Queensland election: Palaszczuk digging deep to save seats and her job

Annastacia Palaszczuk’s shock decision to veto a federal loan to Adani is all about saving her job.

For days, anti-Adani protests have overshadowed her lacklustre re-election campaign, causing jitters about inner-city Labor seats in the face of a well-organised Greens campaign.

The Palaszczuk minority government is likely to lose a swath of seats in the job-stricken regions. Labor needs not only to hold seats in Brisbane, but also to make up for the expected losses if it has any chance of staying in power.

For more than a year, with the Adani project winning final state and federal environmental approvals, Labor has been divided internally as the public debate over the mine heated up.

The government last year sprang the surprise reintroduction of compulsory preferential voting to ensure it picked up Greens preferences in the inner city. But after One Nation burst on to the scene, the voting fix looked like more of an own goal, with the protest party preferences potentially helping out the Liberal National Party.

Labor has been stung by the anti-Adani protests.

A Labor strategist yesterday morning said Palaszczuk needed to put distance between the government and Adani.

Palaszczuk’s explanation she would veto the federal loan — and possibly imperil the biggest project on the horizon in regional Queensland — because of a whisper campaign was feeble, at best.

Her decision was political — cutting her losses in the regions and trying to save her job.