Palaszczuk v Frecklington: Let the campaign games begin
Ahead of the election campaign kick-off, both Annastacia Palaszczuk and Deb Frecklington have laid out the reasons they should be gifted the state’s first four-year term. Read what they have to say and share your thoughts.
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They’re both on a jobs-creating mission but which one scores Queensland’s top job will be a hard-fought contest as the state’s election race officially begins this week.
Ahead of Tuesday’s campaign kick-off, both women have laid out the reasons they should be gifted the state’s first four-year term, and be trusted to steer Queensland through the coronavirus recession and recovery.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, who will be on track to become the state’s longest-serving Labor premier since World War II if she wins on October 31, told The Sunday Mail that fighting the global pandemic had been “terrifying” at times, but her work was not done.
“To be Premier of Queensland means one thing: You have to put Queensland first,” she said. “Predictions at the beginning of the year were terrifying. Other countries struggled to dig enough graves. But not Queensland.”
Ms Palaszczuk said she wanted to continue her work on the road to recovery.
And she said she would continue to stare down criticism of tough decisions she had to make following harsh criticism from the Morrison and Berejiklian governments as she felt pride in the fact more than 5 million Queenslanders had been kept safe.
“Some of them have been unpopular with very powerful voices raised against them. But they were the right decisions,” she said.
Ms Palaszczuk said she wanted to focus on job creation by building schools, roads and hospitals across the state and grow Queensland’s manufacturing industry.
“God willing, in 2024 COVID will be a distant memory,” she said.
“We’ll watch TV documentaries about 2020 and be pleased and proud of the way Queensland came through this challenge the way we always do, together.”
But Opposition Leader Deb Frecklington argues Queensland was being held back even before the COVID-19 pandemic struck.
“We used to be the economic powerhouse of Australia and that’s what I want us to be again,” she said.
“I want Queensland to be the best place to get a job, get ahead and raise a family.
“I’m driven by the desire to help Queenslanders and their communities.”
Ms Frecklington, who has made infrastructure a key plank in her pitch, has committed projects including extending the Bruce Highway to four lanes, a second M1 and a New Bradfield Scheme to irrigate western regions.
But she also wants to reduce crime rates in communities where youth crime has escalated and do more to address domestic violence.
“Through raising my family and working as a lawyer, I’ve seen how important government is to our lives,” Ms Frecklington said. “I have the energy and ideas to set up Queensland for the future.”
The state is officially in recession for the first time since 1991 and Queensland has a near chart-topping unemployment rate of 7.5 per cent, which would be much higher if not for the federally-funded JobKeeper program.
And the state is cruising to hit $101.9bn in debt in 2020-21, including government-owned corporations, as government earnings plummet and the state relies on borrowings to prop up the economy and COVID-19 spending measures.
While north Queensland is used to weathering natural disasters, its tourism industry has been devastated by the pandemic’s domestic and international border closures.
However, the state government has largely removed debate over the fraught border issue by announcing a caveated reopening to NSW on November 1. The LNP enters the election with a slim lead in published polls, with the most recent YouGov poll in The Courier-Mail showing it ahead in the two-party preferred vote 52 per cent to 48 per cent in June.
But Ms Palaszczuk is far more popular than Ms Frecklington among voters.
However, the polling found almost one in 10 voters were uncommitted, meaning there are many Queenslanders still to be won over.
The Courier-Mail’s Your Say survey – the biggest of its kind in Queensland – found vast fluctuations in voter sentiment across the state.
Central Queenslanders were most optimistic about their future, but Gold Coast residents and those across the north were highly pessimistic, rating the Palaszczuk government’s performance the worst.
The results could mean Labor is at further risk of losing valuable north Queensland seats around Townsville and Cairns and its solitary Gold Coast seat of Gaven, where concerns around a surge in youth crime will shape the debate locally.
Should Labor lose those seats, it would need to pick up seats elsewhere in the southeast to retain power.
Voters were also keen to hear “bold plans” from those vying for government, with 86 per cent of respondents saying business as usual would not cut it right now.
Labor holds 48 seats in Queensland’s 93-seat parliament, in which either major party needs to hold 47 seats to form a majority government.
The LNP holds 38, but won 39 in 2017, having since ejected Whitsunday MP Jason Costigan, who now represents his own North Queensland First party. There are three MPs from Katter’s Australian Party, one each from The Greens and Pauline Hanson’s One Nation and one independent. Both major parties are preparing for the possibility of having to form a minority government, with Labor headquarters already having opened lines of communication with the KAP.
The parties are finding it difficult to anticipate the flow of voting preferences in this election, with up to 600,000 people expected to lodge early postal votes, many of which won’t follow the parties’ how-to-vote cards.
The Greens are also providing a threat to Labor in the southeast, particularly in former deputy premier Jackie Trad’s South Brisbane seat.
The minor party’s growing support will also be helped by a bizarre situation in which its sworn political enemy, the LNP, will preference The Greens ahead of Ms Trad.