LNP gets Queensland election campaign jump start

Everyone on the LNP campaign bus was up before dawn for what turned out to be day one of the 2024 election campaign – just how David Crisafulli likes it.

LNP leader David Crisafulli. Picture: Liam Kidston

Everyone on the LNP campaign bus was up before dawn for what turned out to be Day 1 of Campaign 2024 – just how David Crisafulli likes it.

The LNP leader was neat as a pin in crisp white business shirt and navy tie, ready to “get cracking” in steamy Cairns.

The north Queensland city looms large in both sides’ calcu­lations for October 26.

For Mr Crisafulli, it’s the turn-of-tide seat on a margin of 5.6 per cent that will deliver government to the LNP if the early opinion polls are right and all goes according to plan over coming weeks.

Labor insists it’s still in the hunt in Cairns and maybe – just maybe – it can take some of the sting out of the blue wave that 45-year-old Mr Crisafulli seems to be surfing.

The two leaders are only a year apart in age yet present as a study in contrasts. Steven Miles, 46, is the man from Mango Hill on Brisbane’s outer northside who, let’s say, would never be accused of being a clothes horse.

He wears his reputation as the daggy dad with undisguised pride.

While Mr Crisafulli was talking youth crime in Cairns, the Premier was making a point of his own during a tour of a bus manufacturing plant in the leafy, LNP-held seat of Clayfield in Brisbane’s inner north.

Former LNP leader Tim Nicholls is on a tight margin of 1.55 per cent there, putting him in the crosshairs of both Labor and the Greens. Mr Miles’s message to the opposition: watch your backs.

Much was being made, of course, of who could lay claim to bragging rights as the election underdog. Mr Crisafulli said it was a no-brainer when Labor had lost only once since 1986, back when Joh Bjelke-Petersen was still calling the shots and he was toddling around his parents’ sugarcane farm outside Ingham.

“If you want to watch a sporting game and one team has won 11 of the past 12, you would say that side is probably the favourite, right?” he told reporters, easing into a 54-minute stint in front of the cameras. “Let’s call it for what it is. We … are down. I remain the underdog.”

Mr Miles appealed to voters to get behind the changes he had rung in since taking over from Annas­tacia Palaszczuk 10 months ago. Asked whether he would be seeking back up during the campaign from a certain Anthony Albanese, he said: “I’m running for this in my own right. I’m the candidate for premier.”

Mr Crisafulli has already said he would be delighted to be joined on the hustings by Peter Dutton.

Reminded of what Ms Palaszczuk had said to a similar question in 2020 that she “didn’t need someone to hold my hand for a week”, Mr Miles echoed the ex-boss. “I certainly don’t need anyone holding my hand. I’m not sure anyone wants to see that,” he laughed.