The moment Brisbane lord mayor Campbell Newman announced in March last year he was quitting City Hall to make an audacious bid to become the next premier, the state"s ALP operatives swung into action. While Mr Newman"s complex web of family companies was known during his time at Brisbane City Council, it had not faced the close scrutiny of Labor campaigners who have been trained in the art of the dirt file. The full damage inflicted by the 12-month "slow-burn" campaign against Mr Newman is only now starting to become apparent and threatens his chance of being an MP. "The reason it"s been effective is because there is an element of truth involved in it you can"t just make stuff up," a senior Labor insider told The Australian Financial Review. "But the pieces of the puzzle are coming together now.”He got away with the conflicts as lord mayor but he didn"t have the scrutiny. He"s got it now." The man expected by many to be the next conservative premier is now under fire from all sides Labor over his private interests and developer donations, the unlikely alliance of environmentalists and farmers over coal seam gas and the Left and the Right over his stance on civil unions and gay marriage.

And to compound matters in what has been a stumbling campaign run by the LNP, he may not even win the seat of Ashgrove in order to allow him to enter parliament. Labor knows the LNP is likely to win the state election on March 24 but it is doing everything in its power to damage Newman, who, even if he does win Ashgrove, will be "damaged goods" as premier. There is little doubt Labor"s campaign against Mr Newman and his family"s business interests have been relentless and negative. But the ALP has form with fear campaigns, with former Prime Minister Paul Keating"s job on John Hewson"s planned goods and services tax in 1993 or the anti-Work Choices campaign in 2007.

Bruce Hawker is advising Premier Anna Bligh, but the Queensland campaign has been devised and executed by state secretary Anthony Chisholm. Since Mr Newman announced his tilt at state parliament, Labor started the work on casting the spotlight on his myriad of private companies. It did not matter that Mr Newman was not directly related to the companies, but the fact his wife, Lisa, was director and secretary to the parent firm, Frank Monsour Family Trust, meant they could create guilt by association.

Labor exploited the fact Mr Newman was ultra-defensive about his family and refused to budge as the "web" of company links to property development deals emerged. Even after a crisis meeting with LNP members, Mr Newman and his family late last year, he still did not make Lisa resign from the companies. A lodgement to the Australian Securities and Investment Commission by the family last November, in which Lisa Newman resigned from her positions in the family companies, was corrected the next day as an error by their accountants.
With its high quality products such as impact crusher and rotary kiln, Hongxing Machinery has ascended in the front rank of the world in the exporting of mining equipment.