MALCOLM Turnbull is preoccupied with the budget, but sooner rather than later he is going to have to cast his eyes northward to deal with what is looming as a very big problem for the Coalition.
Ten months after it was formed in controversial circumstances with the merging of the state coalition partners, Queensland's Liberal National Party has no strategy in place for fighting the federal election next year.
Extraordinary as it may seem, nobody in the LNP has the faintest idea of whether there will be Liberal and Nationals candidates standing at the poll in a state that is crucial to Turnbull's electoral prospects.
The alternative is to stand candidates from the LNP, the party that supposedly had put an end to brawling and rivalry between the Liberals and Nationals.
In an admission that will have Labor rubbing its hands in glee, federal Liberal frontbencher Ian Macfarlane says: "Whether there are Liberals standing as Liberals, or Nationals standing as Nationals, or Liberals and Nationals standing for the LNP, has not been decided."
Nor is it certain that the LNP will be able to conduct the election campaign from its Brisbane headquarters, with some senior Liberals wanting extensive involvement from their federal party to keep the Queensland ex-Nationals in check.
It is dawning on federal Coalition strategists that the LNP was formed primarily to get the hapless Lawrence Springborg elected as premier in the state poll in March.
Already a two-time election loser, Springborg failed again when Labor was in deep trouble. Voters in southeast Queensland rejected a party they saw as dominated by rural-based Nationals.
The political ineptitude of the LNP was reflected in its election of Springborg as deputy leader after his third poll loss.
Another indication of the LNP's electoral stupidity was Springborg's ostracism of former federal minister Mal Brough, once one of the Coalition's shining lights in Queensland, who has left his home state in disgust at his treatment.
Now, as they plan for the federal poll, the Liberals have woken up to the fact that this Queensland creation could make life difficult for Turnbull.
At the 2007 poll, the Coalition lost eight seats in Queensland, where the swing to Labor of 7.5 per cent was greater than the national swing.
In some key southeast Queensland seats, the anti-Liberal swing was much more: 19 per cent in Forde, southwest of Brisbane.
The Coalition needs to claw back substantial ground in Queensland and the preselection of electable candidates in those key seats is essential.
The state poll results suggest voters in and around Brisbane will not take kindly to LNP candidates associated with the Nationals.
What is worrying the Liberals is that with their superior numbers in the LNP, former Nationals will be preselected as candidates in seats the Coalition needs to win back from Labor but that the Liberals regard as their territory traditionally.
In Forde, for instance, former Nationals heavily outnumber former Liberals in the branches, so the LNP is expected to preselect lawyer Hajnal Bal, who was in the news recently over revelations she had her legs broken to lengthen them so she'd be taller.
The seat had been held by the Liberals until Labor won it at the previous election.
At the 2007 poll, when Bal stood as a National, she polled just 12 per cent of thevote.
In Brough's former seat of Longman, north of Brisbane, ex-Nationals are again expected to have the numbers to preselect one of their own in a former Liberal seat. The lingering bitterness over the LNP's creation has led hundreds of Liberal members to resign or fail to renew memberships, a development likely to cause difficulties on the ground at the election for the Coalition in some electorates, including Macfarlane's Toowoomba-based seat of Groom.
That the LNP has failed in its objective of removing longstanding animosity between the Queensland Liberals and Nationals is demonstrated in the fiasco surrounding plans by Nationals Senate leader Barnaby Joyce to switch to the lower house.
As The Australian revealed last week, Joyce has disbanded the plans because Liberal senator Russell Trood refuses to sit in the Nationals' partyroom in Canberra to make up the numbers for the Nationals if Joyce quits the Senate.
Joyce and Trood, of course, are supposed to be members of the same party, the Queensland LNP.