Opinion: Pandemic a platform for Qld’s accidental premier

Amid the coronavirus crisis, lacklustre premier Annastacia Palaszczuk need only hold her jaw straight and look concerned and she will streak ahead in the polls, writes Des Houghton.

THE coronavirus pandemic is shaping as a blessing in disguise for the ALP ahead of the October state election.

While we in the media are fixated on C-19 infection rates and the community response, there isn’t much space left to scrutinise Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s disastrous policy failures. And there are plenty of those.

Government’s football folly leaves coronavirus message in tatters

Comment: Here’s some handy tips for Palaszczuk backflips

YouGov poll finds Premier, Opposition Leader deadlocked in mediocrity

The pandemic has also given the State Government an excuse to shut Parliament, thereby stopping scrutiny of its ill-equipped hospitals, a soaring crime rate and record unemployment, not to mention a collapse in the infrastructure spending, record bankruptcies and a flop in education standards.

Again and again, Palaszczuk’s Labor has been exposed as unfit for office.

Suspending democracy by closing Parliament is an abuse of power, but it may be a winning strategy.

The crisis gives Palaszczuk endless opportunities to confirm her status while mouthing ever more useless platitudes.

It’s odd how Queenslanders have historically shown a fondness for autocracies.

Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk delivers a coronavirus update.

The pandemic has given our lacklustre premier a platform, while the shutting of Parliament has robbed Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington of an opportunity to attack Labor.

The emergency has also thrust the Premier into LNP Prime Minister Scott Morrison’s national cabinet, where she will appear more important than she really is.

I sense the halo effect is already at work on the six o’clock news. Our accidental Premier is gaining a positive public persona she has not earned, and does not deserve.

At the same time the Opposition struggles for relevance.

Palaszczuk only needs to hold her jaw straight and looked concerned and she will streak ahead in the preferred-premier polls.

Yet the LNP should not give up all hope. Palaszczuk is not a very good campaigner and her leadership will be tested as a global recession deepens.

Yet despite the meltdown in tourism, construction, and the gig economy, Queensland still has a buoyant mining and gas industry.

It pumps nearly $5 billion annually into state coffers in royalties and delivers hundreds of millions more to remote and regional centres in jobs and services.

Trouble-prone Treasurer Jackie Trad is ironically reliant on the mining industry.

It is time for trouble-prone Treasurer Jackie Trad and Palaszczuk to put aside their hostility toward the industry.

Paradoxically, it is the very industry that Trad despises that may save her skin.

The recession coming with the virus will mask her own economic incompetence.

The state needs to fast-track mines urgently.

The Adani mine took nine years to win approvals after Labor made it easier for Greens to wage lawfare against the resources industry.

If we have any chance of saving jobs, the Treasurer is duty-bound to embrace mining and help slash the red tape and green tape strangling the resources sector.

There are more than a dozen major projects that could create more than 12,000 jobs. Why are state and federal approvals taking so long?

The shovel-ready New Acland mine that will create 550 jobs and generate $7 billion in revenues remains in limbo. Why?

Queensland Resources Council chief Ian Macfarlane said mining could create an economic buffer as tourism revenues contract.

“The economy is on the brink, yet the resources industry is continuing to maintain production and employment while putting in extra measures to keep people isolated and lower the risk of C-19 spreading,” he said.

“The resources industry is still pumping out billions of dollars a week.

“We’re still injecting hundreds of millions of dollars into regional economies and we are still putting $5 billion a year into state royalties’ coffers.”

Mr Macfarlane warned against increasing royalties.

“Anything any government does to shake investor confidence in the resources industry will be like an earthquake.”

Macfarlane said the gas industry was still reeling from the 25 per cent increase in royalties last year.

He urged the Government not to tinker with mining royalties that would dampen investor sentiment.

“It would just be an earthquake,” he said.