Devil is in the detail that premier-elect David Crisafulli failed to spell out

LNP leader and premier-elect David Crisafulli in Brisbane. Picture: Lyndon Mechielsen / The Australian

Here’s a curly question for Queensland’s premier-elect.

Let’s say a 13-year-old breaks into a house and murders the unfortunate occupant.

That’s an open and shut case of adult crime.

Does the young offender do the adult time David Crisafulli has promised? Would any court in the land jail a child for life?

Now that he’s climbed the proverbial mountain and won all those seats that the state Liberal National Party needed to regain power, Crisafulli says he will waste no time in implementing his election agenda.

Mr Crisafulli gets down to work with deputy Jarrod Bleijie at Queensland’s Parliament House on Sunday. Picture: Lachie Millard

Front and centre is the Making Queensland Safer Laws to address youth crime.

Crisafulli insists they will be through the parliament by the end of the year and make good his pledge to punish adult crime with adult time “so youth offenders committing serious adult crimes will serve the same time as adults”.

As he is about to discover, the devil will be in the detail he didn’t provide during the campaign – especially when the LNP’s marquee policy is riddled with holes you could drive a truck through.

It is the difference between opposition and governing and, dare it be said, deliverable outcomes from a slogan that worked a treat as a sound bite or with a focus group but which may not pass muster as law.

Squaring this particular circle will take some doing.

It’s not the only challenge Crisafulli faces as he prepares to be sworn in. He has undertaken to cut both taxes and state debt, on track to hit $172bn by 2027-28, but insists this won’t be at the expense of government service provision or public service numbers; a professed commitment to Labor’s plan to reduce emissions by 75 per cent by 2035 seems to be wavering and there’s no clarity on the LNP’s renewable energy target; the budget will be under pressure from day 1 if the public sector unions proceed with a round of hefty pay claims; abortion law revisionism looms as a cul-de-sac for the new parliament.

So good luck, Mr Premier-elect.

Crisafulli deserves plaudits for the disciplined, effective campaign he ran – for all the limitations of his small-target strategy that ended up causing such heartburn for the LNP.

The party came from a long way behind after its numbers in state parliament went backwards at the last election in 2020. A net gain of at least 15 seats this time around, with up to three more in the offing, delivers Crisafulli a workable majority. He would have taken that result in a heartbeat when he became LNP leader four years ago.

Crisafulli is already thinking long term. He wants to be around as premier when Brisbane hosts the Olympics in June 2032, closing out what would be his government’s second term. But that will depend on whether he meets the “KPIs” he has set for himself and his ministers, foremost among them tackling youth crime.

You can be certain he will be judged harshly by the voters in 2028 if he fails to bring down the rate of offending or squibs on the ambulance ramping target.

And for the record, his office’s response to our question about the hypothetical 13-year-old murderer read: “If a youth offender chooses to commit the most serious crimes like murder, they will receive the same sentence as an adult committing the same crime.”