Editor’s view: Premier’s ‘massive backflip’ on Treaty only option with an election looming

Trailing in the polls as an election looms, the Premier was left with no option but to backflip on a Treaty, writes the Editor.

Having laid the groundwork for walking away from her plans for a Treaty with the state’s Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has taken the only realistic path now open to her.

This is the great tragedy of the Prime Minister’s failure in the referendum – that it will have the entirely opposite impact on reconciliation to that which was intended.

Regional Queensland will, as ever, be key to the election in a year from next week – and yet it was in the regions where last Saturday the strongest vote in the entire nation was recorded against the proposed Indigenous Voice to Parliament.

The Premier has taken the only realistic option.

The Premier on Sunday acknowledged that the voters “never get it wrong”.

Enter Opposition leader David Crisafulli, who late on Wednesday dumped his support for the Treaty process, explaining that: “When Queenslanders speak it is the duty of leaders to listen. Queenslanders have spoken, and I have listened.”

Ms Palaszczuk on Thursday morning responded by saying the state’s Path to Treaty would only go ahead with bipartisan support – and then went on to say “we need to be talking about the issues that really matter out there amongst Queenslanders – and it is cost of living”.

Opposition leader David Crisafulli does not support Treaty.

That is a massive backflip, but is also the only realistic option open to her as a Queensland premier trailing in the polls and eyeing an election in 12 months time.

A poll on our website today has 92 per cent of 9000 respondents saying they do not support a Treaty.

The Prime Minister’s massive failure on the Voice referendum has left the Treaty process, as they say in the politics business, “dead, buried and cremated”.