Mango Hill man steps up under union supervision

United Workers Union boss Gary Bullock has spoken; the man from Mango Hill, new Queensland Premier Steven Miles, has allocated the portfolios in his cabinet and Mr Miles says with fresh faces come fresh ideas, “which is exactly what we need as we charge into a new year”. Queensland politics does need fresh ideas. But the ability of Mr Miles and his team to provide them remains to be seen. So does the answer to a question posed in Inquirer last Saturday: “Miles – who has a PhD in union renewal from the University of Queensland and once worked as communications director for Bullock’s union – is now perceived to be owned and operated by Bullock and other union bosses. Every decision of the Miles Labor government will now be viewed through that lens: what do the unions get out of it?” Queenslanders are entitled to know more about the deal that put Mr Miles into his 40th-floor office in the gleaming “tower of power” at 1 William Street in Brisbane.

The challenges of leading Queensland in the tropics in summer are already under way. In far north Queensland, Cairns is surrounded by floodwaters in the wake of tropical cyclone Jasper; 300 residents from the Wujal Wujal Indigenous community needed to be evacuated to safety; and a 2.5m-long crocodile was spotted in floodwaters in Palm Creek, south of the town of Ingham.

Apart from the immediate challenges of disaster management, the priorities of Mr Miles’s rebooted government, he told Jamie Walker, would be health, the cost of living and addressing the housing and crime crises – in other words, fixing up the problems Labor has created in its first three terms, in which he has been a minister. Tackling youth crime and overcoming lack of capacity in the state’s public hospital system are the two problems that probably worry Queenslanders the most.

Preparations for the 2032 Olympic Games, in which Mr Miles was directly involved under Annastacia Palaszczuk, will become increasingly important as the government battles to contain costs. The anticipated cost of rebuilding the Gabba to serve as the main stadium already has ballooned from a ballpark figure of $1bn to $2.7bn. The pros and cons of refurbishing rather than rebuilding the venue will be one of the most important calls by Mr Miles and his cabinet. The row over the Gabba – which resulted in Liberal National Party Brisbane Lord Mayor Adrian Schrinner yanking his support from the plan to demolish and rebuild the stadium – has become a symbol of the chaos afflicting the Olympic preparations. Mr Miles, Opposition Leader David Crisafulli and Mr Schrinner agree on a key point – that an independent agency is needed to manage the multibillion-dollar infrastructure program. Such an agency initially was insisted on by Scott Morrison as a way to maximise investment from the private sector and to reduce the cost of the Games to taxpayers. But in March Queensland Labor confirmed the agency would not be established – an announcement made by Mr Miles as deputy premier. “I don’t think a new bureau­cracy that would just soak up resources is useful or necessary,” he said.

Mr Miles also is walking on both sides of the street on energy, a critical issue to the state’s economy and living costs. While Mr Miles has assured industry and voters that new coalmines and natural gas wells will be assessed and allowed on a case-by-case basis, one of his first moves as Premier was to announce a new emissions target of 75 per cent – one of the most ambitious in the nation. The cost benefits of achieving it through renewables, and the price, are yet to be spelled out. A little more than 10 months until the next election, those policy issues pose a challenge for Mr Miles and for the opposition. The latter, which needs to gain 14 seats next year to win office, has a lot of policy work ahead. It has one headstart – it is not at the beck and call of union kingmakers whose power has been so clearly on display during Labor’s leadership transition.