After the Voice, the LNP’s lean, mean division machine finds a new gear

Not even five months ago, David Crisafulli was adamant. The leader of Queensland’s LNP state opposition was never going to miss a chance at a new way to do good for the state’s Indigenous communities.

Unless a better political chance got in the way, it seems.

David Crisafulli has sought to differentiate his party’s state team from the brutal politics of their federal counterparts. Then, he embraced it.Credit: Matt Dennien

And in taking last week’s first major policy action to drop previously bipartisan support for the Path to Treaty process, Crisafulli has given us a glimpse of the full lean, mean, division machine of the LNP – regardless of the words otherwise.

Now three years into this term of parliament, with Thursday marking one year to the next state election, the LNP have so far been keen to make clear at every occasion their focus on (relatively) less politically charged issues while making them exactly that.

Think cost of living, crime, health and housing. Issues the party says Queenslanders are speaking to them about in conversations fuelling their glossy weekend election blueprint full of further bullet-pointed nods to “hope over fear”, but still little detail.

While any LNP bill introduced to parliament is (to be fair) doomed under the weight of Labor’s majority, this hasn’t stopped all other parties using them to drive debate and consultation on their policies. The LNP broke an almost three-year drought this month with an issue far from their stated kitchen table focus.

And Crisafulli himself, since taking the party’s top job after the October 2020 election, has been at pains to position himself as a beacon of reasonableness; careful to consider issues before coming to a position or even weighing in.

The Voice was a key example of this.

How such an image gels with last week’s blatant political 180 to chase votes, appease party members, throw a spanner in the works of Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s sometimes reactive approach to governing, or a combination of all three, is less clear.

Crisafulli’s team had previously managed to avoid poisoning the Path to Treaty program with the lies, misinformation and inflammatory language seen in the Voice debate – the opposite, in fact.

But instead of continuing efforts to guide the community on the state treaty process launched in 2019 and leading years into the future yet, Crisafulli leaned into the tactic of his federal party counterpart Peter Dutton and the No campaign: repeat the word divisive until, and hoping, people believe it.

I asked Crisafulli at his press conference last week about the mere days he took to make the Path to Treaty call, driven by the resounding rejection of an unrelated referendum question and which he later confirmed was not flagged with any Indigenous leaders despite having “consulted widely”.

“To not take a decision would have just continued the division,” he said of the “bruising” Voice debate led by his own federal colleagues he was apparently seeking to avoid by taking this stance.

“Myself and my team weren’t part of that divisive debate.”

His state parliamentary team may not have been directly part of the debate, but they have wasted no time seeking to benefit from the handiwork of federal colleagues at the expense of the state’s First Nations peoples – and offered little.

The independent Interim Truth and Treaty Body guiding the state process, and including former Brisbane Liberal lord mayor Sallyanne Atkinson alongside its Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander members, said as much on Friday.

Internal Labor confusion sparked by Palaszczuk’s reaction to the LNP backtrack was later, and clumsily, ironed over by a handful of ministers and the Premier herself. (Labor will continue with a truth-telling inquiry from next year. But the treaties beyond are now suggested to need bipartisan support).

On Friday, Crisafulli sought to capitalise on this, too. “Our position is very clear, and we believe that is the clearest way to make sure Queenslanders know we’ve listened, and we’re keen to unite.”

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