On two fronts, Crisafulli’s week of wins shows the LNP’s hard road ahead

When LNP leader David Crisafulli took to the Queensland Media Club stage in July 2021, he was clear.

The public could judge his leadership on the internal renewal of the party he could foster to ensure half of the 14 most winnable seats in 2024 had more diverse candidates, he said.

Queensland Opposition Leader David Crisafulli watches the newest member of his parliamentary LNP team, Darren Zanow, speak to reporters Saturday’s Ipswich West byelection win. A full state election in October now awaits. Credit: Dan Peled

With 28 of his 34 MPs men, he was talking about women – but also candidates from culturally diverse backgrounds – to have his partyroom better represent the wider community.

“In order to be held accountable, I’ve set a target for more women in winnable seats, more parents, more people running small businesses who are given the flexibility to continue to do that and use their experience ... more people from multicultural backgrounds, more people who are Indigenous and or Torres Strait Islanders,” Crisafulli said back in 2021.

“And so that it can’t be trickery, and I pick examples of people in unwinnable seats, politics is a game of numbers, so I’m committing to you that that breadth of talent will come from the top 14 most marginal seats … that’s where I intend to focus my energy in attracting people to want to run for outside of politics and be part of the generational change that this state desperately needs.

“If I’m unable to do that, well, then the electorate’s going to hold me to account more so than any room of preselectors.”

Since then, Crisafulli has made a point of internal reform and discipline. His team does (mostly) act and sound different to his federal opposition colleagues Peter Dutton and David Littleproud. So far, this has been the focus of the leader more so than pitching much detailed policy or grand vision.

Fast-forward to last week, and Crisafulli announced LNP members in 10 of those key seats had preselected women to face voters in October – three better than the seven he set out to make happen. There’s cultural diversity among the group, too.

He can certainly point to this as a positive, and a win. However, it also shows how far the party has to go.

The LNP’s team in the single-house Queensland parliament has the lowest proportion of women of any parliament in the country. Even if all 14 of his best-shot candidates were elected alongside sitting members to form government in October, that partyroom would still be two-thirds men.

(Labor’s quota rules require 45 per cent of those preselected in seats it holds, seats it could win, and the remaining electorates be women – which the party insists it’s on track to meet.)

After its weekend byelection win in Ipswich West, the LNP is now also only in need of 13 of those seats to form the parliamentary majority – plus a speaker – it is hoping to take from Labor after three terms and nine years in power.

It’s tempting to read the above-average anti-Labor swing as a crystal-ball like vision of the looming state election, as similarly sized swings against Campbell Newman’s LNP government seemed to foreshadow of the 2015 wipeout that installed Annastacia Palaszczuk as premier.

Polling across last year showed Labor’s support souring below the LNP under Palaszczuk. The little since, and byelection results, suggest Miles has done little yet to convince voters (and his fellow Labor MPs) he can turn things around – something likely to be a sore point pushed hard by the LNP as parliament returns this week.

Nor would the falling Labor vote in key inner Brisbane council areas at those weekend elections be comforting party figures about the risk from the Greens on the left, as living costs continue to bite and the government is handed a politically tricky 2032 Games venue review to respond to.

But we should be cautious. Byelections – like polling – are a snapshot in time, not a prediction. Though they can etch new points along a broader trend.

As the ABC’s Antony Green reminded last week, the Beattie Labor government lost three seats in big byelection swings between August 2005 and April 2006, before winning them all back (and a fourth term in government) at the wider election that September.

It took another election win by Labor under his successor Anna Bligh before the Newman LNP was able to pull off the landslide win that gave it government for three of the mere five years it has held it since 1989.

Despite the appearance of an advantage recent trends seem to suggest Crisafulli is collecting, this is another area where his LNP still has serious ground to cover.

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