Editor’s View: Treasurer Cameron Dick is asking voters to treat Labor’s past decade as a pre-season

The most telling line in Treasurer Cameron Dick’s budget speech is actually the third last, but it’s a massive call that stretches credulity, writes The Editor.

With pretty well every new measure having been leaked before today, the most telling line in Treasurer Cameron Dick’s Budget speech is actually the third last one.

It is there that Mr Dick invites Queenslanders to cast their ballot at the upcoming election “about their future, not to express an opinion about the past”.

That is a massive call that stretches credulity.

It means the Treasurer – who is also Deputy Premier – is essentially asking voters to treat the past decade of this Labor Government as just the pre-season.

“Trust us,” he is essentially saying, “we are finally getting the hang of this, and we will get better.”

Good luck with that.

But this goes to the heart of the Labor strategy – to frame this election as a referendum between Steven Miles and David Crisafulli, rather than one on the shambolic administration of the Palaszczuk era.

This is Labor’s only hope on October 26.

Was it the right choice to dump Annastacia Palaszczuk for Steven Miles?

As all the published polling has shown, Queenslanders have already set the cricket bats out on the front deck in expectation of polling day – ready to swing hard against the incumbent, as they tend to do every few elections.

Labor’s secret plan is no longer to win a majority, but to hold as many seats as it can in the hope it can then cobble together a minority government – such as it did in 2015, when Independent Peter Wellington’s backing gave Annastacia Palaszczuk power while retaining the right to vote on conscience.

That is why it has leaned so energetically (and costly) into renewable energy – to protect its few remaining inner-suburban seats from a Greens onslaught.

And that is why the Treasurer’s Budget today allocates $5bn or so – the equivalent of $1000 for every single Queenslander – for one-off cost of living measures to be delivered before the first vote is cast.

Hence his line about focusing on the future rather than the past.

Call us cynical, but we assume this will not extend to a no-doubt negative campaign from Labor and its union allies where voters will be reminded at every opportunity that Mr Crisafulli was a Minister in the controversial Newman Government.

Maybe the Premier needs to take a leaf out of George Orwell’s book and establish a Ministry of Truth to handle these inconvenient matters.