Editor’s view: Why has Queensland lost its glow for so many?

The state’s biggest sentiment survey, out today, provides strong evidence we have lost some of our sunny optimism. How do we get it back, asks the editor.

The world enters a new year at the stroke of midnight and we look forward to 2024 with confidence and optimism.

But New Year’s Eve also offers an appropriate moment for us to engage in a little self-reflection, and ponder exactly what direction this state is headed in.

The prompt for this introspection is contained in a story in today’s Sunday Mail that provides some truly disturbing insights into what are, clearly, swiftly changing attitudes among Queenslanders about “the state of the state’’.

Queensland’s biggest sentiment survey, completed by almost 7000 Queenslanders, provides strong evidence we have lost some of our sunny optimism.

The reasons are varied, but centre on the cost of living, crime and congestion.

What is truly worrying is that Queenslanders are less optimistic and cheerful about Queensland than they were when the last survey was released in September 2020.

Remember September 2020?

We were by no means in an upbeat mood.

Covid was still locking us inside our homes, and restricting our movements even upon release.

It was also making us constantly fearful for our very lives, as well as the lives of our loved ones.

Yet in 2020, when asked to describe the state in three words, there were plenty who said “sunny, beautiful or liveable’’.

This year the words “expensive, crowded and dangerous’’ are becoming more frequent.

Queenslanders are increasingly concerned with crime, with one respondent calling for the government to “make offenders accountable, make the state safe again”. Another called for “real pressure” to drive house prices lower.

Dozens of respondents demanded a fix to congestion and for the state to invest in high-speed rail and better highways.

The ancient question from this dissatisfaction does arise – are we killing the goose that laid the golden egg?

For nearly half a century Queensland has held some of the magic of that biblical “shining city on the hill’’ for millions of immigrants, whether they are interstate or international.

Yet this state was very much viewed as a tropical northern outpost from European arrival in 1823 right up to the first post-war decades.

Beautiful Queensland seems to be losing its glow for many people. Picture: Lachie Millard

A sluggish manufacturing sector and a still-fledgling tourism industry did not hold much promise for post-war migrants who surged into Australia’s southern states in the 1950s and 1960s.

From 1946 to 1970 Queensland only absorbed around 30,000 immigrants a year, under 14 per cent of the national intake.

But that all changed as the 1980s appeared on the horizon.

The abolition of death duties in the 1970s, along with reductions in business taxes, fused with the enormous profits generated by the mining sector to make this state a number one business destination.

The international recognition of the Great Barrier Reef helped fuel a rapidly developing tourism sector and the exploding tourism precincts of the Gold and Sunshine Coasts and Cairns turned tourism into a massive revenue earner.

That momentum has never lost strength, not even during the pandemic.

Queensland received more than 100,000 residents via internal migration in those years, largely from NSW and Victoria.

And those inflows were not all confined to the southeast.

Data from the Regional Australian Institute found that the city of Townsville experienced a 500 per cent increase in residents in 2022, the largest increase of any regional centre in the county.

Immigration has been good for Australia, and it’s also been good for Queensland.

But we as a state must not allow population growth to outstrip infrastructure and service growth, and that is clearly happening.

Our state government and our opposition also have to grasp the enormous impact that crime, particularly juvenile crime, is having on the state’s psychological wellbeing.

And our planners clearly need a coherent strategy for transport infrastructure in the decades ahead.

We are by no means doomsayers. Optimism, courage, hard work and a willingness to find solutions rather than dwell on problems have made Queensland one of the most attractive places to live on planet earth.

But all of us, from ordinary citizens to elected representatives, should examine this data and see what can be done to ensure we can continue to enjoy the world-class lifestyle for which we are renowned.