Qld referendum looks likely to pass

Queensland's opposition has attributed an apparent late surge of support for fixed parliamentary terms to Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, though it doesn't mean it as a compliment.

Shadow attorney-general Ian Walker says Ms Palaszczuk's threat to call an early election following the defection of MP Rob Pyne to the crossbench two weeks ago may have helped convince voters of the need for fixed four-year terms.

"Ironically, I think that the premier's browbeating of people about a call to an early election actually turned the tables," he told reporters on Sunday.

The "yes" vote appears to have prevailed at Saturday's referendum, with 53 per cent of votes counted so far in favour of the change as of Sunday afternoon, just a week after a poll showed the campaign was set to fail.

The Galaxy poll, published in The Courier-Mail on Monday, found only 43 per cent of voters supported the change and prompted a last minute bipartisan campaign push by the LNP and Labor, who support the change.

Ms Palaszczuk said the apparent success of the "yes" vote would bring Queensland into line with other states.

"Elections for every other mainland state and local governments in Queensland are held on a fixed date every four years. It works for them, it can work for us," she said.

Opposition Leader Lawrence Springborg said it was the first referendum to succeed in Queensland in more than a century and the first in Australian history to have been put forward initially by the opposition party.

"The remarkable thing about this was that a bill put forward from the opposition, a significant referendum question ...(is likely) the first one to pass in over 100 years," he said.

But Mr Springborg failed to convince voters in his own seat of Southern Downs of the argument, with just over 50 per cent there opposed to the change, according to the Electoral Commission of Queensland.

But Katter's Australia Party leader Robbie Katter said the outcome was "a terrible result for democracy".

Mr Katter's party has led the campaign against the change to fixed four-year terms, arguing it would allow bad governments to stay in power a year longer and that the state's democracy already suffered due to the lack of an upper house.

He said the timing of the referendum, which occurred alongside local government elections, meant many people didn't really understand what they were voting on.

"I think people were generally uneducated, I had a number of people calling me up and saying 'What on earth is this about?'," he told AAP on Sunday.

"I think it was just lost in the noise of the local government elections."

The LNP opposition has suggested strengthening the role of parliamentary committees as a way of overcoming concerns about the impact of the switch to four-year terms on democracy.