Opinion: LNP straps two policy timebombs to its chest

The LNP has set a foolishly high bar to turn Queensland around in 100 days – a timeline about to expire, writes Paul Williams.

Premier David Crisafulli is staring down the barrel of twin policy timebombs. Picture: Liam Kidston

Queensland’s LNP opposition naively wore two policy timebombs on its chest between 2020 and 2024.

The first, attached immediately after Deb Frecklington’s easy defeat in 2020, was designed to counter the LNP’s then-flawed “big target” platform that included an unfunded Bruce Highway upgrade and the rebirth of the ridiculous Bradfield Scheme to irrigate the west.

The smallest opposition policy target ever seen in Queensland slowly morphed into a ticking catastrophe.

But the tactic worked.

The LNP won government by carping about Labor’s alleged responsibility for grocery prices, youth crime, housing shortages and hospital ramping without offering any tangible alternative solutions.

It’s the classic “all care, no responsibility” mantra we see too much of in today’s politics.

The LNP’s second bomb, strapped on amid the campaign euphoria of last October, was to set a foolishly high bar to turn Queensland around in 100 days – a timeline that expires in about two weeks.

Unfortunately for all involved, an appalling crime – this week’s stabbing of a 63-year-old woman, allegedly by a 13-year-old boy – has detonated the second device.

It’s horribly reminiscent of a similar crime, again allegedly by teens, in Ipswich a year ago – the very crime that placed law and order at the heart of the 2024 election campaign.

Police at the Ipswich shopping centre where a Coles worker was allegedly stabbed by a 13-year-old boy. Picture: Liam Kidston/NCA NewsWire

Embarrassingly for the LNP, the boy, now charged with attempted murder, is unlikely to fall under the government’s proudly touted “adult crime, adult time” legal umbrella because – like some surreal Monty Python sketch – attempted murder (and other crimes such as kidnapping and arson) was not included in the Bill the government rammed through the Parliament late last year.

This has now detonated the LNP’s first bomb.

Many Queenslanders, fed up with headlines about criminal kids running wild, often on bail after repeated judicial slaps on the wrist, took the LNP at its word and expected youth crime to dramatically decline on the election of an LNP government.

Many a voter is similarly waiting for lower grocery prices, insurance premiums, house prices and rents – foolishly high expectations the LNP cruelly cultivated in the bid for votes.

And now the LNP’s original bomb is set to go off in coming weeks as the Crisafulli government frantically scrambles its five-member expert panel to advise on how best to amend the Making Queensland Safer Act.

But didn’t the LNP opposition have four years to get this policy right?

How is it possible for a crime-obsessed opposition to oversee such egregious omissions, especially given youth justice was pivotal to the LNP’s campaign?

Queenslanders expect, and deserve, better.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m no bleeding heart on youth crime. I’m as fed up as anyone with lawless youth repeatedly robbing decent citizens of their sense of safety.

But I’m also a social scientist who knows to trust the quantitative findings of objective research that warned us that “adult crime, adult time” blustering would do little to reduce youth offending.

Premier David Crisafulli, for example, said the policy would act as a deterrent.

Opposition Leader Steven Miles has slammed the LNP’s policy as “slogans without substance”.

But do young teens – driven by impulsive, undeveloped brains probably fogged by alcohol and drugs – read parliamentary legislation, or even consume news to know the law has changed?

The real explosion is not the LNP’s humiliation by this omission.

Their blunder occurred during the government’s honeymoon, and in January when most folk ignore politics. It will not harm the LNP in the long term.

No, the real explosion is the way in which this awful crime exposes the folly of an opposition campaigning on a microscopic policy target, then expecting to put policy meat on aspirational bones while on the job.

Labor should be hammering the LNP over this abysmal fail. But, apart from leader Steven Miles’s criticism of LNP policy as “slogans without substance”, Labor cannot mount a credible attack because the Opposition itself is divided over how best to curb youth crime.

As I warned readers last year, small-target oppositions become panicked governments inclined to making policy on the run.

Rather than investing the time to consult widely on policy detail – not just victims-of-crime groups but criminologists, too – the LNP chose the populist sugar rush, and is now acting like a fire brigade: amending policy daily, and frantically extinguishing political fires they, themselves, started.

Sadly, expect more of this type of panicked governance from an LNP that was simply not prepared for government.

Dr Paul Williams is an associate professor at Griffith University

Originally published as Opinion: LNP straps two policy timebombs to its chest