It’s an underdog eat underdog world in the Sunshine State

Queensland Premier Steven Miles. Picture: NCA NewsWire / David Clark

In a post-Christmas press conference on Tuesday, Queensland’s shiny new Premier, Steven Miles, ducked and dodged a few questions on polling before leaving to see a man about a dog. Not just any dog. An underdog.

Nine months out from an election, the 46-year-old has decided that he and his government are “underdogs”. Taken literally, this means Miles believes Labor is unlikely to win the state election on October 31.

A poll conducted by UComms for The Courier-Mail, the first of its kind since Miles became Premier, shows Labor’s dire position has not changed since Annastacia Palaszczuk tapped the mat on December 10.

Outside Brisbane where it has been raining cats and dogs, the Labor Party appears even more on the snout. Thus begins the Premier Miles’s vainglorious descent into mathematical probabilities and animal metaphors.

Almost anything can happen in a two-horse race but, by definition, only horses can win. Dogs cannot, but the underdog is somehow a chance against the odds.

Why the political obsession with underdog status? Why is there perceived value in politics entering a contest as the least likely candidate or party to win? What potential advantage might be gained by portraying oneself as the ugliest cur in the pet shop?

Is Miles barking up the wrong tree or did the underdog eat his homework? He is desperately hosing down expectations after enjoying another oft-used political metaphor, the honeymoon.

Miles’s honeymoon was so short it made Britney Spears and Jason Alexander, who entered into a state of holy matrimony for just 55 hours in 2004, look like a breeding pair of rainbow lorikeets.

Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk

Labor sources were saying as early as May that Palaszczuk would be gone by Christmas and so it proved. In August Labor kingmaker and United Workers Union secretary Gary Bullock gave a “no comment” response to a question on whether he believed Palaszczuk should take Labor to the next election, and the end for the three-time election winner was nigh.

By any measure it was unseemly, with the UWU and the Australian Manufacturers Workers Union not only calling the shots but being seen to call the shots. Labor’s Queensland caucus is little more than a rubber stamp. Bullock and others might argue they don’t run Queensland but it is evident they pick the people who do and tell them how to do it.

Obviously, winning four elections in a row in Queensland is a Himalayan task, but replacing a winning premier with one who classifies himself as an underdog is not exactly the gold standard in succession management.

In 2019, Scott Morrison said it was “fairly clear” he and the Coalition were the underdogs to win that year’s federal election and we all know what happened there. As the votes rolled in on election night, Morrison eschewed canine symbolism and pronounced his victory “a miracle”.

He laid claim to being the underdog again last year but found himself outdogged by Anthony Albanese, who spent much of the campaign referring to himself and his party as the one true underdog. The federal election last year was a battle not only for the hearts and minds of voters but also a dogfight to prove who was the mangiest, puniest mutt on the block.

Gary Bullock

It’s unsurprising therefore that the underdog won, but then it is equally obvious that another underdog lost. Therein lies a statistical anomaly that provides no strong evidence that underdogs, by sporting definition outgunned, outsmarted and outmuscled, find themselves by some weird trick of the universe standing atop the podium.

But wait. Ahead of the Aston by-election in April, deputy opposition leader Sussan Ley clamoured to assume underdog status despite the fact the last time an opposition had conceded a seat to a government in a by-election was 100 years ago.

“So the Liberal Party will start this (by) election race as the clear underdog, we know that,” Ley said.

The Libs lost the seat with a neat 6 per cent swing against them.

Political communications remain mired in coded euphemism. In political terms an underdog is a political party that believes it is about to be taken to the cleaners and its parliamentary members understand it at a deep, instinctive, cellular level but lack the honesty to say it out loud.

Assuming underdog status in politics is becoming tiresome, a hackneyed regurgitation of language that made little sense when it was first used and makes even less now.

Surely we can do better than underdog. Where are the dark horses, the longshots? What ever happened to the rank outsider battling the odds? Where are the Davids bringing Goliaths to their knees? Where are the Bradburians who triumph by being the last man standing at the finish line? Let’s hear some Cinderella stories – the former greenkeeper out of nowhere about to become the Masters champion etc.

Steven Bradbury

Winning four elections would be a remarkable feat. But Premier Miles has no right to refer to himself as an underdog. He has the keys to the state Treasury, with all the largesse therein to spread around. Roll out the barrel. Put some pork on your fork. He has access to media and news coverage that his opponent can only dream of. He has the ability to drive a political agenda, to shape policy discussions in Queensland.

Instead he clings to a form of passive victimhood. By the look of his polling he seems not to understand one other less well known rule of politics – that every dog does not have its day.

Not to mention that there’s a fine line between an underdog and just a dog.

Jack the Insider is a highly placed, dedicated servant of the nation and a columnist at The Australian.