Qld election 2020 countdown: Party leaders make early pitches

A year to the day ahead of the 2020 Queensland election, leaders of the state's major political parties explain why they deserve your support.

A YEAR to the day ahead of the 2020 state election, where Annastacia Palaszczuk and her Labor team will be seeking a third term in power, the leaders of the state's major political parties explain why they deserve the support of Queenslanders:

Annastacia Palaszczuk, Labor leader

Why should voters vote for your party?

We are on the cusp of a new decade, as in a mere two months we enter the 2020s.

Our best times are ahead of us and that hasn’t happened by accident.

We have been acting strategically and purposefully to prepare Queensland for the future, bringing the community with us.

I have always said there is nothing more important than the dignity and financial security that comes with having a job.

I’m proud that since 2015 more than 226,000 jobs have been created across Queensland.

This confidence and employment growth are only possible because we are implementing our plan.

We are also providing the essential frontline services Queenslanders require.

Our $49.5 billion four-year infrastructure program includes $12.9 billion this year, supporting 40,500 jobs - more than 25,000 of them outside greater Brisbane.

Our plan is delivering projects we started like the north Queensland stadium, the Mackay ring road, the Toowoomba Second Range Crossing and the Smithfield bypass in Cairns.

We are helping manufacturers improve their competitiveness with our Made in Queensland program.

We are unlocking gas reserves to protect and create full-time manufacturing jobs, while stimulating investment for a renewable hydrogen industry.

We are growing our tourism industry, adding value to our agricultural exports and delivering a new wave of resources investment.

In August this year, Queensland’s merchandise exports reached a new record of $87.4 billion over the year.

We will continue to deliver on my Government’s $755 million flagship Advance Queensland program which supports the private sector in important areas like defence.

What is the biggest issue facing Queensland right now and how will you tackle it?

Queensland has a skills shortage and I want more Year 12 graduates to get into work without worrying about the cost – that’s why we are also investing in young people with free apprenticeships for under 21s and free TAFE for Year 12 graduates.

The skills boost we announced last week drastically reduces the cost of training for new careers or updated skills and qualifications.

Since coming to government, we have built or started construction on 18 new schools and we are delivering almost 800 more hospital beds across the state.

We have committed $330 million towards preserving the Great Barrier Reef and improving water quality and we have delivered laws to protect 405,000 hectares of vegetation in catchments flowing into the reef area.

Looking to the future is why we are even considering a 2032 Olympic and Paralympic Games bid.

These games must be inclusive of Queensland, not just the South-East and I want to encourage everyone to have their say.

As we approach 2020 we are heading toward a new age and we have ensured that we are ready, so that everyone now and tomorrow can enjoy the lifestyle they deserve and no one is left behind.

When we were elected I said we would always put Queenslanders first, delivering our commitments.

That remains our focus.

What is the one reason Queenslanders should not vote for the other parties?

In Government, the LNP abused the public’s trust, cut important employment programs, sacked public servants and put a for sale sign on Queensland’s publicly owned assets.

In Opposition, the LNP have not revealed how they would pay for their reckless $8 billion in unfunded commitments.

Minor parties with their narrow interests and unstable DNA are no alternative.

Queensland – I believe the best is yet to come.

Deb Frecklington

Deb Frecklington, LNP leader

What is the biggest issue facing Queensland right now and how will you tackle it?

There is no question that the Palaszczuk Labor Government has failed the people of Queensland.

Annastacia Palaszczuk has had five years to prove herself capable of leading this state, but she has failed on every count.

Under her watch, Queensland has the highest unemployment rate in the nation.

Almost 180,000 Queenslanders are out of work – the highest number ever recorded.

Our economy is suffering because Labor has hit Queenslanders with nine new taxes and slashed infrastructure spending to historic lows.

In our hospitals, patients are waiting longer and longer to see a doctor in ED or have important surgery.

Instead of fixing this crisis, Annastacia Palaszczuk’s health priority has been renaming the Lady Cilento Children’s Hospital.

In our schools, NAPLAN has shown that education results are going backwards.

And across Queensland, crime has risen year after year because Labor is soft on crime.

Labor’s integrity has been destroyed by Jackie Trad’s dodgy property dealings and Annastacia Palaszczuk was too weak to sack her.

The Palaszczuk Labor Government is not working and has to go.

The big question for Queensland is how do we fix Labor’s failures?

The LNP has the people and the plan to turn this state around.

Unlike Labor, we haven’t spent our whole lives working in politics.

We’ve used our real-world experience to produce a plan to:

Build new and better roads

Build new dams

Cut hospital waiting times

Improve education results

Create jobs with a no-new-tax guarantee

Why should voters vote for your party?

We’ll get this state moving again by building the Second M1 and we’ll work with the Federal Government on a $5 billion program to build a better Bruce Highway.

The LNP will back our regions – which are battling drought and unemployment – by building new dam projects.

We will create a new state-owned asset, the Queensland Dam Company, which will be tasked with building projects that provide water security for farmers and provide desperately-needed jobs.

As a mum of three girls, I value education and I’ll make improving schools a priority.

The LNP will de-clutter the curriculum so teachers can concentrate on teaching the most important skills – reading, writing and maths.

We’ll also make it easier for kids to learn by airconditioning every state school classroom in Queensland.

It’s a big commitment – but every mum and dad knows cool kids are smart kids.

The LNP will also tackle Labor’s health failures.

We’ll ensure that patients are treated on time, every time, by partnering with the private sector.

Private providers will ease the pressure on Queensland Health and help end the chaos in our EDs.

And the LNP will also bring the state’s finances under control.

We’ll end Labor’s waste and give Queenslanders a no-new-tax guarantee.

That will give businesses and consumers the confidence needed to create new jobs – adding to the new jobs created by our infrastructure plan.

The LNP’s plan will get Queensland back on track.

3: What is the one reason Queenslanders should not vote for:

- Labor

- One Nation

- The Katter’s Australian Party

- The Greens

A vote for any other party than the LNP will only help Annastacia Palaszczuk cling to power.

And Queenslanders cannot afford another four years of Labor failure.

It’s time to get this state working again and only the LNP can do it.

Michael Berkman

Michael Berkman, Greens MP

Why should voters vote for your party?

The Greens want free, high quality public health and education for all. Affordable, publicly owned clean energy. Cheap, frequent and fast public transport. A jobs and investment boom in quality public infrastructure like schools, hospitals and affordable homes. All funded by making big corporations, mining companies and property developers pay their fair share in taxes.

As Queensland’s first elected Greens MP, I’ve seen how big new ideas can challenge our stale political system. The Greens can fight for everyday people because we don’t take corporate donations. We’re not beholden to big business - that’s why Labor and the LNP have tried desperately to attack us.

What they don’t know is our power doesn’t come from what people say about us in the media (even the Courier Mail!) or how many TV ads we can buy. It comes from hundreds of thousands of ordinary people standing up and demanding a better, fairer future.

What is the biggest issue facing Queensland right now and how will you tackle it?

Lots of people might expect me to say that dangerous climate breakdown is the biggest issue facing Queenslanders.

Yes, it’s a massive threat, but it’s not the whole story.

Our lives are getting harder. Unemployment and insecure work are creeping up. If you’re lucky enough to have a job with enough hours, odds are that your wages have barely moved in a decade.

Those wages now need to stretch further than ever. Between power bills, private health insurance, visiting the dentist, childcare fees and education costs, there is less and less left over. More households are falling behind on their home loans, and more renters are struggling.

If this is your situation, you’re not imagining it, and you’re not alone. It’s happening across Queensland, but things are even worse in places where the mining boom has turned to bust.

Big corporations and racist politicians want to divide us up, so they’ll tell us the enemy is someone who might look or sound different.

In fact, whether you’re a coalminer in Moranbah, a nurse in Brisbane, or an aged care worker in Townsville, there’s more that unites us than divides. Together we’re incredibly powerful, but that’s exactly what big corporations fear the most.

The millionaire CEOs and their political allies only care about their next dollar. They don’t care whether our schools have enough teachers, or about waiting lists at the local hospital. They certainly don’t care about a safe climate for our kids.

Those millionaire CEOs and big corporations have far too much control over our lives. They’re making life harder for everyone else and pushing us all towards a dangerous climate breakdown.

The problems are different, but the cause is the same.

The truth is that the biggest issue facing Queenslanders is our broken political and economic system that gives big corporations too much power.

Queensland is a wealthy State, and we have enough to let everyone live a good life. The 2020 State election will be about which party is willing to stand up to the corporate elite and redistribute wealth and power to ordinary people.

What is the one reason Queenslanders should not vote for:

Labor: They’re not willing to take on the big corporations, mining CEOs and property developers. Unless they do, they can’t give Queenslanders a better life and a cleaner, fairer future.

LNP: They’re not willing to take on the big corporations, mining CEOs and property developers. Unless they do, they can’t give Queenslanders a better life and a cleaner, fairer future.

Katter’s Australian Party: They’re not willing to take on the big corporations, mining CEOs and property developers. Unless they do, they can’t give Queenslanders a better life and a cleaner, fairer future.

One Nation: They’re not willing to take on the big corporations, mining CEOs and property developers. Unless they do, they can’t give Queenslanders a better life and a cleaner, fairer future.

Robbie Katter

Robbie Katter, KAP state leader

Why should voters vote for your party?

The Queensland economy and our social cohesion is flailing and we have reached a tipping point.

Rather than banging on about “asset sales” or “rail fails”, both of which we’ll hear plenty of by major parties the next 12 months, I want to cut straight to the heart of the issue. This is, namely, the inability of either major party to navigate the economic, cultural and social divide that exists between “Regional Queensland” and “City Queensland”.

This divide has always existed, but it has been weaponised by the major parties and the vain, entitled mass (aka the Greens).

They have turned this once proud symbol of Queensland’s cultural and social diversity into a political tool, and they have done this to incite sufficient fear and guilt to coerce support for their political brands.

This divide has manifested in appalling public policy decisions by our leaders that have served only to undermine the state’s economic prosperity and social cohesion.

Their land and resource management laws have, and will continue to, decimate our agricultural industry; their energy, infrastructure and renewable policies have destroyed our export state’s global competitive advantage; and their approach to social policy debate has turned a once tolerant and empathetic community into a mob of bitter whingers.

Unfortunately for Regional Queensland, we have been whipping boy for all the pandering fear-driven promises of the major parties over the years.

To reverse this sorry state of appears, we need a party with the stomach to act in the state’s best interests, not simply fall into line with the status quo to avoid being branded “red-neck”, or “bigoted” or “anti-LGBTIQ”, or whatever else they can think of calling us.

We believe the KAP is this party.

The fact is the KAP has no interest in winning a single one of the 50 odd seats in City Queensland.

We’re interested in representing Regional Queensland seats and implementing policies that deliver better economic and social opportunities for Regional Queensland.

This is not because we want to see City Queensland suffer, quite the contrary. It’s because we know that the genesis of an economically and socially successful Queensland is in the regions, and our success is also the cities’ success.

Our wealth in Queensland is generated from the land and the oceans, and the resources they contain.

We’ve built physical and human capital over generations by mining, farming, fishing, processing, manufacturing and managing these resources.

This experience and expertise has allowed us to create a sophisticated and respected commercial services industry as well as world leading educational institutions and tourism experiences in both Regional and City Queensland.

And now, thanks to the weakness of the major parties, all this is slipping away.

The most compelling reason to vote KAP (or not vote ALP/Green or LNP) in 2020 is because we’re proud of the differences between Regional and City Queensland.

We understand that our success as a state relies on our ability to respect these differences while supporting the fundamental role our mining, agricultural and environmental resources play in supporting our entire economy and communities.

The KAP have the courage to enact policies that will restore our traditional industries in the regions, which drive the opportunities in the city.

We want prosperity for all, and we are prepared to fight for it.

What is the biggest issue facing Queensland right now and how will you tackle it?

There are a number of large individual challenges but to pick one, it is the risk of another majority government being elected and then bowing to the whims of their corporate, union or other overlords and subsequently leading Queensland further down a path of destruction.

This sort of thing happening has corporatized people’s interests in government and watered down the representation of the individual electorates.

What is the one reason Queenslanders should not vote for:

- Labor

- the LNP

- One Nation

- The Greens

The LNP and ALP/Greens are caught in the election cycle and are focussed on winning majority votes, therefore they are bound to focus on the heavily populated South East Corner therefore discriminating against regional areas which inadvertently constrains heavily the state-wide economy. The KAP are the perfect circuit breaker to this.

Pauline Hanson

Pauline Hanson, One Nation leader

Why should voters vote for your party?

One Nation has developed the right balance when representing the worker, small business and our farming sector over the past 4 years.

And when actions speak louder than words, our small team of elected members have reinforced their promises with action that has led to the establishment of a code-of-conduct for cane growers and dairy farmers, the implementation of a successful apprenticeship scheme that has now enrolled 3200 new regional trade positions and unlocked access to Defence contracts for smaller mum and dad businesses in all states and territories.

We pride ourselves on being nimble in a rapidly changing political climate. One Nation does not rely solely on the advice of bureaucrats, but instead the feedback from people on the ground.

The establishment of a nationwide, joint inquiry into Family Law was the result of One Nation Senators listening to the heartache from everyday people who were previously ignored by the major parties.

A lack of public consultation has forced rural and regional areas of Queensland to face enormous setbacks, by way of the implementation of Labor’s Vegetation Management Act and more recently, the Reef regulations. Both have had detrimental impacts on our vulnerable farming sector and small communities.

An imbalance of political representation between the city and regions has also led to copious amounts of money being focused on Queensland’s southeast corner, instead of regional parts of our state.

Lyrics from Moving Pictures song, What About Me appear written for all regions outside of the southeast corner, with billions of dollars in mining royalties from Western, Central and North Queensland not benefitting the towns in which they were generated. It’s prompted a cry from Bundaberg and further north to form a separate state. But what happens to towns equally affected in western districts like Roma, Charleville, and Cunnamulla?

One Nation recognises that so many voters are frustrated and lack trust in the two major parties, but change cannot occur if other conservative parties give your preferences to Labor and the Greens ahead of One Nation.

Voters must take a stronger interest in their future and understand how Queensland’s voting system works. You and only you are in control of your preferences unless you follow the major parties’ how-to-vote cards.

Queensland must build a hybrid model of Bradfield’s water scheme that will take monsoonal floodwaters, that would otherwise flow out to sea, and pipe it inland to water-starved farmlands and communities statewide.

A recent 2018 feasibility study again proves the scheme will work, however, there isn’t the will of the current government to spend the money and solve Queensland’s drought problems.

It is also essential to remove payroll taxes on businesses that want to employ Queensland workers.

This insidious tax costs jobs and stifles businesses across the state in every sector.

One Nation continues to build trust with Queenslanders based on real outcomes and will continue its efforts to build a stronger state of Queensland at the October 2020 election

The Queensland Parliament after the first-term Labor Government was sworn iu