“Hello Cynthia, it’s Steven Miles, the Premier of Queensland calling, I’m just making some calls while I’m here in Bundaberg …”

“Hi Barry, Steven Miles, Premier of Queensland, I’m in Bundaberg with your local member Tom Smith calling to see if you have any feedback for us …”

It’s early September, 2024, and in a small room turned call centre in Bundaberg’s Queensland Council of Unions (QCU) building, dotted with Labor Party volunteers, computer screens, coffee cups and Arnott’s biscuits, Steven Miles, 46, is working the phones.

Shirt sleeves rolled up, he’s punching in numbers on his mobile and asking voters how they are, if they’ve received their $1000 off their energy bill, and if Smith can count on their support come the state election.

And if anyone is surprised to hear from Miles, they don’t show it.

Instead, the Bundy locals, cool as their town’s famous rum and coke, just answer his questions and go back to doing whatever they were doing on a Monday night before the Queensland Premier called them.

Some think he’s doing a good job, some don’t and let him know – after one such call Miles puts down the phone and says: “Will. Not. Be. Voting. For. Me.”

Just who – and how many – will be voting for Miles come October 26 remains to be counted, but it’s generally tipped that the LNP, with David Crisafulli as leader, will break Labor’s extraordinary streak of winning 11 of the last 12 state elections.

Unless the polls of the past year are very wrong, Labor’s almost decade-long run in Queensland will come to an end, with some pundits predicting it will be an ignominious one.

The LNP needs 12 extra seats to win a majority in the 93-seat parliament, but the polls say they could win up to 20.

The last time Labor faced such a drubbing was in 2012 when the Campbell Newman-led LNP annihilated Anna Bligh’s Labor, causing Bligh’s hasty exit the next day from politics.

But if Miles is spooked by the numbers, he’s not showing it. Instead he’s crisscrossing the state in a dizzying array of planes, trains and automobiles, hitting the streets and, tonight, the phones at the QCU.

Qweekend is along for part of the ride, travelling with Miles on a two-day, whistlestop tour from Brisbane to Hervey Bay to Bundaberg to Rockhampton and back to Brisbane.

Along the way there will be school visits, hall openings, satellite hospital announcements, a stint on a Meals on Wheels production line, train manufacturing tours, local business pop-ins, cabinet teleconferences, meetings with ambulance workers and somehow, a workout at a gym. There’ll also be eyebrows raised involving the plane travel part of the equation.

But for now he’s here, working through his list of numbers alongside the other volunteers – and leaving his caller ID on his phone “in case someone I’ve missed tonight wants to call me back”.

Early the next morning, in the car heading for an interview at a Bundaberg radio station, someone does. “Oh hello, Doug,” the Premier answers, “thanks for returning my call …”

It was another phone call at 9.30am on Sunday, December 10, 2023 which changed Miles’s political and personal fortunes.

It was from Annastacia Palaszczuk, telling him she intended to announce her resignation as premier – at 10am.

Miles, then deputy premier and on his way home from the gym, says he had “no idea” his boss was about to walk.

“I didn’t even see the announcement until later that night because I had to get straight on the phone calling colleagues to ask for their support.”

Surviving a leadership tilt by his long-time friend and colleague, Health Minister Shannon Fentiman, Miles and Treasurer Cameron Dick struck a factional deal to emerge as premier and deputy premier less than 24 hours later.

It was a short, sharp changing of the guard that would also give Miles an equally short, sharp 10 months before this month’s state election to convince voters he was the right choice.

“I have never been and don’t intend to be critical of my predecessor Annastacia, but in some ways (the timing) made it harder for me to define my contrast,” he says.

“What I did was set about showing people I had some key policies to put forward, and this last period leading up to the election is about showing people I do have a long-term vision for the future of Queensland.”

And despite rumours of a cooling off between Miles and his one-time boss Palaszczuk, he insists they remain on good terms.

“It’s like most jobs. You work with someone for nearly 10 years and you become pretty close to them, then they leave and you don’t see them as much or talk as often but it doesn’t mean you suddenly don’t like each other.

“We see each other at events, we do talk – you know each other well, you know each other’s families, and that connection doesn’t really change.”

As for Fentiman, Miles candidly admits that he was initially less sanguine about her own pitch for premier.

“We have known each other forever,” he says.

“We were teenagers when we met, we have worked together for so long, but yeah, it was awkward. I was sad it happened, and I was a bit disappointed that Shannon didn’t support me at the time, but at the same time I was completely understanding that she wanted the same thing I did.

“I’m not a hater. Some people in politics bear a grudge but I don’t think that’s ever been me. It’s not in my nature. So yes, we remain friends, and we are close.”

Good thing too, because Fentiman has also been along for part of this journey, travelling with the Premier in her capacity as Health Minister to make key announcements in both Hervey Bay and Rockhampton.

And if there was bad blood between them, things could get very awkward inside the cabin of the Embraer Phenom 300 jet the government has leased for this whirlwind tour.

While the plane’s fit-out is luxurious – all leather seating and wood panelling – it’s decidedly snug inside. The eight-seater is at its knees-almost-touching capacity with Miles, Fentiman, two media advisers and Qweekend on board.

Miles will later face criticism, which he will vigorously defend, for the use of this jet, in particular the 12-minute flight between Hervey Bay and Bundaberg. But while a media storm might be brewing outside, inside things are calm and quiet.

Miles is balancing a sheaf of papers on his lap, reading briefs and writing congratulatory letters to Queenslanders who are turning 100, or about to celebrate significant anniversaries. As the plane begins its descent into the first stop on this trip, Hervey Bay, Miles looks up for the first time from his paperwork and out the window, readying himself for the part of the job that even he admits doesn’t come naturally to him.

Meeting the media, glad-handing, making small talk, pressing the flesh, the public part of politics that some politicians are very good at and Miles is getting better at, the nervous laugh that once earned him the sobriquet “Giggles” all but gone.

Still, it has taken some work on his part.

“I am shy,” he says later in the car travelling between Hervey Bay and Maryborough. “And I would call myself introverted, so you have to make yourself … it’s the thing you have to do in order to do the job I love so much.

“Becoming premier, there is a greater intensity to it. There are very few moments when you are alone, when there aren’t other people around, even just having police in the car all the time. It takes some getting used to.

“I was very prepared, having watched Annastacia in the role for so long, for what it looks like, but it’s hard to prepare for what it feels like.”

It is an admission underscored with vulnerability and, lest it be misunderstood, Miles adds: “But it’s the best job in the world, and I feel very fortunate to have it.”

But, like all jobs in the public eye, it can come at the expense of the private one.

Married for 19 years to Kim McDowell, 43, a part-time training officer at Together union, and father to Sam, 16, Aidan, 14, and Bridie, 10, Miles says he and McDowell, who live at Mango Hill, made a decision “early on” to include his family in his public life.

While Crisafulli’s wife Tegan and daughters are largely absent from this campaign (in line with a promise Crisafulli related to Qweekend in a 2022 interview: “Tegan was everywhere the first time around, and so were my kids, but I have told them this time I won’t post photos of them, I won’t talk about them.”)

Miles has taken a markedly different approach.

“I do want people to know my family. They’re such a big part of who I am, far too big for them not to be a part of my story. But I have to respect them, so what Kim and I have done is to let the kids be the gatekeepers.

“If they are not comfortable with anything, we are not going to do it. The boys are not very keen, and I get that, I was a teenager once too, but Bridie is very comfortable, she loves it.”

Indeed, one of the most popular segments of the Premier’s TikTok account is his Lunchbox Chats with Bridie where the two prepare her school lunch together in the mornings.

And if Miles appears more relaxed in these posts than he does in traditional media settings it’s because he is.

“I never expected to be in the position of premier of Queensland, or I mostly didn’t, so I wasn’t used to talking about myself. I was used to talking about policies or programs, but the way I have found to show people who I am is through social media, that seems to work for me. That, and just getting out and about, talking with people,” he said.

But in public life, that doesn’t always go so well either. Earlier this year, it was announced that qualified nurses and midwives in Queensland could prescribe the drug MS2-Step to terminate an early-stage pregnancy.

“When I was health minister we decriminalised abortion, and that was a very powerful experience for me. I spent time in an abortion clinic where I met with women and was told of everything from life-threatening risks, pregnancies from rape and incest, and I saw first-hand how important it is for women to have access to those services and control of their own bodies,” he said.

“So you can’t have a parliament that sets a rule that says you can’t have access to those services. You simply can’t. After we decriminalised abortion, we also passed the voluntary assisted dying (VAD) bill, and they both required managing complex votes in the parliament, we very rarely have conscience votes.

“As health minister at the time you do see people experiencing truly awful pain. VAD doesn’t have to be for everybody, but I think it’s very comforting for some people to know a loved one has that choice.”

Miles says he understands that such choices can elicit strong, even extreme, responses.

“After we decriminalised abortion, I was at Bridie’s soccer match one day and a bloke came over and said: ‘Why don’t you kill your own daughter?’,” Miles pauses. “Right in front of her.”

On that occasion, Miles says he walked away, but on others, he says he can give as good as he gets.

“I remember when we announced women’s and girls’ clinics, someone posted: ‘When will you be opening men’s clinics?’,” and we posted: “Sure, as soon as you get endometriosis, let us know and we’ll book you in.” Miles chuckles. “That felt good,” he says.

The other thing – apart from getting one up on the odd troll – that makes Miles feel good is exercise.

These interviews for Qweekend are conducted on the hop, in between a frankly exhausting schedule of engagements.

After the early-morning radio interview in Bundaberg, and before a school visit, there’s a one-hour, free time window. Qweekend hits the couch, Miles hits the gym.

Later, Miles will post a post-workout photo on his Instagram with the Growth Gyms’ owner, Zak, and one wag will comment: “Man could bench the entire state with those biceps.”

But “sun’s out, guns out” tropes aside, keeping fit keeps Miles sane.

It is, he says, “a pretty much non-negotiable” part of his day.

“It’s one hour, every day,” he says. “No matter how early, or late, and it is my solace. It helps me with stress, and it’s a chance to reflect.

“I’m still checking messages in between sets, but I am by myself and I think that’s a big part of it for me.”

Keeping fit, he says, also gives him the stamina to keep campaigning, particularly across the long stretches in regional Queensland.

Crisafulli is, of course, doing the same thing, both men traversing Queensland, with Crisafulli focusing on crime and his hardline “adult crime, adult time” message, and Miles concentrating on the cost of living, his modus operandi almost Oprah-esque: “You get 20 per cent off your rego! You get $1000 off your electricity bill!”

If the polls are correct, it is Crisafulli’s message that is landing, or it might just be that after almost a decade of Labor, Queenslanders want a change.

“Whatever happens, I am just so glad I have had the chance to show people, particularly younger people, that the government really can make a difference to their lives,” Miles says. “The best thing we’ve done, I think, is the 50 cent fares.

“I was the first person in my family to go to university, actually I was the first person we knew who went to university (Miles grew up in Petrie with his dad, Bruce, a fitter and turner at the Golden Circle cannery for 33 years, and his mum, Christine, a workplace health and safety officer) and I’ve been thinking about affordable fares since I was a teenager.

“It’s not even so much that they’re now almost free, it’s more about not punishing the poorest people in the furthest-out suburbs.”

The fares have proven so popular, Crisafulli has said he intends to keep them if elected.

Crisafulli has also, somewhat rashly perhaps, said that if elected and he fails to reduce the youth crime rate within his first four years, he’ll resign.

Time will tell if that comes to pass, but in the meantime, the campaign trail grinds on for both men.

Miles has another plane to catch, another road to drive, another hand to shake, another policy to announce, another bus to take, another post to make, another chance for the man they call “Giggles” – against some pretty long odds – to have the last laugh.