Campbell Newman argues green credentials

AAP-march,27-The environment is shaping up as a key battleground in Queensland's next election as a new poll shows the Liberal National Party's (LNP's) Campbell Newman is set to wallop Premier Anna Bligh.
The first poll since the Brisbane lord mayor announced his switch to state politics shows Queenslanders would deliver the opposition an extra 33 seats in a landslide victory.
The Sunday-Mail's Galaxy Poll shows Mr Newman has lifted the LNP's two-party preferred vote to 58 per cent, over Labor's 42 per cent.
Mr Newman, who will be installed as the opposition's partyroom leader once his state nomination is validated on April 3, recorded 51 per cent support in the preferred premier stakes compared with Ms Bligh's 38 per cent.
The poll also shows Mr Newman would win his contested seat of Ashgrove, despite the 7.1 per cent margin held by the incumbent Environment Minister Kate Jones.
The leadership switch has knocked the wind out of the premier's comeback following the cyclone and floods crises.
Only late last month a poll showed she gained 23 percentage points as preferred premier to hold a 58-33 lead over former leader John-Paul Langbroek.
Mr Newman said Queenslanders were "desperately unhappy" with Labor.
"There is now a team of people who are a viable alternative and whenever the premier has an election, we'll be there with positive policies, but more importantly, energy and leadership to take the state forward," he told reporters.
Asked whether he could replicate the Labor government annihilation in the NSW poll on Saturday, he said: "I think there is such an anger out there that people are ready for a change."
But Ms Bligh said voters punished parties who let unelected people take over the party, like NSW Labor and Queensland's LNP.
"If you are a party that cares more about yourself than your people, then people will judge you harshly and punish you," she said.
"There's only one party that's behaving like that in Queensland and that's the Liberal National Party."
Asked about the Galaxy poll, Ms Bligh said she would not be distracted by electioneering or polling.
"You might as well examine the entrails of a goat than try to get anything out of these sorts of numbers," she told reporters.
With Mr Newman set to take on the environment minister as he tries to enter parliament, he has already begun talking up his environmental credentials.
He met reporters in a suburban reserve in Ashgrove on Sunday to list off council projects he'd been involved in, like the carbon offsetting of council vehicles.
At the same time, Ms Bligh and Ms Jones travelled to North Stradbroke Island on Sunday to declare a new national park - called Naree Budjong Djara - over 20 per cent of the island.
The declaration follows an earlier announcement to fast track the end of sand mining so three quarters of the island can be protected within 10 years.
Ms Bligh said half of the island would be permanently protected by the end of 2011 as the government transforms it "from a mining island to an island paradise".
Mr Newman stopped short of saying he would reverse what the government was doing on the island, but said he had concerns about how many jobs were at risk with sand mining coming to an end.
"If we're in government, we will have very clear policies about how we'll protect the environment and accommodate mining," he said.
"And we won't, in an effort to buy Green preferences and Greens support in what they see obviously as a difficult election for them, just make decisions that will cost jobs."