Opinion: Why Queenslanders don’t take well to southerners

THE Longman by-election was a big wake-up call, so here’s something southern politicians need to understand about Queensland. You can’t stroll in and think you understand it - it’s better to fake it than to mimic it, writes Barnaby Joyce.

THE great thing about Queensland is that for a huge state, it is a small paddock. On a big night you can go to Cha Cha Char’s in Eagle St and meet someone who can tell you about the season west of Quilpie.

In Sydney, you can just know Sydney and get away with it. In Queensland, if you just know Brisbane, you are not really Queensland.

‘This is nutcase stuff’

Why Lamb won Longman

There is a tribal passion that emanates from the parochialism from being historically called a hick backwater. In Texas, people in Dallas wear big hats and high-top boots yet may not own land or even a cow. They just want you to know they are Texan.

In Queensland, they just want you to know that they are Queenslanders. In this state, there is nothing morally corrupt about having a job in a coalmine. It has its Bible Belt and Joh was premier for two decades.

You can’t stroll into Queensland and think you understand it – it’s better to state that you don’t than to mimic it. There is an egalitarian compassion that comes hand-in-glove with a no-bulls--t abruptness.

Local resident Toni Lea gives Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull an earful at Sandstone Point north of Brisbane last Friday. Picture: Darren England/AAP

The Longman by-election was a big wake-up call – 16 per cent voted for a lady on a cruise in the Irish Sea. This is because Pauline Hanson is defined as Queensland, and the Labor and Liberal leaders are not.

This is nothing more than a statement of the bleeding obvious – Malcolm Turnbull is from Sydney and Bill Shorten is from Melbourne. Where the political class goes wrong is this weird dance between some quasi- left politically correct mantra, and a wink and a nod to the person doing it tough at Depot Hill in Rockhampton, generally a low-income worker.

People struggling to pay their power bills don’t care about the Paris Agreement; they don’t care about your urbane southern guilt in not complying with it. To be frank, many don’t have a clue what it is because they have been left out of the political discourse by politicians who don’t speak to them in a language they can understand. They don’t see the point in engaging in a political debate with others where no one listens to the things that concern them.

Politicians talk at them to try to enthuse them about things that only concern the politician.

Wayne Swan (left) and Barnaby Joyce have both weighed in on the Prime Minister’s Queensland problem.

They don’t understand why we give more money to people overseas who will never pay taxes here or defend Australia, while our farmers are in drought and going without. There’s a good reason for that, but you need to sit down with the constituency and explain. (If we don’t help our island neighbours, China will, and you will be surrounded by a new Chinese empire. Alternatively, you can’t let kids starve to death no matter where they live.)

When it comes to company tax rates, you have to tell people what they are thinking first if you want them to listen to what you say next.

People don’t like big banks and they think big businesses rip us off. They don’t like big power companies that have their foot on their throats. They don’t like big government – a machine that doesn’t care.

Don’t tell them big businesses are all good and misunderstood. Don’t say a CEO earning 100 times their wage needs help. Just say, the reality is some of these people are bastards, but there are a lot of countries hungry for those bastards to go there, and to take their money with them. Find me a country that is prosperous without big business. I can find you many countries that have no big businesses and are as poor as church mice.

We need a truthful analysis to the Longman by-election. There is nothing more ridiculous than coming off the football paddock thinking second ain’t so bad in the Queensland State of Origin.

- Barnaby Joyce is former Nationals leader and deputy prime minister

Turnbull out of touch with Qld

Wayne Swan, Member for Lilley and ALP federal president

IT’S no secret how critical Queensland will be in determining the outcome of the next Federal Election. Labor is vying to win eight seats off the LNP that have a margin of 4 per cent or under.

Some commentators have taken the 4 per cent swing received by Labor in Longman over the weekend and applied it to these seats, suggesting a romping landslide is on the cards for us.

As someone with over four decades of Queensland elections under my belt, I don’t necessarily share this view. It is clear though that Malcolm Turnbull and the LNP have major issues here in Queensland for a number of reasons.

Firstly, looking at last year’s state election and the Longman by-election, it’s now not uncommon for the LNP primary vote to be languishing in the 20s.

Secondly, the recent alliance struck between Turnbull and Pauline Hanson in Longman saw the majority of the LNP’s primary vote decline transfer to One Nation.

Thirdly, the LNP’s biggest problem here in Queensland is, of course, Turnbull.

I know this is a big call, but I do think Turnbull is fast becoming Queensland’s next Campbell Newman. Think about it. Like Newman, he’s taken the scalpel to Queensland’s hospital funding by $160 million. Like Newman, he arrogantly lectures and points the finger at everyone else other than himself.

Labor candidate Susan Lamb and Opposition Leader Bill Shorten celebrate the win in Longman on Saturday night. Picture: Mick Tsikas/AAP

He screeches that his cuts to Queensland hospitals are not real when their $160 million cuts are there in black and white for all to see.

The fact that Turnbull is so out of touch with Queensland shouldn’t be a surprise when you remember that he is a Sydney mega-millionaire investment banker living in a pink mansion on the harbour.

Fundamentally, Turnbull is not someone who gets Queensland. You barely see him up here. He never visits regional Queensland. There are more sightings of Migaloo the whale here than there are of the Prime Minister.

In contrast, it feels like Bill Shorten is up here nearly every other week.

In the first half of this year alone, Shorten has held large public townhall meetings in Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rocky, Gladstone and in Brisbane.

These meetings have allowed Shorten to talk to thousands of everyday Queenslanders and hear firsthand about the issues affecting them. Issues like insecure work, unfair labour hire practices, cuts to penalty rates, the high cost of regional airfares, affordable and quality healthcare and more.

Shorten is fair dinkum and if the Longman by-election proved one thing, it’s that he’s got the policies that cater to the bread-and-butter issues affecting working and middle- class Australians.