be raised, indeed more tiers imposed above that.

The real reason one term governments are being tossed is because both continue with ‘third way’ policies, which far from being a political compromise has historically favoured neoliberal economic agendas: privatisation, and when push comes to shove, old-style laissez faire and cuts to welfare.

There is no invisible hand that will ever bring things into balance; rather, free markets determine that the rich get richer and social equilibrium is impossible.

And while the middle/upper-middle classes get enough/just enough to buy into capitalist ideology, they swing like the proverbial pendulum politically as they see their fortunes wax and wane.

The really sad case is the swathes of the working class, duped by an ideology that—if they used their heads for once they would see—despises them even as it keeps them in trance.

We get shock election results like this when a) the middle classes want to send a message and b) when the working class and cashed-up bogans momentarily wake up!

Labor has to go back to its roots and tax the disproportionate wealth at the big end of town.

It is much more than an accident, it's a train-wreck. Good heavens, we now have the possibility of Pauline Hanson gaining a seat. Add to that the unions already getting their claws into the spoils (Courier Mail today). Great work Queensland

Oh God save us. How could anyone be so stupid to ignore the past and elect a labor government.
Ipswich beware, here comes another flood from a tidal-wave of incompetence!