Not quite the campaign we had expected, and it’s left Crisafulli looking a little the worse for wear
The final days of this election campaign are as much about who will be on the podium for the 2032 Olympics and Paralympics as they are about who will sit on the Treasury benches of the Queensland Parliament in December this year. David Fagan explains
The lame campaign of the Liberal National Party puts them at risk of being weakened from the start if they achieve, as is universally expected, a majority this Saturday.
But a week out, the majority will not be what was widely expected two months ago. A combined Labor and Greens seat count looks like being in the high 30s at this stage, putting a combined LNP/Katter Australia Party count in the 50s.
This is a good majority – at the level Wayne Goss achieved when he won government in 1989.
But the conduct of this campaign has weakened David Crisafulli as a leader who can command the full respect of his party and the respect from the community he needs if he is to do anything other than depart from a script.
Steven Miles has put scratch marks on Crisafulli which will easily turn to scars. In their debate, he sucker-punched him into agreeing to resign if crime did not fall.
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And Labor has shown Crisafulli cannot control elements of his partyroom due to his ducking and weaving on whether his government might bring on legislation that could reverse Labor’s abortion law reforms.
The Labor campaign line that Crisafulli and the LNP are anti-women is damaging and not easy to combat, even if sanity prevails and no one tries to reverse Queensland’s abortion laws. Any government action that can be painted as anti-women will play to this narrative.
All parties – even now they have the benefit of fixed and longer terms – aspire to achieve at least two terms so they can really put their stamp on government. But this requires both authority and a bank of popularity right from the beginning of a term.
Right now, Crisafulli’s authority is less than it should be, given the discipline of his leadership up until the start of this campaign. And the YouGov poll in The Courier-Mail shows his popularity has not risen as it should as voters have got to know him.
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In fact, assuming he wins, he will start his premiership with a barely positive and declining net approval, giving him few cards to trade as the going gets tougher.
And the going will get tougher. It is hard to reduce crime. It is hard to reform the health system to reduce emergency waiting times. It is hard to reform the entire energy system. And it’s impossible to do what conservative governments most stand for – prudent financial management – if there is no reduction of the public service and no asset sales.
A thought borrowed from the sometimes reviled, sometimes revered British political adviser, Alistair Campbell is that successful governments need the right combination of purpose and the right means of communicating it. Ideally, this is positive, not defensive.
The Newman Government had purpose but no ability to communicate it, the Palaszczuk Government had neither, the Miles Government has little purpose but improving communication skills.
Right now, a Crisafulli Government looks closer to a Palaszczuk Government on this spectrum – elected as a sort of revenge killing from an electorate just plain sick of Labor.
The campaign should be the opportunity to change this. But it hasn’t been. David Crisafulli has looked evasive when confronted with an issue (abortion law reform) that wasn’t in his script.
In government, he has promised a lot in the first few months – new penalties for juvenile offenders, cleaning up Labor’s stadium mess and reducing emergency department waiting times top the list.
As reported here, he will also want to fill some senior public service roles – there will be new Directors-General of Premier and Cabinet, Health and Energy by Easter. And a new Under-Treasurer. Add to that a likely shakeout of government boards.
And the frontbench that will carry his government to a fighting chance in 2028 will need to change quickly. No one on either side of politics, for instance, believes that Ros Bates will stay Health Minister longterm.
She has been effective at highlighting the negatives of the portfolio she shadows but it is hard to see her switching to boosting its strengths (and there are many) in government.
All of this adds up to Labor being able to recover from its loss to mount an effective opposition. If Crisafulli doesn’t gain authority and personal approval, it will be a relatively short opposition and the Olympics officials will be sharing a stage in 2032 with Premier Shannon Fentiman or whomever succeeds her.
