2024 Queensland election: Premier Steven Miles catches bus to ask for parliament to be dissolved

In one of its last acts before going into caretaker mode, Queensland’s government has issued a show cause notice to a local mayor for allegedly lying over his military record.

Premier Steven Miles kicks off the election with a visit to Government House with Grace Grace, Cameron Dick and, Shannon Fentiman. Picture: NewsWire/ Adam Head

Queensland Premier Steven Miles has caught the bus to Government House to request Governor Jeannette Young dissolve parliament, marking the start of the formal state election campaign.

In a media stunt to promote Labor’s 50 cent public transport fares, Mr Miles opted to take the bus, rather than drive to Government House in the Brisbane suburb of Paddington, before heading north to Townsville.

Crime has dominated public debate in Townsville, home to a trio of marginal Labor-held seats, and senior party sources have privately conceded the city is “a lost cause”.

In one of its last acts before going into caretaker mode, the Miles government issued a show cause notice to Townsville mayor Troy Thompson late Monday night.

Mr Thompson, who was elected as the city’s mayor in March, is under investigation by the Crime and Corruption Commission after allegedly lying about his military career ahead of the local government elections.

He has three weeks to respond to the notice.

Speaking outside Government House, Mr Miles fired the opening salvo of the campaign.

“This Queensland election is about two things. Who do you trust most to tackle the cost of living and deliver a plan for our state’s future,” he said.

“When it comes to the cost of living, I will be running on my record. From the day I was appointed Queensland Premier my Labor team and I have delivered cost of living relief.”

He went onto spruik Labor’s $1000 energy rebates, 20 per cent cut to car registration and 50 cent public transport fares.

Premier Miles rode a bus to Government House to spruik cheap fares. Picture: Dan Peled / NewsWire

Opposition to preference Labor above ‘anarchist’ Greens

The Liberal National Party will not preference the Greens over Labor at the Queensland election after frontrunner David Crisafulli warned that any boost to the number of “anarchist” crossbenchers would sow chaos in the state parliament.

The LNP was flushed out on the opening day of the campaign when Mr Crisafulli initially hedged on saying whether he supported preferencing against Labor in a rerun of the tactic used in 2020 to engineer the defeat of former deputy premier Jackie Trad at the hands of the Greens.

The LNP leader insisted the problem lay with the system of compulsory preferential voting introduced by the ALP under former premier Annastacia Palaszczuk, not its preference strategy. Until 2016, Labor in Queensland had embraced optional preferential voting to allow electors to “just vote 1” on the ballot paper.

At the same time, senior state ALP figures told The Australian the party would have to rely on Greens preferences to hold several seats in its stronghold of Brisbane to deliver Steven Miles’s government another term.

“We are in trouble with the swing across the state, and some are lost,’’ one Labor source said.

“But there are seats, particularly in Brisbane, where Greens preferences will probably prove critical in Labor holding them. In a seat like South Brisbane, if the LNP puts us ahead of the Greens, we may actually win it back.”

Mr Crisafulli twice refused to be drawn on whether the LNP should preference Labor first, even though he branded the Greens a “party of complete anarchists” and said the next parliament would be “chaotic” if they increased their representation for the third state election in a row.

“We should not have to preference anyone and the government’s had multiple opportunities during the course of this parliament to right the electoral gerrymander that they have rigged, and they chose not to,” Mr Crisafulli said when opening his campaign in the crunch seat of Cairns in north Queensland.

“So you can ask the government about their unholy alliance with the Greens. We know the Greens and Labor are one, and the Labor Party know that there is a real prospect of a larger contingent of Greens giving them preferences and giving them supply and enabling a fourth term in 14 years … I am asking Queenslanders if they want change to vote for it.”

In clarifying, LNP campaign headquarters said the party had “no intention” of preferencing the Greens at the October 26 poll.

“While those decisions can’t be made until ballot papers are finalised, the LNP has no intention of preferencing the Greens, and should the LNP win the October election, an LNP government would restore Queensland’s ‘just vote 1’ system and do away with Labor’s dealmaking system,” an LNP spokesperson said.

Labor under Ms Palaszczuk scrapped optional preferential voting to maximise the tight preference flow to the ALP from the Greens. Full preferential voting is mandated at the federal level and in most other states.

However, the deal cut both ways for Queensland Labor after it lost Ms Trad’s plum seat of South Brisbane to the Greens in 2020. Controversially, the LNP had made the tactical decision to direct preferences to the Greens over Labor, dooming her re-election prospects.

In 2017, the LNP also lost the inner-Brisbane seat of Maiwar to the Greens’ ranking state MP, Michael Berkman.

The minority party is eyeing another three inner-Brisbane Labor seats this time, including McConnel, held by State Development Minister Grace Grace, one of Mr Miles’s most trusted confidantes and a key figure in his troubled 10-month effort to reboot the government.

Mr Crisafulli said it was “completely and utterly undemocratic” that Queenslander voters did not have the choice to fill out the ballot paper how they wished.

Senior ALP insiders said Labor would preference the Greens ahead of the LNP on its how-to-vote cards.