How the pressure of an election campaign can turn a small target big

As far as 2024 Queensland state election campaign events go, Friday’s offering from the LNP was almost textbook.

A suburban shopping centre in a regional Labor heartland seen as ripe for the picking for either its margin or a retiring member.

The subject also aligned with the message Opposition Leader David Crisafulli has been at least in theory keen to put forward (“hope over fear”) on an issue his party has been most keen to pursue and declare a priority for voters (youth crime).

Labor’s Steven Miles and the LNP’s David Crisafulli are now 11 days in to their 26-day campaign to the October 26 election.Credit: Aresna Villanueva

And after some early eye-catching energy announcements from Labor on the issue most voters have said is the top concern (cost-of-living), both major party leaders’ camps were logging a largely low-energy effort with few big new ideas, and some old.

That was, at least, for the first week.

The release of the LNP’s long-awaited plans for another of the “four crises” making up part of its glossy plan (health), though drawing calls for further detail from key stakeholders, landed just as an issue the party has insisted is “not part of the plan” emerged.

For a fifth-straight day on Friday, after leader David Crisafulli attacked Labor for what he described was a refusal to discuss crime, he again refused to detail how he could promise abortion would not again become a crime despite pushes from both within his party, and outside, to make it so.

Crisafulli was forced to step in and bat away questions on behalf of his candidate for Rockhampton, Donna Kirkland, as she refused to say whether she still agreed with an Australian Christians Party Facebook post shared in 2019 which described abortion as “the greatest human rights abuse of all time”.

After several minutes and more than a dozen versions of the phrases “not part of our plan” or “we have ruled it out”, she then refused to even say the word “abortion” when asked to explain what “it” was, before saying “we have ruled out any conversation around that”.

Crisafulli, who has batted away at least 50 direct questions on whether he would grant his MPs a conscience vote on a promised Katter’s Australian Party bill to repeal Labor’s 2018 decriminalisation of abortion when parliament returns, then gave what was probably his clearest answer yet.

“It is a serious issue, and the fact that we have, as a team taken, the decision that it’s not part of our plan, and we’ve ruled it out, should give comfort to every person in Queensland that we are a unified team, and we are disciplined, and we are focused on the issues that matter to Queensland.”

Got it? But in the co-ordinated effort to refuse to engage on the question of what this decision means in detail, those questions have been left to linger by Crisafulli and his team – now facing daily scrutiny on a scale non-existent outside a campaign.

And so, largely fuelled by the emergence of Scenic Rim MP Jon Krause’s September candidate forum comments on Monday, a gap emerged for Robbie Katter and his likely dominant crossbench crew to drive the almightiest of wedges into four years of relative discipline and unity among the LNP opposition.

Make no mistake, this is not an idle threat from the Katter’s Australian Party men. And they are all men. The rural reverse-Greens would relish the chance to flex their unashamedly conservative Christian values to import a US-style culture war and force LNP MPs to a standard conscience vote in parliament to make one of the hardest health decisions a woman can make a crime – again.

Crisafulli conceded this week the issue could eat into the healthy and growing polled support his party has enjoyed for more than a year now. On Friday, he warned of the “chaos and crisis” that anything other than an LNP majority would deliver.

It’s not as if there were not warnings, either.

Even before the emergence of the off-script comments from Krause and Co, what Crisafulli himself has described as the formidable campaign machine of Labor and its union supporters was highlighting differences between more recent LNP words and past actions – like only three MPs backing the 2018 reform.

Most election outcome related predictions are unwise. And any made about the likely impact of campaign happenings to-date would be, too.

But with early voting to open from Monday, the now Miles-led third-term Labor — hoping to deny the LNP only its third term in 35 years — would sure rather not be facing the LNP’s heat. Even if Miles has had some sloppy moments.

Responding to a question about the biggest risk Crisafulli had taken as leader going against the grain for something he believed was right at last week’s leader’s debate, the LNP leader opted for what seemed at the time like a risk-averse answer.

“Every day you have to stand up for things, every single day,” Crisafulli said.

Even a small target can grow large if you focus in close enough.