Rob Borbidge

The first major electoral test of this new political force was the 1998 Queensland election, held in June of that year.

National Party leader Rob Borbidge had formed a coalition government with the Liberal Party in 1996 after a by-election loss tipped Labor out of office mid-term.

But his time in office was to be short.

Like in 1995, the Liberal and National Parties mostly avoided running against each other.

And...

The Borbidge government wasn't exactly exciting the community, so they weren't travelling that well because they'd been a minority government, to be fair to them, so that was tough.

But what happened was they won.

They not only had 11 seats, but they had momentum.

In

1998? Very, very close.

Had Peter Wellington... decided to follow what they thought was his conservative instincts, you would have ended up with Rob Borbidge would have remained Premier and he was leader of the National Party at the time.

They were still separate.

But before that change in government, there was talk about abolishing optional preferential voting.

The Coalition was eager for the change, with National leader Rob Borbidge saying that OPV, quote, can effectively be a first-past-the-post system.

Labor was less certain, but showed an openness to ending OPV.

Despite Labor's obvious frustration with the Greens, that didn't show up much in the preference flows.

If Russ Hinze hadn't had a traffic accident around Springwood one morning on his way into the office in the early '80s, 40-odd years ago, it wouldn't be anywhere near as good as it currently [chuckles] is.

If Rob Borbidge hadn't been the premier, uh, the member for Surfers Paradise, uh, in the mid-'90s, it wouldn't be anywhere near as good as it currently is.

We need to actually have alternate routes.

You can't have one road because all it takes is one prang in one lane and eight, eight lanes are beggared up.