Crisafulli cops flak from both flanks over support of Labor budget

The news

Queensland Premier Steven Miles has accused his opponent of trying to be “the tiniest little ball of a small target” for his pledge to adopt most measures in Labor’s budget before it is even announced.

Opposition Leader David Crisafulli suggested this week he would honour any “fully funded” project that Labor commits to in this year’s budget, which will be handed down next week.

“If projects are fully funded, if they’re in the budget, if they’re under way – good governments, good oppositions honour those,” Crisafulli told journalists in Townsville on Wednesday.Credit: Matt Dennien

Miles made his remarks at a Queensland Day event where he announced renewable energy and jobs spending would ramp up to $26 billion over four years, labelling such investment key to regional jobs.

The pressure was echoed by former LNP premier Campbell Newman, who has also called Crisafulli’s approach a “small target” strategy.

How we got here

Crisafulli raised eyebrows this week when he pledged to adopt funding set out over the next four years in the Labor government’s budget, because “that’s the way you give stability”.

He appeared to qualify the statement slightly on Wednesday, saying such projects had to be “under way”, and casting a cloud over Labor’s flagship Pioneer-Burdekin pumped hydro project.

Why it matters

With less than five months to October’s key state election, Crisafulli and his LNP team are ramping up criticism and questions about the third-term Labor government now under Miles’ leadership.

But the opposition has released little in the way of detailed plans or vision of its own, including on hitting accepted net-zero emissions targets by 2050, and has so far failed to explain how it plans to lower taxes and debt – now also committing to Labor’s spending.

Crisafulli has also refused to explain how this pledge squares with a funded, and underway, First Nations path to treaty, and other social programs opposed by the LNP.

What they said

Appearing before a crowd at the XXXX brewery in Milton to deliver his speech, Miles was then asked in the question and answer session which followed about the LNP’s approach to Labor’s budget.

“My cabinet hasn’t even endorsed the budget yet, but the Leader of the Opposition has? We all know what they’re trying to do, right?” he told the room of political, business and community leaders.

“All of that progress and future investment is at risk if we change course,” Miles said of the state’s renewable energy and jobs plan should the LNP win government in October.Credit: Matt Dennien

“He is absolutely determined to tie himself into the tiniest little ball of a small target so that people won’t see the risk associated with electing them. He is effectively trying to say to Queenslanders, ‘you can have a Labor government, just without the Labor Party’.

“I don’t think anyone’s going to fall for that. You can’t have an opposition, that is pretty much all former Newman government ministers and say, ‘elect us, we’ll be just like the Labor Party’.”

Another point of view

Miles’ comments were echoed by Newman himself earlier on Thursday. In an interview on ABC Radio Brisbane, the landslide one-term LNP premier-turned federal libertarian candidate described the approach as “insane … but more importantly though, it’s dishonest”.

While noting he had a vested interest in attacking Labor and wanted nothing more than to see his former party form government again, Newman rejected the idea Crisafulli could be a small enough target to avoid Labor attacks linking his team to the LNP’s last state government.

“They won’t escape … what you have to do is you have to actually say: this is what we did that was good, this is the stuff that we probably shouldn’t have done, but this is the LNP’s agenda,” he said of his former minister.

Where to from here

Treasurer Cameron Dick, who on Wednesday labelled Crisafulli’s comments “gobsmacking”, will hand down the government’s budget on Tuesday, before the LNP’s reply on Thursday.

After then, only estimates hearings and two more parliamentary sitting weeks remain as political set-pieces until the election on October 26.