First post-Covid election a test of recovery strategies

Pundits venturing a wager on the Queensland election would be wise to factor a hung parliament into their calculations, alongside an outright Labor or Liberal National Party win. The contest, which officially starts on Tuesday, is wide open. In the unicameral parliament, Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk’s Labor government holds 48 seats — a net loss of two would wipe out its majority in the 93-seat Legislative Assembly. Deb Frecklington and her LNP team have 38 seats and face an uphill battle to increase their tally by nine. The minor parties and independents will be hard to dislodge, especially the three Katter’s Australian Party members in the northwest. In the event of a tight result they would probably side with the LNP — at a high price, as Sarah Elks reports. Ms Palaszczuk is acutely aware of the possibility of a hung parliament and used it on Monday to garner support. “I cannot be any clearer, minority governments don’t work,” she said. Until political parties need to cut a deal.

Ms Palaszczuk, according to Newspoll in July, has a commanding lead over her rival as preferred premier. And while support for her hard-border COVID-19 lockdown is softening, it remains a positive. But not necessarily among swinging voters in regional seats along the state’s vast coastline, where the tourism and hospitality sector and its workers have suffered mightily as a result of Ms Palaszczuk’s pig-headed border lockdown. The Newspoll in late July gave the LNP a 51-49 lead. Voters in regional coastal seats also would be the beneficiaries of the state Opposition Leader’s campaign centrepiece so far: a 15-year, $33bn upgrade of the Bruce Highway to four lanes from Gympie to Cairns. The two-lane “highway” is dangerous in places and flood-prone. The policy, which would rely on 80 per cent federal funding, has won traction in regional communities disgruntled about missing out as Brisbane gains more tunnels and its $5.4bn Cross River Rail project advances. The Bruce Highway is good policy and good politics given the interest in infrastructure upgrades in post-COVID rebuilding. At state level, the promise is for a $50m feasibility study and to more than double annual spending on the road from $200m to $440m.

From Labor’s perspective, the pandemic is helping neutralise one of its weaknesses — state debt, which is heading towards $100bn, mostly accumulated before the pandemic. This is also an LNP weakness. Like Labor, the opposition has ruled out asset leases or sales. Neither had it advanced a policy pre-COVID for reducing it or recovering Queensland’s long-lost AAA credit rating. In February Queensland Auditor-General Brendan Worrall delivered a grim assessment of the state’s finances, warning government spending had been outstripping revenue for two years. Unemployment has been well above the national average for too long. The state’s budgetary woes are closely tied to the ballooning public sector wages bill. The 14,000 public servants made redundant by Campbell Newman from 2012 to 2015 have been replaced at least twice over, by at least 35,000 more.

On the positive side for Labor, Cameron Dick, who replaced the ideological and accident-prone Jackie Trad as Treasurer in May, has done well in signalling that the state, including its coal industry, is open for business. After his promotion he sent a clear message to resource companies, cementing rail and port monopolies for at least another decade. Coal, worth $52bn a year to the state, is still Queensland’s largest export industry. If Labor is returned, Mr Dick will be in a good position as Treasurer to reboot the government’s union-dominated big-spending approach and adopt the pro-enterprise approach of predecessors such as Goss government treasurer Keith DeLacy.

During the campaign, issues raised in The Australian’s “The Mates State” would be worth pursuing and both sides have form. Labor mates have ridden high on the Palaszczuk government’s gravy train. Those on board include former Labor MP and strategist Mike Kaiser, who is now a KPMG partner; former Labor chief of staff Nicole Scurrah, who works for PwC; Evan Moorhead, the Palaszczuk government’s former chief of strategy, who is now a lobbyist and on a retainer for the ALP; and David Barbagallo, Ms Palaszczuk’s former chief of staff who did not properly declare his interests in a tech company that received $267,000 in government investment.

On the LNP side, Ms Frecklington lacks a strong profile, but no more so than Ms Palaszczuk did five years ago when she led Labor to a surprise victory against Mr Newman, whose bombastic approach saw him snatch failure from the jaws of victory. Ms Frecklington’s hand was strengthened when she survived the recent push by former LNP president and Clive Palmer staffer Dave Hutchinson to oust her. But the most important battles are yet to come. She and Ms Palaszczuk have yet to present comprehensive plans for rebuilding the languishing Queensland economy post-COVID. The respective policies on reviving the conditions to encourage investment and jobs, cheaper energy and business-led recovery are yet to come. In this campaign for the right to lead Queensland into its first four-year term at one of its most critical post-World War II turning points, good policies will matter more than ever.