Opinion: Abortion row just made David Crisafulli a bigger target

David Crisafulli’s carefully crafted small-target campaign has been blown open by a crossbench hand grenade, writes Paul Williams.

Opposition Leader David Crisafulli’s small-target strategy is unravelling over abortion laws. Picture: Liam Kidston.

The Queensland election campaign just took a turn Liberal National Party leader David Crisafulli hoped it never would.

By introducing the possibility of restricting – or even repealing – Labor’s popular abortion laws via a private member’s Bill, Robbie Katter of Katter’s Australian Party just set a cat among some very worried LNP pigeons.

There has long been speculation an LNP government would unwind any number of Labor reforms, including abortion and voluntary assisted dying.

This week, Crisafulli ruled out any change to current abortion legislation. We have no reason to doubt his good intentions.

But, in politics, good intentions are rarely enough. What will Crisafulli do if, or when, pressured by KAP and One Nation voters, the churches, and even LNP backbenchers to restrict abortion? We must remember one key point: David Crisafulli, a moderate MP from the state’s southeast, is hardly representative of the majority of (often very) conservative LNP MPs in Queensland’s regions.

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Moreover, under our Westminster system, an LNP cabinet (of which Crisafulli is just one member), and not Crisafulli alone, will be the gatekeeper of Queensland public policy over the next four years – a cabinet that will be unapologetically conservative.

If KAP introduces a private member’s Bill, will the LNP grant its MPs a conscience vote? Will pro-choice Liberal National MPs be punished for voting against it?

The bottom line is that Crisafulli, regardless of his own progressive personal politics, will be hamstrung on any number of issues (from abortion to daylight saving) by a conservative cabinet, backbench and even the party’s organisational wing – each purporting to represent a conservative regional Queensland.

No matter how favourably voters regard the very amiable Crisafulli, it would be naive to think the LNP’s conservative majority would never test his authority, especially over such deeply personal and ideological issues as abortion and VAD. The question, then, is Crisafulli strong enough to resist such pressure from his own side, let alone from the Katters and others.

Robbie Katter has blown up the LNP’s carefully crafted campaign.

Anecdotally, many Queenslanders do like the softly spoken Crisafulli, but they also wonder about his strength.

There’s no doubt Katter’s abortion hand grenade has blown a major fissure in the LNP opposition. But the problem isn’t the issue of abortion itself, but how policy and law will be made under an LNP government.

How often, for example, will Crisafulli be rolled by a conservative cabinet? And how closely will an LNP cabinet listen to public opinion, especially given all but three LNP MPs voted against Labor’s abortion reforms in 2018, despite 63 per cent of Queenslanders supporting (and just 27 per cent opposed to) the new laws?

Will an unelected organisational wing castigate LNP MPs for voting a certain way in parliament – as we saw in 2018 when, despite a “conscience vote”, dissenting MPs supporting Labor’s reforms were allegedly harangued by backroom figures?

And do we need to worry not just about abortion and VAD, but also about the future of embryonic stem cell research, programs to protect gay and transgender students, and the place of religion in state school classrooms more generally?

This election is the LNP’s to lose, and a brouhaha over abortion is unlikely to derail its campaign, largely because Labor’s own image at local, state and federal level is so poor.

Labor indeed dropped the ball on youth crime (despite the issue also plaguing every other Australian state and territory), and has been unfairly blamed for a cost-of-living crisis affecting the entire globe.

But one Labor strength is the party’s unity. From the 1950s to the 1980s, Queensland Labor was largely unelectable because of factional and ideological division. It was, quite rightly, rejected by voters dismayed by an ugly sectarianism often fought out in the name of religion.

But even after 30 of the past 35 years in government, Labor remains astonishingly united, and has good relations between its parliamentary and organisational wings.

Compare that to an LNP that can be considered four parties in one – conservative Liberals, moderate Liberals, conservative Nationals and moderate Nationals – with a parliamentary wing often at war with its own state organisation.

Abortion fears will not halt the LNP train, but it might slow it among some women voters in Brisbane and the Gold Coast. It will also test the mettle of Mr Crisafulli who many feel is not strong enough to herd a LNP party room of up to 60 very conservative cats.

Paul Williams is an associate professor at Griffith University