Fear and hoping in Brisvegas

Queenslanders are feeling it at the moment. But exactly what it is largely depends on the major party leader speaking.

After handing down her government’s ninth budget last week, driven by a record mountain of coal cash and filled with cost-of-living relief for residents, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk told a Labor Party fundraising lunch people could feel “it”.

Labor and the LNP are now firmly focused on an election still relatively well down the road.Credit: Matt Dennien

The “golden age of opportunity we are all facing” leading into the 2032 Olympics, that is, wrapped up in the government’s energy transition, pipeline of hospital builds or upgrades, and put at “risk” by the LNP.

Speaking to another Brisbane conference centre room of important suited types downing alternate-drop chicken or steak on Monday, Treasurer Cameron Dick described the state as an “ideas factory”.

Ministers plan to sell the government’s carefully crafted vision even further afield, even as the LNP Opposition warns of more “chaos and crisis”.

Surveys carried out for Brisbane Times by Resolve Strategic since April 2021 show that among the often slim minority who felt the outlook for the state would change in the next year or so, an increasing majority (32 per cent from January to April) felt things were going to get worse.

On a personal level, “get worse” is even closing in on the “no change” crowd.

The government’s budget and messaging around it appears pitched at part of this mood. There’s even more funding to improve how the government is responding to people’s concerns or ideas.

This has been the subject of independent reviews and a recent cabinet reshuffle to address problems on the housing, health and crime fronts, and the sometimes contradictory pressures stemming from experts, some sections of the community, and the LNP opposition.

But budgets are also a time for the opposition to spell out their own message and vision. Opposition leader David Crisafulli made his own budget-related pitch to voters on Thursday.

In the almost hour-long address to parliament, the Gold Coast-based MP made a handful of new announcements or commitments in Labor’s problem areas should voters decide to hand his party the keys in just over 16 months.

Some are already committed to by the government, have been recommended by government-led committees or are largely symbolic. Another was a three-step plan to “empower the public sector like never before” by moving away from the use of consultants.

A shift called for in last year’s review of government integrity and accountability itself but quickly seized upon by Labor for its historical echoes.

Crisafulli’s pitch also contained some other key phrases.

Eleven times he used the “chaos and crisis” label his party is now applying with gusto to the Palaszczuk government, in an attempt to paint issues facing Queenslanders as the fault of the Premier alone and not – in many cases – a more complex and politically inconvenient puzzle of national and even global factors, or in which the LNP also played a role.

He then finished trying to temper the tone. “Hope over fear,” Crisafulli declared a government led by him would provide. A platitude likely welcome to most but, so far, undercut by his party.

With Labor and the LNP now firmly focused on an election still relatively well down the road, both are trying to hit the reset button on their public problem areas early – fearing what happens if it doesn’t stick, but hoping it just might.

ICYMI

• Palaszczuk last week introduced the second piece of legislation (with more still to come) dealing with recommendations from last year’s government accountability report by professor Peter Coaldrake AO. This bill’s focus is mostly on boosting the powers and independence of integrity agencies, and strengthening lobbying regulation – including registration requirements for certain staff in consultant firms.
• After a brief day-and-a-bit return to umpiring duties in state parliament following a month off to prioritise his mental health, Speaker Curtis Pitt is now on leave again after MPs raised concerns about his wellbeing. Pitt said strong painkillers for back pain he will soon have surgery to deal with can leave him drowsy.

Heads up

• While Greens were first (substantially) out the gate, Labor and the LNP have now also started announcing key Brisbane council candidates ahead of the election in March. LNP Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner handed down his administration’s own pre-election budget on Wednesday.
• One member of the LNP’s state parliament team not running next October is Cleveland-based Oodgeroo MP Mark Robinson, set to “hang up his political boots” after five-terms. Attention now turns to his replacement, with former federal MP Andrew Laming declaring he’s keen to try, but plenty of speculation fellow federal figure Amanda Stoker (now Sky News host), may also throw her hat in the ring.