Premier facing tough first weeks after pandemic-era electoral success

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk is under pressure to deliver a budget and make a decision on border restrictions within weeks as she picks her frontbench team and faces a new opponent after the LNP leader quit on Monday.

The pandemic was not the only unprecedented element in last weekend's Queensland election: it was the first contested by two women vying for a fixed-four year term. It also marked the first real test of Queensland's electoral pulse since federal Labor’s 2019 drubbing north of Brisbane.

Many had seen ominous signs for state Labor in this battle, despite holding government for 26 of the past 31 years, in its hopes of retaining a majority. The limited public polling available before election day, by which a record number of the state's 3.3 million enrolled voters had already had their say, suggested the same.

Instead, the party looks likely to claim at least 50 seats – and up to 52 – in the unicameral parliament of 93, cementing Ms Palaszczuk’s place among the state's Labor greats. Dropping only South Brisbane to the Greens, this would represent a net gain of four seats from the 2017 result, on the back of a statewide swing of 4.8 per cent.

Claiming victory on Saturday night, a beaming Ms Palaszczuk acknowledged it had not been an easy year for many, while leaning on her government's handling of the pandemic and promising her team would "roll up our sleeves" to tackle the economic challenges ahead.

LNP leader Deb Frecklington vowed to stay on as leader on Saturday. Her party appears likely to have lost five seats to Labor, for a total of 34, while gaining a 2.1 per cent boost to its statewide primary vote.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk with her dog Winton and her nephew Harry and his dog Oakey before a press conference at Rocks Riverside Park in Brisbane on Sunday.Credit: Glenn Hunt

On Monday, the Nanango MP changed tack and cited a desire to spend more time with family when announcing she would quit as leader after the official result was declared, on the back of a "difficult" year for the Opposition.

Between the major parties, they accounted for a combined share of 76.1 per cent of primary votes, up from 69.1 at the 2017 poll. Analysts have put this in part to a pandemic-era return to the major parties amid poor showings from One Nation and Clive Palmer's United Australia Party.

Despite a multimillion-dollar "spoiler" effort in the vein of his attempts to keep Bill Shorten's Labor out of power and a fielding a record 55 candidates, the UAP only managed a primary vote of just 0.58 per cent – less than the Legalise Cannabis Party.

But the key minor party story turned out to be the collapse of One Nation. Senator Pauline Hanson's near invisibility on the campaign, despite her Queensland-born party fielding an unprecedented number of candidates, had been a harbinger of the result for some.

An almost halving of the party’s vote to below 7 per cent, a large portion of which flowed to Labor, was tempered by their MP in the central Queensland seat of Mirani landing another term with a swing of about 3 per cent.

The pandemic featured heavily across the almost-presidential major party campaigns, largely played out through the lens of jobs and borders. Both leaders donned high-vis (at least once) on more than half the days, pitching long-term road infrastructure projects and manufacturing announcements to combat an unemployment rate now the highest in the nation at 7.7 per cent.

And despite the outsized influence of tourism on the state's economy, the topic was little mentioned and left the struggling sector sweating – particularly around the key battlegrounds of Cairns and Townsville where the LNP leant more heavily on their proposal for a controversial youth curfew trial.

A cluster of Labor-held marginal seats around both northern cities was a major focus for both parties. Sandbagging attempts seem to have paid off for Ms Palaszczuk, who made three flights to Townsville, while Ms Frecklington's cast a vote in the city on Saturday – her fifth visit of the campaign.

North Queensland voters saw a lot of Annastacia Palaszczuk this campaign.Credit: Matt Dennien

To offset feared losses in the north and former deputy and treasurer Jackie Trad's South Brisbane seat wiping out Labor’s majority, Ms Palaszczuk also campaigned heavily in the LNP's Gold Coast stronghold where the ALP have emerged as a genuine contender.

After attempts to differentiate itself from the government's response – largely around borders and a perceived lack of compassion on exemptions, with the help of federal and NSW counterparts – the LNP eventually fell in behind the health advice from chief health officer Jeannette Young.

NSW Premier Gladys Berejiklian seemed to unintentionally step too far in the final week of the campaign when outlining her conversations with the LNP leader who wanted the borders opened "months ago".

Her comments put the highly stage-managed LNP campaign on the back foot. Leaked internal polling in the months prior had also not helped impressions of a party divided.

Labor was shaken slightly by the appearance of union-backed messaging to "put the LNP last" beside candidate material, against the publicly stated position of the party. Integrity issues had plagued the Palaszczuk government in the months and years prior to the poll and the Opposition had sought to capitalise on this, urging voters to not forget Labor’s other "failures" around unemployment and ballooning debt.

For its part, Labor pushed hard on Ms Frecklington's role in the Newman government, whose attempts to balance the budget meant it swept 14,000 public servants from jobs after a landslide victory in 2012.

The major party campaigns ultimately boiled down to Ms Palaszczuk's calls for voters to stick with her throughout the pandemic recovery after an earlier LNP push to open the border, set against her opponent's attempts to cast doubt on Labor's ability to steer the state through the crisis.

Ms Frecklington's message was amplified briefly by Prime Minister Scott Morrison in the campaign's second week. Locked out of the state under quarantine requirements himself, Anthony Albanese became the first federal Labor leader to not join his Queensland counterpart on the hustings since at least 2009.

The federal ramifications of the result appear to be an acceptance by senior Labor members of a need to tweak the policy mix it takes into the next election, while Coalition figures have largely written it off as a benefit of incumbency.

With a majority government now looking certain for Labor, its frontbench will face a mammoth task. Only Deputy Premier and Health Minister Steven Miles and Treasurer Cameron Dick are set to keep their roles amid the retirement of three key ministers.

The Treasurer in particular will be in for a busy first month back, with Ms Palaszczuk promising a budget handed down before Christmas that is expected to flag total government debt of beyond $100 billion by June.

Under continued pressure to relax the border and with a vaccine still a future hope, Ms Palaszczuk will also face a push from the business and tourism sector to further ease internal restrictions. Any change to the borders at this stage would not occur until December under now long-running conventions.

If she was feeling such pressure, the Premier looked relaxed arriving at a park in Brisbane’s south on Sunday with dogs Oakey and Winton in tow. "In this job, you have to listen to the experts and you have to communicate that to people, and that has stood us in good stead," she said.

The night before deputy LNP leader Tim Mander uttered three words as he entered the party's function, summing up the Opposition's election night and a gruelling 26-day campaign fought fiercely under firsts and unknowns.

"Where’s a drink?"

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