Queensland at a crossroad: Fight for state power comes down to the wire

Queenslanders should vote for change, because they deserve it. Or they shouldn’t, because change comes with risk.

This is the boiled-down version of the major parties’ final pitches to voters, some millions of whom will be yet to cast their ballots as polls open on Saturday morning.

Arguing for change is Liberal National Party leader David Crisafulli, who has driven a relatively disciplined opposition since Labor’s Annastacia Palaszczuk won majority government for a third term as the pandemic hit in 2020.

“As we go around Queensland, and I’ve spent four years doing it, Queenslanders overwhelmingly know they deserve better than they’re getting,” Crisafulli told journalists amid a last-dash blitz of south-east seats on Friday.

But after four weeks of formal campaigning, Palaszczuk’s deputy-turned-successor, Steven Miles, is seeking a mandate in his own right after spending the past 10 months trying to show he was different.

Both leaders have tried to (mostly) position the election as a forward-looking contest of ideas.Credit: Aresna Villanueva

Different to Crisafulli, but also different to the Palaszczuk-led Labor Party, which was staring down souring popularity when he took over. Polls this week show he might still save some parliamentary furniture for a stint in opposition – if not re-election.

Staring down the barrel of cameras in his own effort of 36 seats in 36 hours, Miles reached for a sharper message than he has before: “If you have any doubt at all … vote for Labor’s positive plan for our state’s future.”

The campaign caps off the first four-year fixed term of the only single-house state parliament in Australia. Labor has held government in Queensland for all but roughly five of the years since Wayne Goss swept to power in 1989, ending a similar-sized period of conservative rule.

Since then, things have changed. The federal Coalition partners formally joined at a state level to become the Liberal National Party, which crashed in (and out) of government under the leadership of former Brisbane lord mayor Campbell Newman.

Despite being the most decentralised mainland state, Queensland’s population balance has been shifting to Brisbane and the urban south-east, with many migrating from southern states, increasing political pressure on Labor from the Greens in the capital.

In the regions, the LNP’s major fight on the right is no longer with firebrand One Nation but the northern-focused, agriculturally minded, secessionist-agitating and socially conservative Katter’s Australian Party, led by Robbie, son of Bob.

Where Miles has leaned into his outer-suburban roots, Crisafulli has sought to use his personal story to appeal to a wider swathe of Queenslanders required for another path to electoral victory.

Born into a sugarcane-farming family in Ingham, on a farm founded by his Italian-born grandfather, he has proudly spoken about his family heritage, particularly during regional visits and in front of country-minded audiences.

After a stint as a journalist before entering local government in Townsville, Crisafulli served as local government minister in the one-term Newman government and lost his seat of Mundingburra when Palaszczuk-led Labor swept back into power in 2015.

By the following election, he had moved to the Gold Coast seat of Broadwater and set in motion the confluence of events that led to his ascension to the leadership of the LNP, where he has cut a moderating figure among more conservative elements of the party room.

After initially seeking to reform a party wrought with fighting within and between the parliamentary and organisational wings, Crisafulli has turned his relentless recent focus to whether things have changed for the better under Labor.

The “four crises”, as he and his team have dubbed them, align with issues that voters say are most important. At the top is the evergreen, ever-emotional, but often exploited, issue of youth crime – fuelled by high-profile cases and a CCTV-driven focus on offences such as car thefts and break-ins.

Another is the similarly tough topic of health, where horrendous case studies and vision of ambulances waiting outside hospitals illustrate a system that was under pressure even before the pandemic.

Cost-of-living and housing pressures are at the top of the pile for voters. On the latter, the LNP and Labor are on near-unity tickets, with both pitching their efforts to boost supply and homeownership.

The LNP has backed a raft of Labor’s costs-of-living measures, including $1000 power bill rebates for all households and flat 50-cent public transport fares.

But it has baulked at others, including free school lunches for all state primary schools from next year, a new state-owned energy retailer, state-owned petrol stations and caps on fuel price rises, plus 50 new state-backed bulk-billing GP clinics.

The opposition has been accused of running as a small target and seeking little mandate beyond not being Labor. That charge is much less likely to stick on youth crime, where Crisafulli has sought to differentiate his party with a promise of “adult time for adult crime”.

It’s not the only ideological crack left showing between the major parties. The LNP has also vowed to overturn recent three-strike personal drug possession reforms, and sided with the KAP on issues including a “dog whistle” motion about trans-women eroding women’s sports and rights.

Crisafulli has sought to assure the electorate there will not be a repeat of Newman-era public service job cuts, but will nonetheless need to fund the billions of dollars worth of promises made in the campaign.

But with the LNP’s broad acceptance of Labor’s last budget, the party has been left little wriggle room to address its promised lowering of government debt – still below NSW and Victoria but set to tip over $170 billion before the next election, regardless of who wins government at this one.

The lingering questions after Crisafulli’s pitch are how the LNP would manage the transition from coal to renewable energy – with a promise to use the state-owned fossil fuel generators indefinitely if needed – and how he would negotiate his opposition to nuclear energy if partymate Peter Dutton were to become prime minister.

Both federal leaders have joined the hustings. And while the nuclear issue has drawn some focus, the left-field issue of abortion – decriminalised by Labor and opposed by all but three LNP MPs – has derailed the opposition’s campaign most.

What began as an effort by Labor and its union supporters to seemingly tap into US-Democrat-style political sensitivity around the issue by highlighting the LNP’s voting record – and candidates like former federal Coalition senator Amanda Stoker – quickly gained greater significance.

Comments from two LNP backbenchers at local candidate forums fuelled questions about the still-bubbling desire among some in the party to unpick or repeal the law, despite previous assurances from Crisafulli that there would be no change because it was “not part of our plan”.

That explanation was repeated dozens of times across the final three weeks of the campaign as Crisafulli declined to repeat previous promises of a conscience vote for MPs if a Katter bill landed in a new LNP-controlled parliament.

When the dust settles, both parties will rake over the coals for insights into their looming federal campaigns.

But the drubbing Labor appeared to be in for before the campaign appears to have been clawed back to the point where two-party-preferred polling sentiment sits in the LNP’s favour, but with electoral maths and error margins not ruling out a minority government.

In the 93-seat parliament, 47 are needed for a party to govern in its own right and provide a Speaker. Labor entered the election with 51 seats, the LNP 35. On the crossbench, the KAP have four seats and the Greens two, alongside independent Sandy Bolton in Noosa.

Labor support is strongest around the capital, where it will face Greens’ challenges in a handful of central seats, and the LNP needs to break some ground. But the majority of the most-marginal seats the LNP is hoping to flip are in regional cities up the coast to Cairns, each with their own mix of retiring members and either bellwether or Labor stronghold status.

Throw in the KAP threat and a strong former Labor mayoral candidate returning for another run, and the LNP’s path to government could still feature several obstacles – even before vows by Crisafulli and Miles to make no deals with the crossbench are tested.

Under such a scenario, convention dictates that Miles can test the numbers on the floor of parliament. He has previously said he would do so. Asked about this situation again on Friday, he warned against a potential LNP-KAP government and said he was “campaigning for a majority”.

“I very much intend to be successful [on Saturday],” he told journalists at a Gold Coast campaign stop, as Crisafulli warned against a minority Labor government dealing with the Greens in Brisbane and KAP in the north.

But it is now up to voters to have their say on the records and visions of both men, and their teams, as they choose the next parliament. How much that may change remains to be seen.