During any state election it is standard to ponder who the next premier will be, but rarely are there more than two viable candidates for the job.



A particularly brutal first term in the polls, a conservative premier with an inner city seat full of progressives and sacked public servants and a volatile voting population mean it is a distinct possibility a re-elected Liberal National Party (LNP) could be left with a seatless leader.

Campbell Newman holds the seat of Ashgrove by 5.7% and Labor needs a swing of 11% to win government so the LNP’s consistent lines that if Newman loses Ashgrove then the party will lose government do not hold any water.

The LNP refuses to say who would be premier if Newman lost or the process for the election of a leader that would take place. However, this could be in part because the LNP does not actually know who would be premier if Newman is not.

Any appointment of a new premier would be dependent on the make-up of the new party room and where the sympathies lie of new MPs, MPs in safe seats and the MPs who hold on to their seats by their fingernails.

At the moment there are four likely contenders for the top job if Labor’s Kate Jones becomes the member for Ashgrove, but the LNP triumphs in the election:

Fourth time lucky? Lawrence Springborg could make another comeback. Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP

Lawrence Springborg

It might be the case of fourth time lucky for the man who once tried to adopt the nickname “the Borg” in his campaign material. Springborg is seen as the father of the Queensland merger of the Liberal and National parties, a feat fraught with high emotions and many potential enemies but ultimately improving the LNP’s prospects of election as it ended three-cornered contests between Liberal, National and Labor candidates in some electorates.

In 2009 he met with bikies and came out swinging against Labor’s proposed anti-association laws delivering a blistering speech in parliament which included the statement:

“Members of the LNP will sleep better tonight knowing that we have fought against this government’s draconian laws—laws which extinguish centuries of established natural justice rights which have guaranteed an accused person access to the evidence against them. We will also sleep secure in the knowledge that we fought to maintain the fundamental right of free association. Labor members by contrast should be haunted by the spectre of their bans on free association. Labor members should be condemned to the eternal nightmare which follows their trampling of centuries of established legal rights of every Queensland citizen into the dirt as they are doing today.”

Fast forward to 2013 and Springborg was part of the government which has introduced the harshest anti-association laws in Australia.

Springborg has already led his party to three elections, and was handed what some saw as the most difficult portfolio in Queensland and a poisoned chalice, health, in 2012.

The bungled payroll system, introduced under the previous Labor government, which saw thousands of doctors and nurses overpaid and underpaid for years fell to Springborg to fix and he has largely faced the challenge head on.

Seen as a safe pair of hands, unafraid of what can seem impossible tasks, Springborg is also popular with the LNP base, receiving the only spontaneous applause at the LNP launch when Newman mentioned him in his speech.

Gunning for top job? John-Paul Langbroeks on the campaign trail with Campbell Newman on Sunday. Photograph: Dave Hunt/AAP

John-Paul Langbroek

The “Mr Nice” of the LNP, raised as a Jehovah’s Witness and qualified as a dentist, is state member for the safe Gold Coast seat of Surfers Paradise.

In possession of a dry wit, demonstrated in his personalised Christmas card messages to journalists, Langbroek is well liked outside of his party but seen as too nice by internal critics. He referenced the supposed image problem of being nice in a 2010 interview with Fairfax Media, saying he doubted a toughened-up Langbroek image would do him any good.

‘‘Labor people come up to me and say, ‘Mate, we want you to be harder, we want you to take them on,’ and I say, ‘Look I’m trying to do it in a rational way because I think that frothing at the mouth, showing I’m really tough like that, actually doesn’t make people think you’re automatically making sense.’

Langbroek has showed a tough side since taking on the education portfolio, steered the Queensland government through negotiations with his federal counterparts over the proposed Gonski reforms, and remaining one of the most outspoken state critics of them.

When Julia Gillard was prime minister, Langbroek labelled Gonski “a cruel hoax” but after the election of the Abbott government he signed a deal with the federal government worth $844m for Queensland.

Fluent in Dutch, German and Tok Pisin, Langbroek, who was seen rocking out to the Hilltop Hoods at the 2010 Big Day Out, would be a different breed of conservative premier to those Queensland has previously seen.

The man with the numbers: Tim Nicholls is congratulated by Campbell Newman after his budget speech in June. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP

Tim Nicholls

At the outset of the election, Nicholls was the only alternative to Newman who had the numbers in the party room to lead, according to political analyst Paul Williams.

The former solicitor and Brisbane city councillor was one of the senior party figures who drove the plan to parachute Campbell Newman into the premiership from outside parliament.

Nicholls is from the party’s dominant faction and is assured of re-election in the safe LNP seat of Clayfield.

“He’s got all the runs on the board, he was with the parliament long before the 2012 wipeout, he’s got a lot of credentials,” Williams says.

“That doesn’t mean there won’t be some strong competition from the likes of Emerson, Langbroek and even Springborg.”

Nicholls’s challenge as premier – or even LNP leader – would be how to connect with people outside the south-east corner.

As treasurer, he’s been linked with the big end of town.

An economic conservative with an ideological commitment to small government and the free market, Nicholls was instrumental in the “Strong Choices” to pay down government debt through privatisation. If he becomes premier, expect a continuing agenda of trying to drive more efficiency in the public service. He will champion the role of the private sector in service delivery.

Held up as one of the better performers in parliament, Nicholls’ rise to leadership could still open up the old divisions between the Liberal and National party elements of the party, whose machinery is still dominated by the Nationals.

Nicholls comes with long-standing baggage, his association with Santo Santoro, the former Howard government minister who is a divisive influence in the party but is aligned with an influential group.

Regarded privately to be “good for a joke and a beer”, Nicholls was nevertheless in the past seen as arrogant, a perception he is said to have done well to moderate.

His knowledge of his own electorate verges on the encyclopedic, right down to the location of the canals and sewers.

No small “l” Liberal, Nicholls nevertheless would be a moderate influence areas such as law and order.

Untarnished image: Scott Emerson and Campbell Newman in at the Port of Brisbane last year. Photograph: Dan Peled/AAP

Scott Emerson

Emerson, the transport and mains roads minister, going into his sixth year in parliament, is the least experienced contender.

Compared with other high-profile Newman ministers, Emerson has appeared in public as relatively even-handed. He has not been hugely radical in his portfolio areas or come into conflict with stakeholders. He has launched no multibillion-dollar rail projects.

Emerson, whose career as a journalist exposed him to media, business and political powerbrokers even before he entered politics, has had the happy knack of emerging reputation intact despite the troubles of others around him.

The controversial and ill-fated stint of party powerbroker Michael Caltabiano as head of the transport department took no shine off Emerson.

In fact, it was Emerson who referred Caltabiano to the parliamentary ethics committee for investigation.

Emerson’s former business partner Andrew Crook – who is nowadays publicist for Clive Palmer and his political party – was arrested last month over an alleged criminal conspiracy targeting a banker.

Emerson was a partner and shareholder in Crook Publicity from 2004 until he entered politics in 2009. The firm’s name was taken out of Emerson’s Wikipedia entry last week.

Emerson in public relations advocated for the likes of ABC Learning Centres, led by flamboyant entrepreneur Eddy Groves to a spectacular (and costly) crash.

Before PR, Emerson was a journalist with the Australian, working as Queensland bureau chief and national chief of staff, and the ABC, where he began as a cadet in 1988.