Vikki Campion: Anthony Albanese needs to properly tour regional QLD
Labor leader Anthony Albanese should have visited less touristy parts of regional Queensland to drum up votes, Vikki Campion writes.
Opinion
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Politicians are flocking to Queensland, which will determine the next federal government, and are looking a little lost, wearing suit jackets to cattle sale yards in 37C Rockhampton summer heat.
But it’s not just the weather confusing their wardrobe choices.
Instead of focusing on how the next policy they bring in could gut the state of the royalties that safeguard its health and education, they stuck to the tourist map.
Sydney’s Labor leader Anthony Albanese, raved about North Queensland’s seafood and the Frosty Mango, baulking at a spicier itinerary for a vanilla, Contiki-tour foodie-inspired version of the regions.
A tour of copper mines, nitrate plants, coal hubs, cement factories and robotics engineers wouldn’t offer pretty pictures on social media as frozen mango treats but wouldn’t visiting jobs Labor intends to sacrifice under their latest carbon abatement scheme provide more flavourful insight?
Politicians of all stripes are sleepwalking to catastrophe if they believe regional Queensland is just beaches, bananas and sunshine.
It’s sweaty, sinewy, workers grazing cattle, picking fruit, fishing seas, planting, fencing, mining, building, logging, and welding.
Suit jackets? Maybe – at a wedding – and only if you’re the groom.
Travelling regional Queensland is one thing, but understanding it is something else. They hate being the punching bag for views of people thousands of kilometres away – just ask them.
Albo should have swapped the suit for a snorkel off Fitzroy Island near Cairns and seen for himself the brilliant reef life, and sea turtle conservation and realised for himself that the reef’s not dead, like his counterparts and press releases like to claim.
Further down the coast, he spent days in Dawson, where his biggest announcement in 72 hours was a denouncement of outgoing MP George Christensen’s podcast, Conservative One.
In urging people not to listen to it, Albo gave it national media attention, soaring it to the top 10 Australian charts.
Of all the messaging Dawson wanted to hear from Albo, maybe about the issues facing cane farmers, accused by his southern counterparts of destroying the reef, the clarity they sought from the Labor leader was not about his thoughts on a retiring member’s hobby.
He should have dropped the anti-podcast pressers to hear from Adani workers at Abbott Point
near Bowen, primarily how they feed and clothe local kids to get them to school.
Or the Bowen Rail Company, a next-generation rail business that only employs locals, created to transport high-quality resources for export to the world.
From there, he could kick up the road to Collinsville and show his support for Indigenous company Shine Energy that wants to build a coal-fired power station.
Their CEO might be happy to point out that Burri nation never signed the Paris agreement.
But full credit to Mr Albanese for going outside his comfort zone to front regional journos at Gracemere Saleyards.
Unlike the Canberra press gallery, they remembered him as a minister of the Labor Government that buckled to activists and shut down live export. He responded to questions with a vapid: “My message to farmers is we are on your side.”
He was happy to spruik his token miner candidate, now a novelty for the Labor Party, but would not commit to jobs for the next generation. He didn’t mention at Gracemere Saleyards, that Central Queensland, would bear the brunt of Labor’s new carbon abatement scheme.
He could swap his suit jacket for hi-vis and visit any businesses that would cop it – namely Blackwater Mine, Curtis Island GLNG Plant, Dawson Mine, Ensham Resources, Fishermans Landing Cement Curtis LNG Plant, Queensland Nitrates Ammonium or Yarwun Nitrates to hear from workers first-hand.
Under Labor’s proposed scheme, industries that make things that contribute to our economy will need to buy carbon credits while banks and their massive carbon polluting data centres are exempt.
Each year a Labor government will set a baseline for what they can legally emit.
At a time when Covid has demonstrated our lack of manufacturing capability, Labor seeks to impose a cap on how much stuff Australia can make.
All mines, whether that’s lithium, the primary component of an electric vehicle, rare earth that you need for renewables, copper, minerals or iron ore, will be impacted and forced by mandate to decrease the baseline of emissions that they can emit legally every year, making it harder and harder to operate.
In Maryborough, all Mr Albanese did was distract from the flood clean-up efforts and take away the attention of the emergency services, which are focusing on recovery to put himself in the spotlight – just like Premier Palaszczuk did when she took away the gurney from emergency services so she could pose for a photo shoot.
Going by the polls, the election is Albo’s to lose, but if he bases his policy positions on what TripAdvisor recommends, he could very well end up like his predecessor.
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Originally published as Vikki Campion: Anthony Albanese needs to properly tour regional QLD
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