Queensland election 2017: Adani protesters upstaging Premier

LABOR really should get a better line to use in response to anti-Adani protests, because you can bet they will be around most days of the campaign, writes Dennis Atkins. (Picture: Sky News)

IT’S hard to imagine Labor campaign advancers and managers would have failed to anticipate interventions by anti-Adani protesters when Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and her battle bus chug around the state.

However, that’s the only conclusion to draw after two days on the campaign trail.

Day one saw Palaszczuk’s media conference announcing the election crashed by an anti-Adani protest, with voices raised in favour of saving the Great Barrier Reef.

Palaszczuk look startled and failed to take a stand one way or the other on the $6 billion, world’s-biggest coalmine in central northern Queensland.

Instead she muttered about her Government’s record on renewable energy, which tended to do nothing but confuse the issue.

Today Palaszczuk was in the Whitsundays, which includes a 0.6 per cent LNP seat, and doing a live cross to Sky News when another anti-Adani protester ran across in the background.

This time the Premier laughed it off, which was marginally better than her confusing reaction yesterday.

Joah Fanning, 3, from Airlie Beach was one of the anti-Adani protesters. Picture: Darren England/AAP

Palaszczuk and Labor really should get a better line to use in response to these protests, because you can bet they will be around most days between now and November 25.

Labor is in danger of losing the Adani mine issue from both ends, with voters going to the Greens in the inner city and to the LNP and One Nation in the outer suburbs and in regional centres.

Defending any support for Adani with Greens voters has always been a losing argument, and ministers Jackie Trad and Grace Grace will fight off insurgent assaults from the Left.

Labor managed to mix its messages with those voter cohorts who might cheer on any support for Adani.

In and around Townsville — which is the biggest population centre near the mine, and the place nominated by the company as its primary hub — Labor looked like it was lukewarm on Adani until the last minute.

Elsewhere, Labor’s presumed support for any subsidised loan to Adani — which is what is proposed for the $1 billion rail link to the coast — is opposed by almost two in three Queenslanders.

These cross-currents could well see Labor high and dry come polling day.

Originally published as Queensland election 2017: Adani protesters upstaging Premier