Promising humility, the LNP launch parliament with hubris

Premier David Crisafulli and his new cabinet were clear before the election – and since – they would do what they said they would.

Their much-touted Making Queensland Safer laws were going to be the first introduced and the “first legislative priority”.

And despite vowing to push this through without usual scrutiny, the government would bring a “fresh start” with humility and decency.

Queensland Premier David Crisafulli’s LNP government promised its first priority would be tougher youth crime laws. But its first day in parliament was focused on something else.Credit: Matt Dennien

Within just hours of the first question time under the new parliamentary norm, Crisafulli made good on one part of this.

The Making Queensland Safer Bill was indeed the first set of laws introduced. But it won’t be the first passed.

That badge will fall to a separate bill ostensibly about setting up the LNP’s new 100-day review of 2032 Games planning.

Except that’s not all within it.

Contained in the bill, rushed through in just four hours with no standard committee scrutiny, are clauses to honour a promise not said to have been a priority: ending the Path to Treaty.

This element will repeal the landmark laws of that name passed early last year in Cairns with full-throated support from Crisafulli.

He and the LNP, spinning it as avoiding the very divisiveness they were leaning into, U-turned after the failed, unrelated federal Voice referendum.

The laws had set up the First Nations Truth-Telling and Healing Inquiry (which began in September), and preparations for treaties.

Despite the 180, Crisafulli had not made winding-up the inquiry a priority. It did not feature in his first 100-day plan.

I asked him about this myself at the second leaders debate of the campaign. “We will do it in a timely manner,” he said.

“We won’t be allowing those to go ahead, but it will be done with respect and decency,” he told journalists after the election of the inquiry’s planned hearings.

This was news to the inquiry at the time. As was the news of its almost immediate end on Thursday.

Holding a hasty media conference after Deputy Premier Jarrod Bleijie briefly revealed the move in parliament, inquiry chair Joshua Creamer said emails went to him and his team at the same time.

“I have a different view about what respect and dignity is to the Premier,” Creamer said.

“I think the ability of this inquiry to exert our independence, to do the work that we thought was in the public interest, and prioritising the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island people, was perceived by them to be a threat.”

Earlier, Crisafulli had introduced the hardline youth justice laws long promised by his team, said today to be just the first effort to “strike back” at youth crime rates having seen recent upticks and high-profile cases, but still at historical lows.

These will boost maximum sentences for kids who commit a range of crimes, ensure detention is no longer considered a last resort in sentencing those aged under 17, significantly boost the openness of the Children’s Court, and expand what can be included in a child’s criminal record while allowing it to carry with them into adulthood.

The impact of this, as cautioned by a raft of advocacy and watchdog bodies before the election and in a media conference of their own today, will be more kids pulled deeper into the criminal justice system despite global evidence making clear this does not make for safer communities in the longer term.

Garth Morgan, chief executive of the Queensland Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island Child Protection Peak also tasked with leading broader youth justice work, made clear the focus needed.

“The reason why we’re talking about tough on crime now isn’t because we haven’t been tough enough on crime in the past, it’s because we haven’t been tough enough on poverty,” he said.

The laws will also, for the third time in two year (twice earlier under the former Labor government which set them up) require an override of the state’s human rights act.

Labor’s opposition leader Steven Miles hit out at the LNP for trashing parliamentary conventions his own party often also pushed aside. But the hypocrisy doesn’t discount the substance.

A statement released with the youth justice laws notes already straining youth detention capacity will be further pushed, and First Nations kids will likely be disproportionately affected, but claims they “will not directly or indirectly discriminate based on race”.

Ruby Wharton, a Gomeroi Kooma woman and community development officer at Sisters Inside, was one of those who spoke against the laws outside parliament after Morgan.

“This state is committing to so many different avenues and ways in which to silence First Nations children. This is our future. We must leave this community in a safer environment,” she said.

Bleijie introduced the path to treaty-ending bill as 60 members of an Indigenous youth leadership program watched, and several reportedly cried, in the public gallery.

In dropping his support for the pathway last year, and since, Crisafulli has said his government would pursue better outcomes in health, education and housing instead of truth-telling and treaties.

The release of those plans are yet to be made a priority. Neither Crisafulli nor his ministers fronted media on Thursday.

Heads up

• Also among the group of stakeholder organisations and independent government bodies opposing the youth justice laws today, to be considered by a parliamentary committee reporting back the Friday before December’s sitting week, was the Youth Advocacy Centre. Its chair, Damien Atkinson, said the group would “look at ways to challenge this legislation”.

Catch up

• Another of the elements in the omnibus bill rushed through on Thursday was the return of 24-hour notice periods for union workplace health and safety permit holders to enter workplaces, except in exceptional circumstances, under the cloud over the CFMEU. Queensland Council of Unions general secretary Jacqueline King described the move, which will apply to all workplaces statewide, as “outrageous”.
• The government also introduced a bill to re-establish a state Productivity Commission, set to be tasked with reviewing the building sector.