State election watch: Labor understood to have booked television advertising spots
AS speculation grows over a state election date, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has confessed she has an important meeting on Sunday. But she insists it’s not at Government House.
QLD News
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PREMIER Annastacia Palaszczuk insists the only thing on her agenda for this Sunday is a meeting with her Nanna.
As speculation grows the Premier will make the trip to Government House this weekend, Ms Palaszczuk did her best to hose down speculation.
“I have an appointment on Sunday ... To see my Nanna, I’m serious,” she said.
“As I’ve said it would have to take something pretty extraordinary for me to call an election.
“I’m always open to listening to the public and at this stage it’s only the media that has increased asking questions about it. I’m listening to Queenslanders and it would have to take something extraordinary.”
Ms Palaszczuk this morning turned the first sod on the Ipswich Motorway upgrade with Federal Minister Paul Fletcher after the State and Federal Governments agreed on a 50/50 funding split of $200 million each.
The upgrade is expected to be completed by 2020.
The Courier-Mail today revealed that Labor was understood to have booked television advertisements to start as early as Sunday night.
It is understood the state ALP has been booking slots in anticipation of an election being called, potentially this weekend, for November 25.
The LNP is also understood to have been booking ad space.
Pauline Hanson’s chief-of-staff James Ashby said the One Nation leader could return from her planned trip to India should Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk call the state election in the next week.
Senator Hanson is due to fly to India tomorrow as part of a week-long parliamentary trip.
The speculation comes as new figures show the number of public servants has ballooned by more than 20,000 under the Palaszczuk Government, including a surge of 1700 in the three months to June.
Most of the growth to June was in frontline doctors, nurses and teachers as the Government readies itself to fight an election in which it will again evoke unpopular job cuts under the previous LNP government.
But the explosion to 217,577 full-time-equivalent jobs has broken the Government’s earlier pledge to cap public sector recruitment to population growth.
The Newman government spent millions of dollars cutting the public service from 209,000 to 192,000 full-time-equivalent positions by June 2013, angering many voters.
When Mr Newman left office, there were 196,856 public servants.
The latest figures are a turnaround on last year’s growth, which was driven by greater numbers of desk jockeys. Analysis of workforce figures since Ms Palaszczuk took office in February 2015 shows the number of frontline staff has grown by 10 per cent to 198,381, compared with 8 per cent for backroom bureaucrats.
The number of media advisers has also grown — up 16 per cent from 878 to 1019.
Originally published as State election watch: Labor understood to have booked television advertising spots
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