The Queensland state election next week is looking like a bad choice of movies; or deciding which way to return to the past. Paul Syvret with the curtain-raiser.
When it comes to politics, Queensland could be considered the baseball bat state.
When a second-term Labor government was hammered into minority government at the polls in 1995, then Premier Wayne Goss said that voters were so cross with the Keating government federally they were “sitting on their verandahs with baseball bats” waiting for the writs to be issued.
Similarly, in 2012, Labor Premier Anna Bligh (who assumed the leadership after Peter Beattie’s retirement in 2007) led a tired government to a catastrophic defeat against a Campbell Newman-led LNP. Labor lost 44 seats to be reduced to just seven members in the then 89-seat parliament.
Just three years later, the hubris and often brutal politics of the Newman tenure saw the baseball bats come out again, with Labor’s Annastacia Palaszczuk leading her party to an extraordinary come-from-behind victory.
Fast forward to 2024, with Queenslanders heading to the polls on October 26. The ALP has been in power for close to 30 of the last 35 years, and Labor Premier Steven Miles is leading a third-term government viewed as tired, lacking any grand vision, and floundering on hot-button issues such as housing and law and order – specifically youth crime.
Polls are pointing to another electoral catharsis event in a state that, when it decides to change direction, often tends to do so in quite a ferocious fashion.
Uninspiring campaigns
It is, to date, a singularly uninspiring campaign. The LNP under David Crisafulli has adopted a small target “not Labor” strategy that would defeat most electron microscopes. His shadow Treasurer has been nigh on invisible, policy costings non-existent and platitudes abounding.
For its part, Labor is throwing the proverbial kitchen sink at a jaded electorate: 50 cent public transport fares (a seriously sensible policy for a state grappling with the traffic congestion and road infrastructure challenges of roaring population growth), a $1.4B free school lunch scheme, state-owned petrol stations and a state-owned electricity retailer just for starters.
Closing Down Sale! Stephen Miles’ Queensland budget channels Rishi Sunak and his Tories
This belated flurry of policy activity – along with bread and butter commitments on health, housing, policing and renewable energy – all seems a bit too much too late for a nine-year-old government widely perceived as tired and moribund in the post-COVID years. There has been little in the way of long-term strategic vision a la Peter Beattie’s Smart State program of 20 years ago.
Worse, many of the big-ticket programs Labor has championed have suffered from inept oversight and governance – the planning for the 2032 Olympic Games and massive cost overruns, delays and safety issues on the multi-billion dollar Cross River Rail project being cases in point.
Add into this the same housing affordability issues and cost of living pressures being experienced around the country – then throw in a tabloid media frenzy about youth crime – and you have the recipe for an “It’s Time” level electoral drubbing.
Labor losing union support
Further, Labor has also lost the support of many of Queensland’s blue-collar unions following its decision to wholeheartedly back the Albanese government’s attack on the CFMEU, despite there being no evidence of any corruption or criminal activity in the Queensland branch of the union. This has seen the ALP refuse to accept donations from the CFMEU, and other unions, such as the ETU, withdraw not only party funding but also the all-important mobilisation of members for on-the-ground campaign work.
Lastly, Steven Miles has not really had the time to win the confidence of the electorate. As Peter Beattie pointed out at Labor’s campaign launch last weekend, when he stepped down, he gave Anna Bligh two years of clear air ahead of the next election. Steven Miles had just nine months:
“Transition is all about what’s good for Queenslanders,” Beattie said in a thinly veiled swipe at Annastacia Palaszczuk.
That’s what’s important. And that’s why when you have a transition you make sure that the person who is coming in has plenty of time.
Miles, a 46-year-old former trade union official, political advisor and public relations spruiker, is undeniably astute. In small gatherings, his intelligence and warmth come through, but at larger occasions and media events, he often comes across as stilted – as encapsulated by his oft-lampooned nervous giggle.
On the other side of the coin few Queenslanders would be able to tell you much about David Crisafulli at all. The 45-year-old former journalist and Townsville City Councillor won the Townsville seat of Mundingburra in 2012, only to lose it in 2015 in the Campbell Newman implosion. He then relocated (not full-time) to the safe LNP seat of Broadwater on the Gold Coast, which he won in 2017.
Conservative Liberals
While describing himself as a centrist, his policies – at least those that have been detailed – are archetypically conservative: “adult crime-adult time’’ and boot camps for wayward youths, winding back Queensland’s emission and renewable energy targets and withdrawing from Queensland’s path to an Indigenous treaty for example.
In the last ten days, he’s also struggled to define the LNP’s position on issues including abortion and Voluntary Assisted Dying (VAD). After the vast majority of LNP parliamentarians voted against both a bill to decriminalise abortion (2018) and legalise VAD (2021), Crisafulli has been blindsided by a vow from Katter’s Australian Party (KAP – which has three seats in Queensland’s 93-seat Parliament) to introduce a private members bill to repeal these pieces of legislation.
Suffice to say, based on previous voting patterns, if a conscience vote was allowed on such a repeal bill a majority LNP government with support from KAP and (possibly if elected) One Nation would likely drag Queensland back decades on the social reform agenda.
And in a unicameral parliament a majority of one is all that is needed to ram legislation through without any prospect of review by an upper house.
In short, for Steven Miles and Labor – despite the bravura of the recent campaign launch – it now seems like a mission to save as much of the furniture as possible, including the at-risk seats of potential future leaders such as Meaghan Scanlon on the Gold Coast.
For Queensland Labor, the baseball scenario right now is not so much Field of Dreams as it is the baseball bat beheading sequence in the zombie classic Return of the Living Dead.
Recovering former Murdoch columnist. Proud unionist, lover of cats, beaches, heavy metal, horror and Z grade films and cryptic crosswords.