On 18 March 2011, "Nine News Queensland" Spencer Jolly reported that the LNP's organisational wing was engineering a plan to make Newman the leader of the LNP. According to Jolly, party president Bruce McIver was trying to arrange for Bruce Flegg, the former leader of the Queensland Liberals and the MP for Moggill, the only safe LNP seat in Brisbane at the time, to resign and hand his seat to Newman. Under this plan, once Newman was safely in the legislature, he would have challenged Opposition Leader John-Paul Langbroek—who, like Newman, is from the Liberal side of the LNP merger—for the leadership of the LNP. Newman subsequently acknowledged he had been approached about moving up to state politics. Although he did not rule out running in the next state election he stated that, for the time being, he was committed to serving out his term as lord mayor and running for re-election in 2012.