Editor’s view: Leadership not the ‘real’ issue

The Palaszczuk government would do well to remember the more a political party talks about itself and its leadership, the more likely it is to lose its voting base, writes the editor.

The Palaszczuk government would do well to remember the more a political party talks about itself and its leadership, the more likely it is to lose its voting base.

This is especially true when there are more pressing issues at stake for the public – and for Queenslanders in 2023, those issues are housing, cost of living and youth crime.

Watching a government implode while people are struggling to put food on the table and a roof over their heads leaves a particularly bad taste in the mouth.

These conversations are damaging. And it is affecting governance of the state – anyone watching the parliamentary sitting before the Premier got on a plane to Italy, in which youth crime laws were rushed through without any scrutiny, would know this is a government spinning its wheels.

It’s clutching at straws, making kneejerk decisions it thinks will appeal to voters with a little over one year until Queenslanders head to the polls. Throw talk of a leadership challenge in the mix and you have a perfect recipe for political disaster.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk. Picture: NCA NewsWire/Tertius Pickard

It is often true that the most powerful trigger for a leadership change is self interest – fear one is going to get turfed out at the polls and be out of a lucrative parliamentary job. It also shows destabilisation has been damaging for both sides of politics – just ask Kevin Rudd, Julia Gillard, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull.

There is a unique added dynamic in Queensland.

Annastacia Palaszczuk’s popularity has become canonised in the Labor party room – many believe she is the reason they are all here, eight years after winning what was thought to be the unwinnable election.

Accidental Premier no more, and those at the bottom of the pendulum feel indebted to her – but they’re also the ones most likely to lose their jobs.

Youth crime has been the cut-through issue that has many everyday Queenslanders calling for change. So it is little wonder the government is frantically trying to gain traction in this space, attempting to appease the masses in a bid to put the issue well and truly to bed before the starting gun is fired for the election campaign next year.

What they need to ultimately focus on is good policy for the benefit of Queenslanders, without the short-sightedness that comes with fearing for your job.

Labor can’t rely on another pandemic to catapult Ms Palaszczuk’s popularity through the roof again just in time for the next election.

And Queenslanders don’t want to see her likely successors overtly jostling for position, testing the waters with their colleagues and the public.

Labor must decide soon if she is the right leader to take them to the next election instead of having the same conversation on repeat for the next year. If she is to go, it must be done without spectacle. If she is to stay, the party must get on with governing.

Queenslanders deserve as much.