“Peter Beattie’s domination of Queensland politics appears to be on the slide, with evidence of a massive fall in voter support for one of the nation’s most popular Premiers ahead of two crucial by-elections this weekend,” Queensland political vet Shaun Parnell reports in The Australian today.

“Amid a furore over public hospital services, a Newspoll conducted exclusively for The Australian shows voters are fast losing faith in Mr Beattie, as anti-government sentiment hits levels not seen since the Coalition fell from grace in 1998.

“The Government and Opposition parties are now neck and neck, each with 50 per cent of the two-party-preferred vote, as Labor contemplates its lowest primary vote in seven years.”

That ain’t half of it. Queensland Labor is imploding with factional jostling not seen since Beattie took office. Events were triggered by the resignation of Beattie’s right hand man, strategist and back protector Terry Mackenroth last month. With him gone, the factions are all fighting to gain the upper hand in a well and truly divided Cabinet.

The movement of Labor advisors from various departments and some advisor exits to private business hasn’t helped Labor stability. Two more MPs are tipped to go, too – meaning two more by-elections for Premier Pete, two more than he wants right now.

Without an effective opposition, little in the electronic media and a cowed Courier Mail – Beattie is the only premier whose media homepage consists of a warning off rather than a list of press releases – Queenslanders are hearing little.

With the health department crisis and the Dr Death scandal claiming The Courier Mail’s front pages on a daily basis, the Labor backroom boys are scrambling to come up with a diversion, especially with the looming losses in the two by-elections this weekend predicted by in-house Labor polling.

The best the bruvvers can come up with is hints of developer and councillor corruption on the Gold Coast, Redlands Shire and Cairns Councils. The tip is that the non-party political but heavily conservative Gold Coast Council is about to be sacked in the fortnight following the expected Labor State by-election losses. This should divert attention from the losses after the inevitable poor showing by Labor.

Handily, such a move would also allow the Labor party machine a clear run at the 2008 Gold Coast council elections, with the Labor ticket free to grab some of those very same developer funds. The sacking will also dent the reputations of most of the nominal Liberal and National sitting councillors for future council or state contests.

It’s assumed that the Gold Coast Council sacking will take health issues off the front page for a while, but once these reappear Redland Shire Council will be in the Government’s sights.

During all of this The Courier Mail has been deafly quiet on the internal machinations of the Labor Party factional war. The Courier Mail has been doing all the dirty work for Local Government Minister Desley Boyle, firing plenty of arrows at the Gold Coast Council over recent days.

Yet the Labor brain drain – particularly Mackenroth’s departure – has lead the Labor back room boys down this path without clearly seeing the looming disaster for Labor ahead. The Queensland ALP gets plenty of its funding from developers, especially since Mackenroth created the Office of Urban Management, a quasi planning department. The path Labor is following will scare off donations.

The only question remaining is whether The Courier Mail will be brave enough to connect the dots and question the State Government over the donations from developers they have received – since many of these are the same developers who donated to Gold Coast councillors.