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Polls narrow but LNP favoured to beat Labor amid Queensland election shenanigans

by Paul Syvret | Oct 25, 2024 | Comment & Analysis, Latest Posts

More stunts than policies from the LNP as Queenslanders head to the polls this weekend in what appears a fairly sure victory for David Crisafulli’s Liberal Party. Paul Syvret reports.

Even by the colourful standards of Queensland politics it was a bizarre, bordering on the farcical, campaign scene: 

A televised Deputy Leaders’ debate sponsored by the state’s dominant Murdoch-owned paper, The Courier-Mail, against a bright blue studio backdrop and a live audience, with the paper’s state political editor “moderating” a debate between Deputy Premier and Treasurer Cameron Dick and … wait for it, wait for it … a cardboard cut-out of the LNP Deputy Leader Jarrod Bleijie.

The cut-out was assisted by a wheel of fortune featuring Bleijie’s most oft-repeated platitudes which was to be spun whenever it was the cardboard conservative’s turn to speak. Juvenile perhaps, but also apposite for a man fond of stunts such as wearing a stuffed rat on his shoulder in parliament.

Head kicker too busy

With just two days until polling day, Bleijie – who relishes his role as the Opposition’s chief head kicker and slinger of undergraduate epithets – maintained he was “too busy” on the campaign trail to front up to such a public forum.

Thus it was left to the Deputy Premier to spin his interpretation of LNP policies on the eve of an election that all polls – while narrowing – point to Labor losing after nine years in office.

Bleijie – a dapper conservative and arch-monarchist from the UK Tory Party mould with a penchant for pocket squares – was Attorney-General in the short-lived Campbell Newman government.  This was a government with a majority unprecedented in Australian parliaments that quickly alienated voters with its hubris, brutal public service cuts, sales of public assets and fights with key constituencies such as doctors and the judiciary.

The vacuum left by Bleijie’s contempt for public and media scrutiny on Thursday (ridiculed even by The Courier-Mail) is deeply redolent of the arrogance of the Newman years, with a feeling on both sides of politics now that while Labor’s odds of clinging to power are longer than a Christopher Nolan film, voters may not deliver the electoral bloodbath widely expected a few months ago.

Queensland Deputy leaders debate

What will LNP bring?

Which begs the question what would a first term LNP government under David Crisafulli actually do, given that beyond punitive law and order reforms policy detail is tissue thin? There is a definite feeling that many voters who had grown understandably disillusioned with a tired third term Labor government are questioning what exactly an LNP government would bring, beyond “not Labor”.

We do know the LNP have said they will abolish a raft of taxes including stamp duty and the GP payroll tax and has pledged to reduce the state’s debt – allegedly without cutting services – at the same time as maintaining popular (and expensive) Labor initiatives such as 50 cent public transport and generous energy rebates.  As of 48 hours before election day no costings have been provided on any front, with savings coming from a “productivity review”.  

After the Newman experience, the state’s public sector workers are understandably edgy, and speculation abounds as to what public assets may be dressed up for sale.

Vague plan but pro-coal

We also know that an LNP government would abandon Queensland’s renewable energy targets, dump the Burdekin pumped hydro project, keep Queensland’s fleet of coal fired power stations running indefinitely, and possibly kill off future wind farm development.  Again, no detailed energy and emissions reduction plan, and no costings.

What has been spelt out in sometimes eyebrow-raising detail is the LNP’s Dickensian plans on the youth crime front, which includes a commitment to “adult crime = adult time”, boot camps, and solitary confinement for incarcerated children who refuse to toe the line in the iron motel.

While the youth crime epidemic scare campaign has been brutally effective, it is at odds with recent statistics showing youth crime rates actually falling, not that you’d get that impression reading the Murdoch newspapers or watching commercial television news.

Ye olde tough on crime

For the conservatives, tough on crime has always been viewed as a winning platform in Queensland ever since the days of Joh Bjelke-Petersen. Hence, the LNP has also pledged to dump Labor’s “three strikes” drugs policy which allows people caught with small amounts of drugs for personal use three chances before facing criminal charges – despite pleas from both police and the medical profession that this is a retrograde step that criminalises people who need a health intervention, not prosecution. 

Likewise, with the annual “Schoolies” bacchanal on the Gold Coast looming in November, Crisafulli has said he will take a “hard on drugs” approach and scrap the government’s pill testing program … just as Queensland authorities have detected a new ketamine-related drug, CanKet, in circulation.  With 20,000 unsupervised teenagers descending on one of the drug capitals of Australia to party what could possibly go wrong?

Possible abortion repeal

Questions remain unanswered on other hot button issues, with a possible repeal of the state’s abortion and voluntary assisted dying laws sucking oxygen out of the campaign in the past 10 days.  It remains unclear what a majority Crisafulli government would do when faced with a possible repeal bill moved by one of the minor conservative parties.  Is it status quo, or conscience vote, the latter of which could go down to the wire and take Queensland hurtling back into the past?

In short you have vagaries at best on major economic issues (where Queensland is performing pretty well by most measures), and what looks like a return to hard-line social conservatism on many fronts.

Whether Crisafulli and his pugilistic deputy have learned from the mistakes of the Newman experiment remains to be seen, but based on current evidence, for Queensland it looks like a case of Here We Joh Again.

Queensland election: Field of Dreams, or Return of the Living Dead?

Paul Syvret

Recovering former Murdoch columnist. Proud unionist, lover of cats, beaches, heavy metal, horror and Z grade films and cryptic crosswords.

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