“I’m not going to sit here and say that winning Ipswich West is going to be easy,’’ the state’s Opposition Leader declares – not yet knowing the feat he would pull off.

“But what we are doing out there, and in Inala, is giving people the real option, maybe for the first times in their lives, of voting for something other than Labor.’’

The North Queensland born farm boy is at ease here at the Boardwalk Tavern on Hope Island in his Broadwater electorate, acknowledged affectionately by the punters while one of the owners, Richard Malouf, drops by the table to check if all is well.

Although attentive to questions thrown his way by a seasoned print journalist, and even generously tossing in some newsworthy titbits including his views on youth boot camps and home ownership for Indigenous Queenslanders, Crisafulli is clearly anxious to be somewhere else: Ipswich West.

He’s planned an afternoon of doorknocking in an electorate which would ultimately give him good reason, well beyond mere polling, to suspect his long march to the peak of the state’s power pyramid is in its final stages.

Yet on this afternoon, over the sirloin (rare) and pepper sauce, chips and veg and my petite eye fillet (medium) with mushroom sauce, chips and salad, pulling Ipswich West over to the LNP side of the political ledger is still nothing more than a gleam in his eye.

At the start of the year, he took wife Tegan to the “Walloon Saloon’’, a pub just outside Ipswich, to simultaneously celebrate the couple’s 22nd wedding anniversary and kickstart the LNP campaign to win that seat.

That was a move that might not rate highly in the annals of Romantic Husbands and Exotic Wedding Anniversary Locations.

But in terms of political practicalities, it does demonstrate the sort of hard-core commitment that can separate the winners from the losers.

Tegan and their two daughters, one at uni and one at high school, are seldom seen in public, a situation some regard as odd given the highly photogenic nature of the Crisafulli family.

The state’s political class have even speculated there’s trouble inside the marriage, given Crisafulli spends so much time in Brisbane rather than at home on the Gold Coast.

Crisafulli is blithely dismissive of such rumours – “We are like most Queenslanders where the balance between work and home is not as good as it should be,’’ he says, acknowledging married life and politics almost always present challenges to any couple.

But, pressed a little further, he’s both forthright and unrepentant about the reason the Queensland electorate won’t see much of the other three members of this family in the looming election campaign, or even after it if he wins office.

After he lost Mundingburra in Townsville in the 2015 Labor landslide, Crisafulli was stung by how much mudslinging hit his family, and decided “never again.’’

The family unit is tight, with the kids often heading up north to visit his parents, Karen and Tony, still on their splendid sugar cane farm near the Johnstone River outside Ingham.

“I have got wonderful people at home who make life worthwhile,’’ he says.

“I don’t mind being the subject of whatever the Labor Party throws at me.

“I will look at the billboards and, to me, it’s just water off a duck’s back.

“But I want my wife and daughters to be their own people and live their own lives.’’

As for the direction his own life will take, well, that’s clear – he’s hell bent on becoming Queensland’s 41st premier.

This dream didn’t materialise in his teenage years when he was guiding one of Tony’s John Deeres up and down a drill on the cane farm.

He didn’t have his road-to-Damascus moment – he was not radicalised as a Labor MP might claim, nor determined to make a contribution as the Conservatives usually settle for.

He was just a young Townsville homeowner wanting the council to do better at roads, rates and rubbish, so he decided to run for council.

Crisafulli and Tegan bought a house in suburban Townsville when he was barely into his 20s, before they were even married, and he started looking at his suburb with a critical eye.

He stunned everyone when he won a berth as a Liberal on the Labor controlled Townsville Council in 2004, especially given the huge popularity of Labor Mayor Tony Mooney.

He won that contest by using his still favoured method of campaigning even in this internet age – doorknocking.

He went on doorknocking to become the deputy Mayor of the amalgamated Townsville/Thuringowa councils before door knocking his way into state politics by winning Mundingburra in 2012.

Crisafulli, born in 1979, swiftly found himself, aged in his early 30s, seated in ministerial leather as local government minister in the Newman government.

Today, despite the still youthful appearance, he’s a seasoned political veteran, and understands there is one issue which will do most to propel him into the top job – youth crime.

Labor, he explains with a certain amount of repressed glee, is demonstrably responsible for this strange madness, this “generation of untouchables’’.

“Townsville was the first city which called it out,’’ he says proudly, referring to his old stamping ground where social media was employed to focus on youth crime nearly a decade ago.

“When the government watered down the laws in 2015, to the great credit of the people of Townsville, they were the ones who called it out and said, ‘This will end in tragedy.’ ’’

Crisafulli reels off examples of the Labor Government’s own language of nine years ago.

“There will be more young people allowed to be in the community, we will remove breach of bail, we will remove detention as a last resort, they gloated about it,’’ he says.

The LNP see the Youth Justice Act as the key to turning around the juvenile crime crisis and, if the party wins in October, the Act’s provision that detention be a last resort will be removed “this calendar year’’.

As to the suggestion he might put his party in conflict with the United Nations Conventions on Human Rights, there’s a cocked eyebrow and a faint echo of Sir Joh Bjelke-Petersen:

“We’re not worried about that at all.’’

Crisafulli is open to a range of other solutions to youth crime, quite happy to discuss those “boot camps’’ which the LNP Newman administration tried out none too successfully.

He has looked at ideas promoted by northern MPs Bob and Robbie Katter regarding isolated camps where kids are removed from their phones and computers and given training in practical skills such as (in Robbie Katter’s own words) “how to pour a slab’’ (of concrete).

Juvenile justice can never be reduced to some vengeful notion of making wayward kids suffer, he says.

“I want this to be about discipline, about these kids getting skills, about turning their lives around.

“But rest assured, I am not going to put kids doing the same crimes back on the streets.’’

Indigenous home ownership, unlike youth crime, is not going to be a major vote winner, but it’s clearly got him intrigued.

It’s far removed from the symbolism of the proposed state treaty which the LNP quickly abandoned after last year’s failure of the Voice referendum.

It’s been a decade since the LNP’s Andrew Cripps announced laws allowing Indigenous Queenslanders to own their own homes in their own traditional communities under the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Land (Providing Freehold) Act 2014.

A few titles in these essentially collectivist communities were granted, but they’re not comparable to mainstream freehold titles and hold little weight as collateral if you’re chasing a bank loan.

Crisafulli sees an opportunity for financial corporates in this issue. His idea might even come under the heading “woke’’

“I reckon you get the banks, who are always looking to do philanthropic things, to help underwrite this,’’ he says.

“Where there is a clear connection to land, either regarding an individual or a family, you (the state) sell the land at a very fair price and you work with the banks to make it happen, to give Indigenous people the right to own their own house just like anyone else.

“This has to be real freehold title, and that could change those communities for the better _ there is generational equity there that excites me.’’

One thing that possibly doesn’t excite Crisafulli so much is the ghost of Campbell Newman.

The spectre has hung over the LNP ever since the former LNP premier began his restructure of the public service soon after becoming Premier in 2012, now remembered as “mass sackings.’’

Crisafulli says it won’t happen, and that’s not necessarily because he likes big government, but because Queensland’s demographics will demand a growing public service, not a slimmed down one.

”We are going to need more health care staff, more police, more corrective services officers, we are going to need more teachers, more doctors, nurses and more allied health professionals,’’ he says.

As for that tradition (perhaps more Labor than LNP) of Queensland’s winning governing parties sacking Director Generals, Crisafulli is at pains to reassure the majority of DGs that their jobs will be safe under an LNP Government, provided of course your name is not Mike Kaiser.

The former Labor MP and director-general of the Department of Premier and Cabinet is advised to iron only one shirt for work on Sunday night if the LNP wins the October election, because he’ll only need Monday to clean out the office.

“Put aside what side of politics you come from, you can’t have someone who was state secretary of a political movement and a member of parliament in that role.

“If you want an independent public service, that just doesn’t work.’’

Crisafulli dispatches the sirloin, rates it a 9.5 out of 10 and declares that applies to it all _ food, service, atmosphere in what is a wonderful, waterside pub.

In a few seconds he’s out prowling the car park looking for his ride, looking to get back to door knocking in Ipswich West, still unaware of just how effective his campaigning will turn out to be.