Opinion: Jarrod Bleijie dominant, David Crisafulli unknown among Qld public

Whose voice is loudest in the LNP partyroom, and who has the biggest influence around the cabinet table, asks Paul Williams. VOTE IN OUR POLL

State and federal infrastructure ministers Jarrod Bleijie and Catherine King at the Queensland Press Club last week. Picture: Dan Peled/NCA NewsWire

I watched Deputy Premier and Infrastructure Minister Jarrod Bleijie deliver a showstopper performance at the Queensland Media Club last week.

Trouble is, while his speech ostensibly addressed the 2032 Olympic Games, I’m not entirely sure what the real takeaway is. More on that later.

Joined on stage by Labor rival and now best buddy Catherine King, the federal Infrastructure Minister, Bleijie gave us a phrase that will undoubtedly be repeated ad nauseam till the 2028 state election and beyond. It’s all about “legacy infrastructure”, folks.

That, in itself, is a good thing for a Brisbane now bursting at the seams via unbridled population growth.

With six million people calling South East Queensland home by 2046, the need for new roads, train lines, houses, schools, hospitals, shopping precincts and green spaces is a no-brainer.

I’m no fan of an Olympic Games our children will still be paying for decades from now – despite Bleijie’s unconvincing insistence the $7.1bn price tag is sustainable – but if the Games facilitate the type of future planning needed to save Brisbane from itself, then I’m for it.

Yet this underscores one of those wicked problems of public policy: Why does it take a sporting event to bring state and federal governments together to address our most obvious societal problems?

For decades Queenslanders have complained of infrastructure shortfalls, ranging from soaring energy costs to a torturous Bruce Highway.

Why are pollies only now pooling their resources to produce a real legacy?

Put bluntly, it’s a shameful failure of governance in this country.

But Bleijie also failed to address an issue any Uber driver – the go-to arbiter of public opinion – is only too willing to discuss: Where’s the public enthusiasm for the Brisbane Games we saw before Sydney in 2000?

Has it been lost in the wasted years since we were awarded the Games in 2020? Remember of course, Sydney only had seven years to prepare.

It’s all well and good for Bleijie to talk up a sports fest that may well transform much of Queensland – it’s only fitting the regions also host events – but governments in a democracy must have the people on board before spending big.

Put simply, the Queensland government will need to spend more of our taxpayer dollars on advertisements and public relations reminding us why we should be excited.

That very gap between expectation and reality is made more painful by chronic housing and teacher shortages.

Yet it’s a third impression I got from Thursday’s speech that really got me wondering.

Just who is the premier of Queensland?

Whose voice is loudest in the LNP partyroom, and who has the biggest influence around the cabinet table?

I’ve rarely seen a pollie as confident and polished – some say slick – as Jarrod Bleijie.

It’s as if the school-captain-turned-lawyer was born with a microphone in his hand, and a leadership baton not so discreetly tucked into his knapsack.

It wasn’t just what Bleijie said on stage last week – a hum of hubris over a transformative Olympic Games – but the way he said it.

Indeed, his rather patronising self-referencing as a deal-maker with Catherine King and Logan Mayor Jon Raven conjured up images of a young Donald Trump.

It’s that sort of cockiness that can knock a pollie off a perch quicker than brickie removes froth from a beer.

Despite our modernity, Australia still suffers from poppy syndrome.

Not coincidentally, the next day I asked an Uber driver – as I inevitably do – what he thought of Premier David Crisafulli.

“Never heard of him,” he said.

That public ignorance is supported by the most recent polling, a Redbridge survey, that found in March that 37 per cent of voters did not know of Crisafulli.

Despite most voters – almost three to one – rating him as, so far, doing a good job, the softly spoken and ideologically moderate Crisafulli appears to have a much more tenuous grip on the LNP’s leadership than those figures suggest.

Add the 37 per cent who don’t know Crisafulli to the countless regional voters who prefer a conservative as premier, and we get yet another gap – this time in leadership – between reality and public expectation.

Watch out for senior ministers who are “ambitious” for their leaders.

Just ask Malcolm Turnbull and Scott Morrison.

Paul Williams is an associate professor at Griffith University

Originally published as Opinion: Jarrod Bleijie dominant, David Crisafulli unknown among Qld public