Canva, ‘chaos’ and Crisafulli: The LNP’s plans (so far) for Queensland

In late 2020, a former TV journalist and Townsville deputy mayor-turned Gold Coast MP took the helm of the LNP’s shrinking parliamentary team, after a third-straight state election loss.

Fronting reporters, David Crisafulli promised an opposition focused on three things: a small and family-business built economy, frontline service delivery, and integrity in government.

David Crisafulli fronts media in the months after his return to state parliament as member for the Gold Coast-based seat of Broadwater in 2017.Credit: Amy Remeikis

Since then, we’re yet to see much detail on just how the party would realise such a vision beyond its own contribution to the Canva-tisation of politics.

And with a Wednesday sit-down interview scheduled between the leader and decorated journo Kerry O’Brien (topic: “reshaping the centre-right” of politics), now’s maybe a good time to take stock.

The three areas most troubling the government as we move through the third year of this first four-year parliamentary term are health, housing and youth crime.

This is acknowledged by Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk herself in her recent reshuffle of ministers responsible.

The Queensland state LNP opposition has ramped up its effort to paint the government as one of “chaos” this month, as shown in formal media statements sent out by its media team containing variations of the word.Credit:

Often enlisting his shadow cabinet members to throw most of the personal barbs, Crisafulli has sought to rise above, declaring last month people wanted solutions, not politicians pointing fingers.

But the ideas placed on the table by Crisafulli & Co so far, through daily press conferences, regular commercial TV appearances and simple social media graphic lists, are what you could maybe generously describe as thin.

On crime, the LNP has so far announced vague plans to introduce “consequences for actions” by “putting victims before young criminals”. There has been little elaboration of what this involves.

The LNP would also (again) remove a nationally consistent and United Nations-backed principle that judges use detention as a last resort for young offenders guilty or accused of crimes.

The LNP’s plans so far this parliamentary term in the three key areas troubling the government.Credit:

Never mind many in the legal field, including the Queensland Law Society, aren’t sold on the idea – which youth advocates and experts say will only drag more kids, mostly First Nations, deeper into cycles of offending.

Or the fact the law society says the Palaszczuk government’s tightening of laws essentially does this for kids declared serious repeat offenders anyway. (Those changes also struck out an earlier item of the LNP’s plan: breach of bail.)

The LNP also lists funding, resourcing and reforming “gold standard early intervention” as one of its solutions on the table, of which there is little detail beyond links to work being done by the audit office around programs aimed at helping stop kids being pulled into crime in the first place.

Turn to health, with pressures facing governments nationwide, and the solutions are equally symbolic: real-time emergency department data, streamlined “triaging when patients arrive”, putting “doctors and nurses back in charge” and investing in more hospital beds.

Something the LNP has been focused on is running “health crisis town halls” to hear community experiences of the health system, with the 31st taking place on Monday in the Redlands.

The party’s solutions on housing are hazier still.

But the LNP’s priorities so far have not extended to introducing a bill to parliament (which, to be fair, would be doomed to the bin under the government’s numbers and consideration by the Labor-controlled committee system).

The offer of a review for that system was extended to the LNP by the parliament’s speaker, Labor MP Curtis Pitt, last year to little response.

Crisafulli last month suggested he wanted to “reform” at least part of the system, alongside resurrecting the Productivity Commission. But don’t expect the party to be in such a rush to implement some of the suggestions that agency has made in the past.

His conversation on Wednesday is expected to touch on the internal state of the LNP following efforts to clean it up amid internal, and electoral, issues for the Coalition parties nationwide.

He is also likely to try to distance himself from his stint as a minister in the Newman government – whose spending cuts still provide (increasingly strained) fodder for Labor 10 years on.

Asked for more detail on his party’s plans for hospitals at a press conference on Monday, Crisafulli said there would be more to come as the October 2024 state election approaches. A reply to the government’s budget will also come within weeks.

Meanwhile, the opposition has cranked the dial on its efforts to paint the government in a state of “chaos and crisis” (not helped by Labor’s now well-worn reactive streak) using variations of the phrase in official statements almost every day this month.

If as the LNP repeatedly suggests, Queenslanders deserve better from – or than – the Palaszczuk government, they could also rightly expect more from the party who would seek to replace it.

ICYMI

• A wild week in parliament to initiate reshuffled ministers drove some changes to Brisbane Times’ painstakingly kept list of MPs behaving badly so far this year. Both Labor and the LNP now have a pretty even split among the seven kicked out more than twice, while deputy opposition leader Jarrod “the King of Kawana” Bleijie now tops the warning list with 22.
• With the state budget due in two weeks, the Auditor-General issued a new report on Monday warning about the problems higher interest rates might pose to the government’s books in coming years, while recommending more transparency around its investment funds.

HEADS UP

• After the surprise retirement announcement from WA Labor Premier Mark McGowan, Palaszczuk has paid tribute to her University of Queensland-era friend, describing him as a “strong leader who had worked tirelessly” in the role since 2017. Cue further speculation about Palaszczuk’s own future.
• Queensland Labor and union folks will descend on Mackay this weekend for the party’s state conference where they’ll hash out administrative rule changes and policy platforms that may (or may not) get picked up by the government. What of that internal rumbling might spill out onto the conference floor, or in public, remains to be seen.